The author appears to be serious. His desire of being a 'True Kernel Developer' probably led him to google something like "best distribution for Linux Hacker",

The author appears to be serious. His desire of being a 'True Kernel Developer' probably led him to google something like "best distribution for Linux Hacker", perhaps the first result was Arch. At some point our "Linux Hacker" probably started to feel confortable running pacman -Syu twice a day to be on the cutting edge.