Sorry to hear you had a bad experience. The reasons I don't downvote much are not because I don't believe in fighting spammers, nor because I care about personal attacks (At the beginning of Splinterlands — Steem Monsters — I co-ran a Splinterlands contest channel called contest kings. Aggy worked with us and distributed free packs through us. Man, I got called so many bad words and was threatened so many times by people who didn't think we were giving them enough. You kind of just ignore it after awhile), but because my account is small and I don't want to get in any downvoting wars with people. If I could afford to buy more HIVE, I wouldn't worry about that, but alas...I can't.

Anyway, maybe it's best to step away from downvoting for now as you figure out what you want to do and recover from the shock of how these people react. Just curate stuff you like for now and both enjoy the curation rewards and enjoy bringing the poster a little happiness as they see a big vote coming in. I told you before that my biggest motivation to powering up was voting on the return proposal. That's only half true. My other biggest reason is so I can better reward people. I want to be like @appreciator where people feel good when they get that vote and feel good about what they wrote. In other words, I want to make people feel happy. Silly, I guess. It's the Mr Rogers in me.