Sadly, he's probably not even the 20,000th member who's wanted--or tried--to take some kind of shortcut to build an established reputation on the forum.  He just happened to open a thread and ask how to do it publicly.  Think of all the morons, degenerates, and reprobates who purchased accounts that already had established usernames and all the members who tried to con their way into the community by busting scams and whatnot solely out of self-interest.

So yep, there are shortcuts....but my advice to OP and anyone else is to just stick around, post constructively, and be an honest member of the forum.  If you've got an interesting enough personality and/or you do enough good deeds over a long enough time frame, you'll become known.  It just takes a while, especially since there are so many people here making a ton of background noise.