I will tell you now. If I see ANY post down voted to $0 that is not spam, plagiarism, etc. it is noticeable. There is a difference between reducing rewards and removing rewards completely.
I think the $0 for something with a lot of votes is something we want to avoid seeing.
I've seen the up vote abuse as well. That can occur in many places and it definitely occurs with some powerful accounts and always has.
As to your two down votes of my post. I was fine with that. You didn't send me to $0 and ultimately the conversation we had was worth more to me than any amount of money the post may have received.
As to WHY I chose Lucy as I told you. It was the most blatant and obvious example. Anyone could look at it and see it. Yet it wasn't the only example.
That was the reason I chose it. It was undeniable what had been occurring for some time.
Is it rare? To be sent to $0 I hope so. Yet I haven't been back long enough to know. I do see some seemingly bot down voters that latch onto communities and topics they don't like as if they were leeches but they are low power votes and I see them, see who they are, "oh look it's sunsetjesus again" and I shrug and go on with my day.
While I am glad @trostparadox saw value in my post and even you did in hindsight. I did not mind your votes. If I'd been voted to $0 I might have minded but that's about it. It also would have made my own post a good example. :)
It is quite rare and I'm also someone against zero'ing posts and have always been, it's enough to reduce the rewards and fend off the maximizers who previously to this HF would stick on anything getting big votes for the returns. It's especially rare because the person in your example has quite a rare antagonizing, sockpuppet/fake ID history behind him that may cause people to want to zero him out, even if I still don't agree with that as it comes off as personal more than just wanting to reduce rewards to save the rewardspool from it.
It becomes even more rare when people counter the downvotes because they think they were overdone.
I like it when people counter it. I've tried to do so in the past and back when I was a Dolphin on steemit I was powerful enough a few times. Most of the time I was not. :) I was at 25000+ or somewhere around there when I started powering down. That isn't as big a deal here. That number has climbed. Yet it is achievable.