I live off of the grid and have for 15 years now. It is considerably more expensive, time consuming and is a general pain in the butt. If and when they ever run power up my way I will eagerly stand by the road with my own smart meter if necessary. The limitations/expenses to generating your own electricity cannot be fully appreciated until you have journeyed down that road.
I get into this discussion all the time with folks who complain about the rising cost of their utilities and think living off of the grid is the way to go. Once we compare their yearly costs with just my fuel cost, then they start to see the light.
Then I add in the cost of the generator, oil, inverter, batteries, parts and the time I spend operating and maintaining the system and divide the whole sum by the limitations of what tools or appliances I can run and the package looks less and less attractive.
As far as the smart meters go, all they are doing is giving real time power use data and then transmitting that data wirelessly. Big deal. The guy in the first video blows it way out of proportion and is almost as ignorant as the guy in the second video. Ok he is not even close to being as ignorant as the second guy but you get my drift. The power companies and law enforcement have been using meter information for many many years to catch pot growers and other law breakers so no new news there.