I'm not going to address most of what you said as I disagree, and its not entirely on topic. However, I think the statement above is, and you might actually be right. Okay, it most certainly didn't kill Bitcointalk, however I do believe it killed of a sub culture of the forum, which was account farming. Either for selling forum accounts or for participating in signature campaigns. Merit practically killed that culture off, because now it actually requires some effort, which not surprisingly a lot of users here aren't willing to put the effort in to reap the rewards.