As many of you readers and authors have noticed, there has been quite a lot of 'Upvote Shops' lurking around lately. And you may ask, what is an upvote shop? Well, an upvote shop is a shop that upvotes a story with multiple accounts for exchange of karma points. Upvote shops provide upvotes in a bundle, a small package may contain 5 or 10 votes while a large contains 100 votes. 

This leads me to another important point people have been debating about lately, the featured stories. A lot of people have been accusing the authors of featured stories to have bought upvotes in order to get featured, and I totally agree. But, I still believe they were good and well written. If the authors would spend karma points to promote their stories to that extent, it shows how desparate the authors are and how much they care about their story.

Now, here is something I just cannot comprehend. How can the purchasers of the massive amounts of upvotes sit still and face their readers and other users? The moment they transfer their karma points, excitement probably floods their minds as they were eager to get the 'attention'. But after getting the upvotes they want, after their story gets featured, they should feel more guilty than happiness.

When one decided to get featured by buying massive amounts of votes, the respect I have for them is definitely lost and the borders have been crossed. I believe buying upvotes to get featured is the worst thing an author can do. It is unfair to other authors, whose stories are wondefully written and actually deserve to get featured. 

When I see authors of featured stories saying things like 'I didn't expect to get featured!' 'Thank you all for your support!'. Come on, how do they have the guts to even say such things to the public?

Purchasing Upvotes: I have lost my dignity. 
Here is my own confession with purchasing upvotes.

Around a year ago, as I strolled among the lists of advertisement shops and packages, something caught my attention. Instead of the usual upvotes included in a package along with wallposts, I saw the 'upvote' packages of a shop.

It was my first time every seeing a shop that provided upvotes, I was really happy to come across it, I mean, I'll be able to make my story seem more popular and eyecatching, right? No, that wasn't the case.

As I watched my upvotes go up, I was content. But the shop made a mistake, I requested for 20 upvotes, but they gave me 50... The ratio of my upvotes to subscribers became 1:2. It made me look very desperate, and of course, I was. I felt extremely guilty.

I hid the number of subscirbers of that story and tried to pretend nothing was wrong. My readers didn't point it out, but I felt absolutely terrible. Even until this day, I wish I can 'down vote' my story again. I promised to myself I'll never do something like that, and I kept my promise.

For those of you out there, saving your karma points to buy upvotes, no matter how tempting it is, DON'T DO IT. It's not worth it, that star by your story isn't worth it. Don't lose your dignity over this little thing.

I am very ashamed to confess all this, here is the story link that I bought upvotes for. I don't even want to look at that story. It marks my immature and shameful past as an author. https://www.asianfanfics.com/story/view/714643#

December 14 2015- Update:

I didn't tell the complete truth in this blog. I actually have another story that I bought upvotes for. I didn't want anyone to know since it's my most popular and adored story. But looking at how other users are pointing out the fake upvotes, I'm afraid someone will bust me. So I'll confess before I get caught. 

I bought 20 upvotes for this story as well, it was from a very long time ago. I had contacted the shop owner to downvote my story, but I still heard no reply.