Shawn Fanning was part of tons of "crews" on EFNet. Just like anybody else who was on irc at the time.

Before WhatsApp's purchase, the "napster on irc" byline was, #winprog taught him all he knew about winsock programming and without #winprog napster would never have been made.

Now suddenly it's "without #w00w00, napster would never have been made" because this combined with WhatsApp's purchase lets someone write some 1500+ word article about nothing.

I wonder what would have happened if TetriNET ended up selling for millions back in the day, would that have suddenly become the irc hackers made bajillions byline?

And surprise surprise, people who used one of the more technical communications medium back in the 90s end up being technical people when they grew up.