This made it virtually impossible to level up.

Even if I write a really high-quality post, maybe 100 people really like it but only 2 of them have spendable merit because they used it already.

I don't understand how this system is supposed to help anyone level up?

Instead, it just makes sure that the people who already put in the work previously, will be rewarded for it.

It's virtually impossible to gather 250/ 500/ 1000 merit scores if you don't have the rank yet.