If they are using gentoo, you should be finding someone else. Gentoo users are typically the most dangerous combination of profoundly ignorant, yet absurdly overconfident in their abilities. Seeing a bunch of autotools and gcc output scroll by does not teach you anything. But the mistaken reputation as an "advanced" distro makes people think that by using gentoo, they are therefore "advanced".
If you go though the handbook properly (and potentially enough times until you don't need it to install), then the amount of inherent linux usage and admin knowledge you can pick up is just phenomenal -for example I love the xkcd[1] even if it stopped applying when I started using gentoo.
I would expect a gentoo user to be comfortable on the command line, which doesn't hold true for a lot of other desktop users. That said, isn't it immense desktop linux has gotten to the point where the barriers to entry are grandma level low :)
It's also probably fair to say that every userbase has it's vocal idiots... [1] http://www.xkcd.com/1168/
In numbers, I mean, not form factor.