Maybe because I grew up in a different background (80s and 90s in Japan), but I always found the "Hacker" culture bizarre. What's with their "underground" theme, after all? Black backgrounds and skull figures and that kind of stuff. Their attitude is pretty much the same as the locker-room culture, which isn't cool either. Gangs and pirates (and ninjas and yakuzas for that matter) were never considered "cool" among techy people in Japan, and I had a trouble understanding their taste.