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Ok, now I'm hearing you loud and clear. This is also true and based, with abundant parallels. Like, teenagers think being aloof, distant, or mysterious is cool. More mature adults tend to end up deciding that being open, earnest, and genuine is sexy, even if they don't care about the things you do. Passion is what's cool, and apathy is just either insecurity or emptiness.

To me, there is an inherent satisfaction that comes from defying soulless entities trying to dictate my habits, values, and most notably dependence for their gain. There is inherent value in having greater freedom of choice and lower cost to changing my mind than accepting vendor lock-in would permit. And there is greater financial and lifestyle security from reducing the role of cash flow (and big tech) in sustaining that lifestyle. It's actually pretty comfortable relying more on other forms of self-help, including services that no one can manipulate against my will, or outright rug-pull on me.

I never really though of such things as irrational, but rather assigning different weights to the inputs we're tweaking and outputs for which we're optimizing. My values and "weights" are somewhat described by the personalized examples of benefit I presented - albeit scoped down to one particular context. The principles or values that resonate with any particular person do so for a reason. I think if we analyze those reasons deeply enough, we'll find both the internal motivation and external incentives to either change them or commit to them.

Conversely, I don't imagine nihilistic choices ever feel particularly good or right.

I think the notes of "America doesn't care about your principles or actions" are what rubbed people the wrong way in your original comment. And that's probably because it speaks to that sense of nihilism that likely isn't well represented on an open-source, Canadian-hosted, left-leaning, mainstream-alternative platform. But such people I would argue, based on global outcomes, are much more representative of the general public even in Canada. I'm upvoting your original comment now, on the basis that this underlying point is a message many need to hear, and probably articulated in the way that those people would hear.