To give OP a straight answer (and not a good hazing, which is what he really deserves): you'll rank up to Jr. Member when you get at least 1 merit. Obviously you missed the big kerfuffle a couple of weeks back when Theymos made that a requirement. All the Jr. Members who hadn't yet earned a merit got busted back down to Newbie rank.
So you'll run straight into a bounty
Wear a signature
Then start spamming BD and AD section..
Yeah, of course. Obviously OP doesn't do much reading or else he would have figured out that the rules have changed, or else he was on vacation when the new change went into effect.
Good luck trying to get a merit in either one of those sections, BTW. Last time I visited either BD or AD there weren't many posts getting merited despite there being
hundreds of posts per thread, sometimes thousands.