Also merging two branches that tend to touch upon same modules but are not kept in sync all the time (due to whatever reasons) is a lot simpler when you use --no-ff.
You say that these properties are bullshit, but I found them invaluable when fixing bugs and architectural defects and where it was important to find out when and how the bug or a behaviour occurred. And funny that you mention accountants and auditors. Because being able to do forensics more easily on the codebases that I worked on has saved me and my clients many hours and gray hair. And I have found myself in situations where
I can live without --no-ff, I can live without git even. There is plenty of people out there not using any kind of source control and they are living just fine.
Your last paragraph is a nice example of psychological projection. If you weren't so narrow minded you could have used your energy to learn something.
Myself I use --no-ff because it fits the kind of work I do very well. I haven't lost a minute of sleep or time over its deficiencies. And I am pretty certain that I spend a whole lot less time fiddling with git than people who advocate "agressive rebasing".
I do admit you have some merit in pointing out how bad a git history looks when littered with merge commits for single commit branches. But then, this is pretty easy to fix. Just use a fucking vanilla merge, or indeed a rebase when it fits the problem. Another way to work around the bad aspects of --no-ff approach is by using a better git history explorer.