This is a very innocent way of thinking. But it is good that you have come to this conclusion. Unfortunately, not everyone would feel bad about buying merits and cheating. So the big demotivating factor when buying merits is not that you would foul your soul. It is that you will dirty your account forever with a very likely Red Trust.

And taking out a Red Trust is a very difficult task. Much simpler to build informative and useful posts that can acquire some merits.

I am not the best example of how to get many merits since I still lack 148 merits for the next ranking. Even so, I always earn a few merits every month trying to inform or discuss matters about Bitcoin and Altcoins that I like and read about. I always think of providing useful information to someone rather than just replying to a topic about my personal opinion. Bitcointalk is not a social media, it is a forum for debates.