I tried it and was underwhelmed, but also overwhelmed.

I love the idea of choosing everything I want, but Arch also meant the pain of learning to install everything I actually need first.

Is there a minimalistic distro that installs all just the essentials (drivers, services like DHCP, a package manager, desktop GUI), and then I choose from there?

I'm using Arch because you start with nothing and you can make any system you want. I have disk encryption, btrfs as a filesystem, secure boot with my own custom keys, I'm running self-build kernel, I'm using apparmor and I can use any program from AUR, etc. Thats my personality. Things that you can't see but are important to me.

On other distros some of these things would be very hard to do. Especially without Arch Wiki.

I just wanted a distro built to my specs, up to date, uses pacman, not run by a for-profit company, with good documentation. The hype is mostly Reddit elitism and gatekeeping. I like that nobody has slipped branding and extra bookmarks into my browser.

afiak the prase "i use arch btw" is mostly sarcasm,
instead of genuine appreciation.

its mocking the stereotype of arch users that constantly bring it up to sound smart or feel supperior.

think of arch like "vintage car culture" with a touch of minimalism.
its restricting and breaks all the time,
but thats kinda the point because fixing it becomes a part of your lifestyle.

anime waifus