It would be a very sad thing if that's what it took to get stories to the front page. Unfortunately it seems that quite a few people have adopted your 'tactic', I always find it a little suspicious when links have been posted literally minutes ago and already have 3-5 upvotes without any comments, especially if they then scroll off the new page without receiving further upvotes.

My guess is that those are simply sockpuppets used for the initial votes. The sad thing is that plenty of times the strategy seems to work.