Wasn't there a "bounty" program where if it had a lot of views but no answers, the answer rewarded more internet ego points?

Not automatically. You could add a bounty using your own points if the question didn't get an accepted answer in 2 days.

Which is kinda cool, but also very biased for older contributors. I could drop thousands of points bounty without thinking about it, but new users couldn't afford the attention they needed.