The loyal bitcointalk members don't care about merit. Because they don't need and ask merit. They want to learn and share about crypto stuff on here.
The merit system was not created to be neglected. It is a measure of your contribution and all members need it and it drives most of the posts made.
It was created to motivate users to contribute qualitatively, by researching and improving their knowledge base.
It becomes and abuse when you randomly posts in all boards with little knowledge on the topic and little interest in going through the contributions of others.
Share your ideas and knowledge on here. You will receive merits automatically. Don't spam and don't make garbage posts to get merits on here.
No, you would not receive merits automatically, you could even have posts which are objectively high quality get ignored or go under in the sea of posts.
But, Yes, if you don't spam and keep contributing you would eventually get merited, and also something else, you would have become more knowledgeable.