Merit is not to be chased, it will come automatically when you are able to provide something valuable in the forum.
But also no fishing, it's not a good choice either.
The merit system should be thought of as something very simple, but it was introduced to encourage more users to post quality stuff. More precisely, maybe don't think too much about merit, let alone keep talking about it, it's better to improve the quality and improve it as best you can.
Each Member has the same opportunity to rank up, the difference is that some are fast and some are slow.
It really depends on the way and habits of the user, if you are technically savvy maybe you will get more merit than general posts or regular contributions.