The real intricacies of tulip mania don't matter. Who cares if it was not exactly the bubble we thought it was? It was still a bubble, with serious consequences to those exposed to it. Yes, it didn't move at the speed of the markets move now because markets then were much more slower and it only affected a bunch of businessmen.
So what? We use the analogy because we know markets sometimes go crazy around stocks and other assets, with no apparent justification other than thinking the price will continue to grow and usually based on not much more than faith. Tulip mania has become a proxy for that behavior because the absurdity of a flower bulb skyrocketing in price, but if you don't like it, you can certainly point to many bubbles we know existed, had more widespread effects and were equally based on nothing. Some of them are not even a decade old.