Yes, and that's because if you need to hear it, then clearly how you live your life isn't working for you.

And a common mode of failure of "living one's life" is buying stuff and thinking this will make you a better person, more creative, fix your personal issues, cure depression and so on.

It's not just some "personal failure": it's a failure the coprorate world spends trillions in aggregated add budgets to encourage, and that a large part of the economy, from fast fashion to tech gadgetry, all the way to "gear acquisition syndrome" for musicians, depends upon.

>It seems to me that the advice is almost always coming from two types of people: the extroverted, or the terminally online. The extrovert wants you to travel. Travel is the magic panacea to all of life’s problems. (...) The terminally online thinks you should only own an iPhone and a Mac. Since that’s enough for them, because all they do is sit in front of a screen all day, then that should be enough for you too

A, the gift of not just one, but two strawmen!

Because in a world with quite a lot of mindless consumption (sorry, "shopping therapy") going on, accompanied with quite a lot of depression, it's only "travel more" or "only own a laptop and a smartphone" that people advocating for minimalist suggest.

Not "be purposeful in what you buy" or "don't devote yourself to passively consuming", or "don't let the things you own define you" or "the next gizmo/jacket/synth/camera/whatever is not going to make you happy", or "buy less junk, focus on buying higher quality", or "don't overcomplicate your life", and so on - and lots of other pieces of useful advice.

Trivial? It's only trivial if you already follow it, which many don't.

Redundant? It's only redundant if they're happier not following it, which many are not - in fact, not following it makes them depressed in an endless grind.