Going off on quirky tangents can be an effective tool for keeping a reader interested. It reminds me a little of Douglas Adams. He punctuates the hard science fiction with goofy anecdotes to get the reader thinking about the subject from another perspective and to keep them entertained.

It is not a tutorial on how to phish or a vulnerability report, but rather a story about how motivation is potentially more important to phishing than technical skill. Without the casual writing style, the main character (and author) might have seemed more sophisticated, which would have diminished the point of the story.