Eh, I don't think OP is being stupid--I think he just doesn't understand how some members can give away so many merits so quickly.  From an outsider's perspective, I can understand how it would appear suspicious.  After all, it's not like this forum hasn't had tons of merit abuse (and likely still has a lot happening).  When someone looks at my merit-giving history, they might reasonably conclude that I'm favoring some members and perhaps question how I could rapidly give a single member 30-40 merits in a single 5-minute period.

The fact is that I'm not favoring anyone.  I'm either doing a post history review for someone who's PM'ed me, or I'm reviewing post histories from this thread, which I try to follow closely.  As I said, it doesn't take long for me to determine whether someone's put enough effort into their posts to warrant merits--but OP may not have understood that, since it hasn't really been discussed before.