Thats exactly what some shitposters are having wet dreams about.
Yep, but fortunately shitposters are still having, along side those masturbatory fantasies, an extremely hard time earning or mistakenly getting merits. This is a good thing and makes me happy. What doesn't is that they're still shitposting away as if the merit system didn't exist. The consolation for me is that the merit system inhibits them from earning as much as they could from signature campaigns, so that they're not rewarded even more for shitposting.
Anyway, I don't know who designed the merit system (I assume it was Theymos), but it is pretty brilliant. My opinion of Theymos is that his priorities regarding bitcointalk are heavily influenced by the money made from the traffic generated by shitposters. He tends to ignore simple solutions to the level of spam here with reasons I don't fully agree with--which I accept, since it's not my forum. However, I think the merit system was necessary and really well-designed, and I respect him for implementing it.
One of the best things about it is that you can't retract merits, and they don't expire. I think I would like the system a little less if they could. It would make it unnecessarily complicated and would probably provide more opportunities for abuse.
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