This is due to the fact that racist memes are never relevant, automatic downvote!

This is silly though, isn't it? Most people think most things that they disagree with are low quality by nature of being something they disagree with.

Whatever was intended for them, IMO upvotes and downvotes work because everyone just uses them however they want, and the sum total of everyone doing that averages out to a somewhat passable quality sorting system. Trying to tell people how to use their upvotes and downvotes is just yelling into the wind.

Yes, that's more than likely where I first learned about it.

I like this explanation the best. Net vote count is a decent proxy for whether something is worth reading.