I think the modern era has complicated the issue in many people’s minds, by making high tech stuff like solar lighting and internet seem like necessities. They aren’t if you decide they aren’t. Folks just want to appear more devout or disciplined or extreme than they are for cultural cachet. I don’t really get it, but I guess if you are wealthy, then you may desire to avoid consumption for any number of reasons, and offgrid living is a kind of restrained conspicuous consumption.
Having grown up off the grid in a one room cabin without running water or even electricity at the beginning, I think it’s a lot less romantic if you’re poor, and especially so without the amenities of modern living. To me, a lot of this feels like a flex, like #vanlife vs being homeless and living out of your car, or glamping vs sleeping rough. But I digress.
And the internet is part of the grid, not that the distinction means as much these days, with reliable WISPs and Starlink being viable. I think offgrid living jives more with DIY and community projects and less with corporate turnkey monetized solutions.
That’s the distinction I think is important here. Some folks want to be offgrid because of the freedom it gives them and their community. Some folks just do it for themselves and their egos.
To me, “off grid” simply means being entirely self reliant for all aspects of your well-being, for a period of time.
Bobbing around in a tiny plastic boat in the middle of the enormous Pacific Ocean with literally no possibility of connection to any other human is just about as off grid as you can get on this Earth.
Just because they reconnect to the grid occasionally to top up and download, doesn’t invalidate this. The truth remains that they are “on-grid” far less than most of us.