Considering your Newbie rank, I would recommend you, forget about merits/activity etc at this stage and spend maximum time in gaining the knowledge. Forum administration/management is doing its best to provide a better user experience for everyone and we should trust those efforts. Read as much as you can and try to understand the things and concepts. You can begin with '
Beginners & Help' section, you will find answers to your most of the queries in this section itself.
Merits are similar to the likes on facebook but here, you can send similar likes (merits) and there is no option to buy merits so you have to work on sharing the knowledge that you have and then someone
Might award you with merits for the same. So in order to share knowledge, you must gain it and to gain it, read my first paragraph.