Just a few quick comments on what you commented:

- Numerically, the overall number of different sMerit Senders (profiles) per month has been more or less stable since the end of 2018, and is somewhere in the 1100-1400 range roughly.

- The overall number of different sMerit Receivers (profiles) per month has been more or less stable since the end of 2018, and is somewhere in the 2000-2200 range roughly.

Since those numbers are more or less stable, I’m going to assume that the forum is Ok with them. That makes earning merit not a piece of cake, but not impossible either by far. It is not though easy-peasy, and it does require some persistence in posting content that is decent enough (which entails time, likely often on a larger scale than one is prepared to commit).

See: https://public.tableau.com/views/BitcointalkMeritDashboard/MeritSendersReceivers?:display_count=y&:origin=viz_share_link

On the topic of giveaway merits, conceptually they do not exist. There are though some threads where people may post links to some of their prior post in order to see if the OPs of those threads want to merit any of the linked posts. These are not giveaways in the sense that, ultimately, it will depend upon the OPs criteria what to merit and what to leave empty handed (as well as to the amount of sMerits he's willing to use on the thread). It's an on/off sort of thing, and I don't think there are that many of the kind currently active.