What I meant to get at is that most complaints come from lower ranked members, but I wanted to emphasize that merit is difficult at all levels, and even more so considering that the top ranks require an enormous amount of Merits.
For example, the Hero Rank for example has currently 1.060 forum members which have received at least 1 sMerit. I don’t know what fraction of active Hero members that represents (I guess Vod could fill up in here), but out of the merited heroes, just looking at the merit side:

-   90 are waiting to be named Legendary, having and initial merit of 1.000 (Hero exceptions theymos mentioned once as having received an airdrop of 1K merit if I’m not mistaken). These are in the randomizer queue you mention.
-   1, Jet Cash, has formally made it to Legendary having been awarded >= 500 additional Merits (not in the 1.060 sum since he is now a Legendary).
-   3 more are virtually there (Last of the V8s, TMAN, hilariousetc), having been awarded >= 500 additional Merits, but lack the formal Legendary rank title (also in the randomizer queue therefore).
-   2 are nearly there, with over 900 merits in all (awarded over 400 merits): BTCforJoe & HCP.
-   3 are close, with over 800 merits in all (awarded over 300 merits): marlboroza, romanornr and Hhampuz.
-   4 have over 700 merits in all (awarded over 200 merits): tonych, sabotag3x, poptop and TryNinja.
-   17 have over 600 merits in all (awarded over 100 merits).
-   941 have under 600 merits in all (awarded under 100 merits).

In summary, 88,77% of Heroes that have received at least 1 sMerit require at least 400 sMerits more to rank-up to Legendary (just looking at Merits here, not activity). In the same period of time, only one Hero has made it to Legendary formality, and three more virtually...

It doesn't seem to act as a spam deterrent, just as a ranking-up barrier. So long as campaigns do not all include awarded Merits as a requirement, spam will be as it is I'd say.