I'd say because of money. There's plenty of money in being a professional hacker working for some nation state or shady corp like VUPEN, there's no money in smu

I'd say because of money. There's plenty of money in being a professional hacker working for some nation state or shady corp like VUPEN, there's no money in smurfing each other and vying for the role as most leet, no time to go to meets and hacker spaces because money must be made, no time to sit on IRC either since you need to put together your 'red team' SaaS pentester 3000 tool to shill it at the next security con. Hacking is a business now, you either join a state connected security corp or risk having your whole crew being informants and the state coming after you with counter terrorist bravado. It seemed to have changed right when Shadowcrew forums started in the late 90s.