For the most part, downvotes on poor questions don't cascade a ton. Questions that go lower generally deserve it. Of those questions about a day old with score

For the most part, downvotes on poor questions don't cascade a ton. Questions that go lower generally deserve it. Of those questions about a day old with score <= 0, only ~30% are less than 0. Of those <= -1, only ~30% are < -1 and only ~10% are < -2. Your RTFM tag doesn't seem to add very much over a moderate count of downvotes. I believe the rest of what you've said applies when downvotes happen.