Yep, reddit works with upvote and downvote bandwagons. Often (though not always) the first votes on a comment or post determine how the whole thing will go, especially with the self-reinforcing sorting. I noticed what you said about downvotes too, that if someone has an slightly hard to interpret, ambiguous or sarcastic post, once a few people downvoted it, other people will assume it’s a “bad” post and be more likely to down it themselves. Also you can post the same comment on similar threads in the same sub 2 days apart and the results might be wildly different depending on timing, placement, or just who saw it first.