I mean to be honest, that's really how it goes. They just cycle the smerits around and then give them back out to the newbies and other members on the forum.
Merit doesn't really matter anyways because once you hit hero, it's basically the same.

Off topic though, who really cares about a title? Does it really matter when smerits are cycled through the people who are already legendary/hero? They just get more smerits to give out to the other contributors on the forum.
The only thing merit gets you is a higher pay rate in signature campaigns unless you have like shitty post quality then you'll just get booted out. So??