These groups are quite common in some places, actually. They can definitely have some real technical prowess to them, but the "anti-authoritarian and anarchist" image is like catnip for posers and entryists. I think you mostly see these groups in places outside the Anglosphere where the usual norms of civil society are not that well developed, or even understood by most people. So the very idea of average folks meeting together in pursuit of some do-it-yourself education or entertainment becomes endowed with this deeply weird, 'subversive' tinge.
