Calm down, kid :)
I apologize.
Okay?
No one brought it to your attention because people who you interact with are clueless about hive and blogging and community. It is not your fault. It is their fault.
Again nothing happened to you. It is a difficult world out there and not everyone will be as easy. No ones asks you to give you upvote why would anyone warn you to downvote?
There is no difference between upvotes and downvotes other than a sign convention. Neither one is personal (until it is). In fact if you care for hive, you want it to be personal. Otherwise it is just auto-vote which is 95% of the time as you wrote in your post.
If you want engagement then this is what you want. In fact this post of yours has the highest engagement in the history of your posting. Now tell me is that a good thing or bad? I say it is a good thing.
There is no such thing called "bad publicity", there is only publicity. In a rally car world isn't that what you want? Otherwise no publicity no money. No money no driving. This is just marketing.