Seems pretty Meta to me, but that's for the mods to decide if anybody bothered to report OP's post.

OP, you'll get there.  I've read a bunch of your posts and it's obvious you put some effort into them, which is what a ton of members who registered in 2017-18 and who are still Newbies-Jr. Members don't take heed of.  Nobody is going to earn any merits by writing short, lazy posts that are usually in very broken English.  If your grasp of English isn't that great, you can overcome that with effort--I've seen it done.  Plus there's the local boards to earn merits on.

So to all the noobs who are wondering what the trick is to ranking up these days, look at OP's post history.  If you're not willing to put in that much effort into your posts, don't expect to rank up past Jr. Member.  This is exactly what the merit system was supposed to do, by the way, i.e. force members who want to advance their rank to make constructive posts.  And for the handful of members who've actually managed to claw their way toward Hero member status, it's worked.