Thank you for your very direct answer

I'm fairly persuaded that, while there are many who attest to the quality of my work, on balance the general consensus is that my short content is overvalued, as I have to assume that they'll be more silent dissenters than supporters.

I was assumed that perhaps memes/one liners etc have viral potential, and I'm ok at making them, but it's very likely I completely overestimated my own abilities.

As to the economics of it, yes it's difficult, because even with that amount of self voting, I probably was barely breaking even with passive income. I may be unique or at least fall in an extremely uncommon category here, being both a content creator and decent sized investor. Trying to 'beat passive investment rate' was probably not the right mentality, it burned me out creatively, and annoyed other Steemians. I couldn't mentally justify making less than doing nothing but maybe I'll find some middle ground.

I absolutely agree that downvoting is necessary on this platform, although it does ask a lot from the appraisal skills of a few, and I hope it's exercised competently. My case was an appeal on quality, and I think overall, the answer was 'your content is not quite good enough' and the downvotes were on balance legitimate. I accept that.

I do apologize to everyone in general, and hope that in light of the following: 1) I genuinely thought my content was worth that much, 2) I made a new account to not exploit an existing curation trail, and 3) I stood to gain at least as much from doing absolutely nothing, as many other investors have done, at equal cost to the rewards pool, that they'll not judge me too harshly.

Going forward I'll definitely be less active on my @traf account, and will only post something if I inadvertently think of a joke, and vote modestly. This account may still be a weekly long post sort of thing.

Thank you again for providing candid feedback