Trekking poles are not necessary. But they are useful, and he obviously see a potential use for them. Your comment comes across as somewhat rude.

I can live with that.

Shoes are not strictly necessary either, but they help. Trekking poles help, and I also need them to pitch my tent, so I'll keep them.

They come as part of the tent or what? Tell me more I'm intrigued.

Here's an example. This tent is not in production anymore, but was sold without poles. UL-hiking often involves finding as many uses as possible for as few items as possible.

https://hilleberg.com/eng/shelters/rajd/

Sibling comment gives a good example. I happen to have a Durston Gear XMid 2p: https://durstongear.com/products/x-mid-2-tent-ultralight-bac... .

Some tents are designed to use your hiking poles in place of some or all of the poles they would normally use. Get double duty out of the mass you carry. If you're going to carry it hundreds or thousands of miles weight becomes very important.

That's a tarp, I also use one sometimes (a simple rectangular one.) Lanshans are cheap tents that are pitched with trekking poles: https://www.aliexpress.us/item/2255800228890614.html (this is the older generation I think.) A friend of mine has one, they're good.

Where have you walked? How far? How much weight do you carry? How old are you?

For days in the Norwegian wilderness, Australian outback, Japanese mountains.

And..? The details are really important here. I walked extensively in Snowdonia, the Lake District and the Peak District without poles but only carrying at most 3kg on my back. Distance covered in Britain tends to be less because the going is tough. 10 miles (16km) in the Peak District can be a very long day of walking. I then walked 320km across Northern Spain on the Camino Primitivo. Pack was more like 12-13kg and days were up to 32km with >2000m of elevation change day after day. Pretty much everyone who didn't have poles said they wished they had poles. It became something of a meme.