I would like to think that it is different, but somehow it seems to me that these days we have a lot more newbies who do not seem unique to me, not only in the way they think when it comes to Bitcoin, but also in the sense that they are not very innovative (and not even smart) when choosing their names. The term "smart" seems to be quite popular these days 
I agree with your reading that the OP probably many of the newbies we see around here are undeclared alts. In principle, even if they don't say they are alts, we don't have to assume they break the rules and alts are allowed, but in most cases we end up finding out over time that they trade merits with each other or join the same signature campaign, things like that.
Of course I'm not saying that the OP is someone's alt account, but the methods people use to build alt farms on this forum are getting more and more cunning. Therefore, I would recommend that you be careful with merits until you are sure that the user is a unique person who has sincere intentions.
In any case, we should give merits to their posts simply for the quality of the content.