I don't know if you're just playing a beginner who wants to give the impression that he's interested in these kinds of things, or if you have a tactic that helped you get more merits in a very short period of time than some others in a few months.
Do you think this post deserved to get 23 merits?, that's the first post of brand new user who registered in December 17, 2023. @OP is also a brand new user who earn a lot merit from his first post, so... do you get what I mean? 
This is just more proof that the OP is not a beginner, and that @aleph1 very likely belongs to him, and that he is in the construction phase of making very successful alt farm so far. If I had to bet whose alt accounts those are, I'd put a big bet on someone who has been the main topic on the Reputation board for months.
Of course, this is not an accusation, just my personal opinion.
For someone who is a just brand new account getting 23 merit with just a single post single activity is kind of (highly) suspicious. If it were a rank ranked member that would have been different story. But with brand new, it's naturally that people (we) will think it's an alt, and most likely it's an alt account.
I don't know if it's a pure mistake done by OP or not. But just as Lucius said, it's not an accusation, but his personal opinion (Which is also what I believe).
I remembered there was a user from Pakistan (if I remember correctly), who accidentally gave 22 merits instead of 2 merits, later he made a post. And everything settled before anyone though of anything negative. So maybe OP should have made things clear.
I don't know what things are illegal in this forum. So please tell me if I broke any rules.
I discovered that you don't lose merit when sending merit. I read how smerit works. To test it out I created aleph1 to dump all my smerit in and recovered half of it.