Well I'm glad people disagree. What would the world be if nobody would be wrong ;)

No I mean.. but yes, I'm glad you're happy with your upvote bot experiences. However I might guess you have not received upvotes from actual whales, and it'd be difficult to get their attention with upvote bots. There are basically "whale upvoting servies" and some pack a power of an actual whale, that's for sure.

Some people have pointed out, that before the upvote bot trend started, more users were giving out upvotes for free to others. Now more and more people are asking for a payment to upvote something.

At one point, you couldn't buy your way to trending and the trending page looked a bit different than what it is nowadays.

But can't deny most of us are here for the money and fame.