I had exactly the same experience with /r/minimalism. Thankfully I found /r/simpleliving through it, but I quickly unsubscribed from /r/minimalism. The repetitive posts about expensive watches and wallets, people trying to get to the arbitrary number of 100 items for no logical reason, and people chastising others for having a bed was just ridiculous.
Shaving soap. It's in the photo, in the jar.
I typed a response to this yesterday, but my phone ate it. 🙃 For anyone else trying to comment here, you need to explicitly set the language of your comment to "English" when responding to Kbin users (which OP is.)
I started out in spaces related to minimalism before I found the simple living movement. It definitely felt like a good fit in some ways, but a very bad one in others. For example, I definitely prefer to own less stuff than the average person, but I would say that for me this comes from a rejection of consumerism. Whereas many "minimalists" are very driven by consumerism: opting for buy very few items, but only those of the best brands or with the right "aesthetic."
There is also a tendency for grifting in those spaces. People become microcelebrities and put out blogs, videos, and even documentaries all rehashing the same, meaningless message. "My life was so terrible, and then I discovered minimalism and discarded all my possessions, and now my life is great." The epitome of this is "The Minimalists," two guys who somehow ended up with a Netflix documentary. This content has a great aesthetic, but lacks substance of any kind. They fail to dig into the things that explain why shopping doesn't make us happy (the hedonic treadmill,) or provide a meaningful critique of consumerism.
So, compared to the average person, I would say that I am a minimalist. But it isn't an identity I would tout in front of self-professed "minimalists," because we have fundamentally different values.
They will almost certainly be closing the RSS and JSON loopholes next.
I am PMing users on Reddit to ask permission to reshare their OC, and then manually posting here once I obtain it. It gives me the chance to give the posts a pass for typos and such, which is nice.
I'm personally archiving some of the great content from my community on Reddit because it meant so much to me, and to lose it would be a shame. I think it's important for us to preserve the foundational content of our communities.
Being in the moment is huge. I feel like society is paced in a way that can really let life pass you by if you submit to it. Everyone is always rushing. We eat quickly before work or on breaks, coffee is a means to an end rather than a joy, and we scrutinize every moment of our time for its supposed "productivity."
To me, simple living is largely centered around the feelings I get when I step outside of this rush. Walking without destination. Stopping to smell some lilacs. Watching a thunderstorm with a cup of tea. The ritual of making a hot drink. Doing the dishes meditatively. Reading a satisfying longform article that brings me new insight.
Part of why I'm so excited for this new group is that it is so small. I want to have those deep conversations, to share those long articles that give so much insight. Thank you so much for reading, by the way. I often feel like I'm sharing into a void with long pieces like this — that nobody will have the attention span to read them. Reddit especially felt that way in the last few years; though in the early days it was certainly a decent place to find discourse, it became "Instagram-ified" and engagement became reduced mostly to people scrolling and voting on feel-good things they could ingest in a moment.
Thank for being here, and thanks for your insight. 💙
I'm more than halfway through mine, but I've also used a few for breadmaking. I can't believe how much I used to spend on shaving supplies!