It had its own heroes and legends and even its own vocabulary and grammar, along with a real spirit of playfulness and exploration. And then the rest of the world wanted to join in. Well, we don't want you. The Internet was once a truly alternative media source. Now its been co-opted by the mainstream, somewhere journalists troll for copy and marketroids troll for trends and advertisers try to create hype.
New technologies are always subversive, because they always alter the status quo.
And perhaps the mainstream has been changed, even subverted, by the hacker ethic. It's good that the real world has become much more like the Internet. If you're going to come stomping in here, at least bother to learn something about it. Go read the Jargon file . Read up on some Internet history.