MichaelX is a 4 year old user who's still a Newbie. He's not a spammer, so there's no damage to the forum by Meriting him. There's also nothing gained by MichaelX.
I sometimes send a lot of Merit to one user, and I don't think that's Merit abuse.
I commonly see one good post from a user, and then go through their history to merit even more of their posts, because if they have made one constructive post then they've likely made more.
I guess it's only a Merit source thing to have to search for good posts. I'm happy when I can "unload" a bunch of sMerit, and I'm happy to see new users who aren't spammers. They're the future of this forum (and Bitcoin)!