The author seems so self indulgent and self involved while grasping desperately for a group identification.

Huh. Yeah. I can kind of see that framing when you put it that way. In her defense, when we're younger we tend to put more weight on our personal ideas and discoveries and treat them bigger than they might be. Everything we discover is still new, therefore there's an inherent air of excitement to those discoveries, and enthusiasm abounds. Just think of all of the high school and college kids who are just getting into politics, philosophy, etc., and think they suddenly have the whole world figured out.

I think its not very well written which doesn't help her come across all that well. Let's face it, pretty much anyone can write something for Medium, so the quality of the content is kind of all over the place there.

I got a slightly different impression from it, feeling that she's kind of come to an "A-ha!" moment where she's simultaneously discovered that she as an individual has something to offer the world and that she sees the same out of so many others and is trying to find ways to connect and make those connections meaningful. Which, on the one hand is sad, because I don't think that the realization that people are wonderful and worth knowing should ever be an epiphany for anyone, but on the other hand when someone does make that realization, well it's a good thing. We hopefully get one less person confining themselves with isolating behavior and instead we get one more person who wants to be a part of the world.