You don't have to be a bot or an obvious spammer. There are many users who just write 30 one liners over the required time and then they become a Junior Member with no effort whatsoever. People are farming accounts in their hundreds if not thousands this way. Requiring one merit is not outrageous, but it certainly makes farming Junior accounts much more harder and doesn't really effect those others who are here to contribute something as they will likely get the merit pretty fast. I've just looked over your few pages of posts and whilst I wouldn't call you a spammer you haven't really contributed anything substantial either, but I doubt you'd have much issue in getting one merit if you put some more effort in. Requiring one merit to move up a rank really shouldn't be an issue, and if people can't even achieve one merit I would say the problem lies with them.