For example, the article leads with "You're young, smart, and hoping to have a positive impact on the world."

Writing in a conversational tone attempting to empathize, establish rapport and maintain interest. That barely even qualifies as grey arts. It is more 'not pretending to be a Vulcan so as to prevent dark arts accusation".

I'm not advocating everything in the original post - it is a good post but far from perfect. But this objection was an (ironic) abuse of the 'dark arts' label and something that I would wish to discourage.