You have to follow the others.
You should pleasant other member here.
Use your skills to lick and flattering them. Believe me, if they like your flattery, You will be fast grow up your rank like others.
I'm struggling to understand whether you said that sarcastically or you meant it. If that was sarcastic, I give it to you that it was funny, but if you meant what you said, I would like to respond.
So, if you already know the formula of how one can grow up in ranks easily like other users, I wonder why you have been struggling with it yourself, and had to participate in threads where you are rewarded with merits for completing certain tasks such as
signing a message or
running a node.
Now, if you say that you didn't do those things for merits but did it for learning purposes, I would say you don't need to make a post if you are doing it for learning purposes. However, I don't think that's a bad thing, you learned something and got rewarded for it, but I find no logic in what you said about how one can earn merits. Licking someone's feet or flattering them wouldn't earn you merits, it will make you lose your respect eventually.
Please ignore the second part of this post if you were being sarcastic.