'point chasing' e.g. karma farmers on reddit is fucking stupid, but I find the metric useful on an individual post. I think of them like an online extension of a facial expression: if I read a post attempting to explain something, and it's got way more downvotes than up, the kinda tells me the poster is full of shit, which is especially useful in threads where I don't know enough about the topic to actually identify the bullshit myself. Like a flat-earther trying to give a lecture to an auditorium of booing geological scientists - my clueless medic ass is going to be gauging the audience as much as the speaker.

Or, say I post some joke: if it gets a lot more upvotes than down, that tells me other folks folks got a kick out of it.

It's just another tool to communicate - and communication is hamstrung right out the gate in a predominately typed medium, so I'll take the crutch.