Many people don't care about the rank, many people don't care about anything in live maybe save money.
You can notice that many people are applying to be merit sources while some who are merit sources don't care to distribute.
No strong feelings, here is just a discussion forum.
Applying to be a merit source is a desire to contribute to the users in this forum, but I don't think merit source is a obligatory type of work where they have to spend all their merit every month. They can stop doing it for some time, it's just free work. True, some people don't care about the merit system, some don't care about rankings either. That should be normal for this forum.
That is it and in same vain, legendary members contributing to the forum and answering newbie questions is not also obligatory as opposed to what Op thinks. Those regular names we see here daily and weekly are passionate about the forum. It is not easy for some people who were here since 2013, 2014 or even earlier to still remain active. Most of the people who started earlier are no longer here.
I always considered VIP to be the highest rank here. We should all strive to reach that someday. I guess my question is, if you got rich in Bitcoin, how rich would you have to be to donate 50 BTC here, or even 10 BTC to become a Donator?
I so much believe that if there is a need for such donations again, there are people in this forum who could still donate 50btc. But the question would be if the donation would worth it.