I honestly don't care what superficial steps you take towards minimizing dragnet surveillance. Go right ahead. My problem is with communicating to ordinary people that encrypted email is reasonably safe to use to protect secrets. It is not.
Do your house doors not have locks because locks are easy to pick?
Further, wouldn't encrypted email, even in current implementation, be much more effective in keeping secrets if everyone used it? You can do much less with metadata than with email contents, and the fact that leaks of plaintext archives may happen eventually doesn't mean that all archives will be leaked.
The article has a valid point but shaming people by accusing them of larping is IMO irresponsible.