Somehow this holds true. If you take a look on Altcoin Discussions, you can see a lot of Heroes or Legends spam all around.
Not all members achieved their rank by '
earning' merits, some acquired them through airdrops when the merit system was newly introduced and it was on the basis of their activity and not the value of their content, and ironically some have not been able to earn even a single merit despite owning legendary/Hero member accounts