@Cinebar ~ I chose my words very carefully there. No, I didn't directly accuse someone. I am more directly accusing the system for allowing anyone the choice to self download in the first place. Here I stated my gallery observation of one creator who I have over time been concerned with is self downloading. If one understands the basic statistical structure of the gallery you will see that one does not need to waste their time self downloading 1000 times. In fact in another post I made here I clearly explain how this system works and how a self downloader only needs to add say 10 extra downloads every hour in the first 24 hours to guarantee a spot in the popular now section. 5 DL in 1 minute, 25 DL in 5 minutes. I repeat ~ in only 5 minutes any one of us could right now add 25 downloads to their own or anyone else's creation. Add that to the legitimate downloads they are getting and easily they reach the popular now page within 24 hours. Once they are in the popular now section the natural ideas that you bring up like "when people see 'popular now' they want to be part of the cool crowd too, so they also download something someone told them is 'popular now'." kicks in and then the whole gallery clicks 'like' and downloads that creation. I am agreeing with you. I am agreeing with the whole point of this thread. I am disagreeing with the methods and intentions of this new popular now as default. I am also disagreeing with the major flaw I keep clearly pointing out to anyone who will listen. I do not know how to explain this further. If I were to add 25 more downloads to my own creations that would only take me 5 minutes. My self downloads would add to my legitimate follower base who does actually download my creations then the numbers do add up. I could boost myself into that section with every creation just taking a little extra time to self download. I couldn't make it to the top self downloading in this smaller way but getting to the top in the first 24 hours is not necessary. Once you are seen in that section then we start dealing with all of the points you have just brought up. Plus, reaching the top of popular now within 24 hours would be way too obvious. It is a numbers game in the gallery. It always has been especially if you buy into the whole idea of "popular now". If I did only want popularity here I would have just shut up about this self downloading concern and joined in the self downloading strategy for popularity. It is a huge rush to be a hit and to be seen by everyone viewing that page. It is an even bigger rush now in this new system because my downloads only for this one creation are growing exponentially more than I have ever seen in the 2 1/2 years I have been creating and sharing. Plus, that new follow button is being used a lot so my follower base is growing faster than ever before just by that one male sim being up there at the top legitimately. That easy follow button is a new, and in my opinion a very tempting factor to continue using or now start using the self downloading method if my major motivation in uploading was for popularity and fame. Clearly that is not my motivation. Never has been, never will be. I am not so naïve to believe in the goodness of all people I share this incredibly creative gallery with anymore knowing the way to self download is available to all of us and much too quickly able to be used.
Thank you @Cinebar for bringing up these points which helped me to highlight the reasons some people will choose to self download in the first place. I appreciate your critical thought process. I never want to outright accuse anyone because I do not have a right to judge anyone personally. Who knows what is going on in the minds and hearts of others and the why in which people chose to do the things they do. I only want us all to see and most specifically EA/Maxis to see how damaging this one fact is to the health and fairness of this gallery.
Thank you to everyone taking the time to read, think, comment and consider the validity of what I am saying. I would even say test it out yourselves but that would be encouraging you to use a game flaw to manipulate the numbers to your benefit which is against EA's rules. I do encourage you to please reach out to anyone you know that could be influential in helping fix this self downloading mess though .. please :)
