Maybe attack the ideas and not the structure / style of the piece?
It has nothing to do with the author "finding meaning." It's critiquing an overpriced, socially bankrupt culture and area, and the toll that can take on mental health and happiness.
>It's critiquing an overpriced, socially bankrupt culture and area, and the toll that can take on mental health and happiness.
This is what the piece _thinks_ it's critiquing. That's what it wants us to think too. But I'm arguing that it's very obvious where the author is coming from. You can tell from the examples she picks that she's just basically a new Google hire who's not really fitting in, and feeling disillusioned with her cohort. "Everybody goes to Lake Tahoe for the weekend"? Tell me that's not coming directly from somebody who's feeling bored and unfulfilled and surrounded by people she hasn't bonded with. And so my point is that this is something that a lot of people go through, and it doesn't have much to do with the monotony of Silicon Valley or the moral decay of our society (which, as a reminder, I don't really deny as real phenomena!). This is basically a diary entry of someone walking through a tough time in their life, but it's trying to bring the weight of society's problems along with it to make you feel like it's a deep insight. But it ain't. And we, as adults, should be able to understand what's going on there, and call it like it is.
I think it has a whole lot (if not entirely) to do with the author finding meaning. In particular, the reason this "bankrupt" culture takes a toll on the author's happiness is because she doesn't find Silicon Valley's value structure to be meaningful. In other words, surrounding yourself with people who have a different value structure than yourself can cause mental health problems (especially when you haven't taken the time to explicitly inspect your values bc you either feel like there's something wrong with you or everyone around you is a horrible person).
Such a critique shows more about you and your inflated sense of yourself than anything else.