PHP folks are a perfect case of the blub paradox and they are sadly always looking up. PHP isn't treated with the respect it deserves. PHP powers large parts of the internet, from tiny to huge projects. But there isn't even an attempt to understand what it made/make work so well. PHP is quite different from other languages but instead of curiosity from the competitors, there is just bad reputation and ignorance. The community and language itself constantly leans and evolves towards other languages. Ruby, Java, Javascript and whatever. The shortcomings in contrast to other languages are often drawing much attention in the community and in my opinion is overshadowing PHP's strengthes. Much of the recent changes in PHP have been a kind of fanservice to appeal the users of other languages. While this isn't particularly a wrong strategy to stay around, it caused an addiction to be more similar to the competitors. PHP lost it's identity and got unknowingly angry about it.
This is just my opinion and there are some wrongs here, but thats how I would currently explain the sub par PHP community behaviour.