Your observations seem spot on to me.

I'm not all that inclined to commiserate with those who's personal problems lead them to believe they'll find truth and meaning and solutions in life with these kinds of endeavors.

That's not to say that there's no market for a book/play/movie about it. There certainly is. People, by in large, do love to wallow in other people's misery and they've been paying for the chance to do that for almost ever. My wife loves that stuff. I get bored instantly, then annoyed shortly after, with that kind of stuff.

I suppose we could all gush on producing soul searching prose about why we backpack or go for a walkabout and talk about our attempts to discover ourselves, that's why I can't read books like that. "Into the Wild" just kind of pissed me off. Both because the guy it was about was full of self pity and really did almost nothing for anyone and leaned on others kindness and generosity for almost everything, and the author, while a skilled wordsmith, goes out of his way to romanticize and dramatize this guy's petty little problems. And one of the results of his work has been to inspire a bunch of others to do the same. I guess it's fair to say that if I smell someone going out of their way to find something to be miserable about I tend to pinch my nose.

On the other hand, I am very much interested in those who go out to explore. I've got dozens of old books detailing the accounts of great explorers, and those never cease to amuse and enthrall me.

Those tales of explorers describe almost the exact opposite personality type. Self pity almost never shows up in their accounts, and when it does it's not described with anything close to endearment or compassion. Those types knew they were going to face hardships yet they were driven to discover or document something that would be a benefit to themselves and others. Many of them did it solely to extend the base of human knowledge. There was nothing whiney about them.

I suppose that's a pretty hard look at it, and it's not as cut and dried as all that, but these are some of the feelings and thoughts I have about the subject.