That yuppie elite article was spot on.

You know one thing that became more and more apparent when I was hanging out on the site was that ... the lack of meaning, the lack of a feeling of purpose, after FIRE, was really apparent once you dug into the forum a bit more.

Many, many (most?) people that actually retired - even from jobs they hated - seemed to be unhappy, adrift after they stopped working. And didn't seem to find their way.

Or maybe it's just the complainers, the ones for whom it didn't work out all that well, who made these types of posts, like, "I'm FIRE, now what? I'm bored and depressed".

Another thing that the FIRE movement really encapsulated for me was...if a group wasn't EXPLICITLY anti-woke, they would become woke. FIRE at the beginning was a pretty normal group, frequently with an alternative, libertarian edge. Towards the end of when I stopped reading much on it, they got really woke, and allergic to other points of view.

Weird how that happened. I read an article like that somewhere (basically, if a group, no matter what type, was not explicitly anti-work, they became woke). I think I observed that in a number of places.