My advice is to just stop identifying as a minimalist, and find a better word to describe your identity. The thing is, the article is describing a group of peop

My advice is to just stop identifying as a minimalist, and find a better word to describe your identity. The thing is, the article is describing a group of people who self-identify as "minimalist", but you, along with ten other groups that are nothing like you OR the minimalists in the article OR each other, all identify as "minimalist". It's just not a word with any coherent meaning. The result is that every time anyone talks about minimalism, there's some criticism leveled against minimalism, and then everyone's argument is "that's not minimalism, THIS is minimalism". It's an endless circle of semantic arguments. I at one time described myself as minimalist, but now I would describe myself as an anticonsumerist. It's not a perfect term either, but I haven't gotten in any stupid arguments about it.