I don't know what brought this to my attention, but there are many users here on the forum who got merits unusually. I can bring many examples (like we saw some account farming busted in the past years).
Don't and you could have not mentioned the account farming here at all when we're talking about old users and merit sources, and you obviously know it's not the case, is
The Sceptical Chymist or
fillippone or
our beloved AI growing any kind of accounts here?
They are merit sources, they find a good post by someone, they realize this guy deserves more merit, they go through his history and spend a bunch of merits. Nothing special.
I've not pointed out The Sceptical Chymist specifically for account farming and have definitely not come here to throw any such accusations on anybody, I just watched this on many profiles so I thought to ask.