Whenever these posts come up I question to myself whether an ideology for "stuff" is actually required, desirable, or helpful at all. They are usually thoroughl

Whenever these posts come up I question to myself whether an ideology for "stuff" is actually required, desirable, or helpful at all. They are usually thoroughly entertaining and informative, but I always leave feeling it's been therapy for the writer, a defense of their preferences whipped up into a reassuring formal-looking philosophy. Like much writing, the damage is in the contextual assumptions imposed on the reader before the article even begins. Once you've started reading and focusing on the details of the piece, it's too late - you've unwittingly accepted the assumptions and are playing by the author's rules. In these cases, one such assumption is that an overarching, complete and consistent methodology can be applied to personal property in the first place (and that certainly if there's a good one then it can be knocked out in a few hours on a blog post...). This is part of a larger pattern I'm falling into of scrutinously questioning the motives behind articles posted on personal blogs. I could be going in the wrong direction entirely but it seems very often to be validation-seeking behaviour, whether by submitting one's views for the approval of others, or simply that writing it all down gives it some mental gravitas to assuage personal doubts that the individual might be "doing it wrong". It certainly appears consistent with the range of submissions to Hacker News related to personal improvement (or, "lifehacking", as the internet seems to be running with these days). Why did these authors write these two pieces? It's very difficult to analyse! If "for validation" seems a little condescending...well, I'd prefer it to the standard interpretation: "The Best" is unsubtle status-signaling, "The Worst" is equally unsubtle counter-signaling.