@DdmrDdmr hey I can see you have a huge number of merits, how you got that.
Have a look at the posts he received Merit for and you'll work it out.
This whole merit system was to stop scams
It had nothing to do with that at all. The system was designed to stop people from automatically ranking up just by posting anything. Gaining rank is now something that has to be earned by making a valuable contribution to the forum. The people polluting the forum by posting repetitive pointless posts in spam megathreads are going to be stuck on the same rank forever.