I think you made a mistake there philipma. This is the exact kind of account for whom the step was meant to. This guy has over a 1000 posts that are only "Reports" while the other are one-liners.
He has had zero merits until you hastily awarded him 2 merits for this one-liner post. To all the new merit sources, This step will only be truly successful if you take the pain to at least read/browse/glance at the post history of the guys whom you decide to merit.

Spending it the way Philipma just did would only lessen the effectiveness of this courageous and desperately needed step from Theymos. Lets make sure it is put to the best use.

Go through the post histories to see whether the people you are meriting have actually made the effort. Not like this toheed2x account which is probably just someone's farming alt. Defeats the whole purpose, causes a lot of heartburn for people who have actually made the effort and have felt ignored because of the spam.