Yes: in retrospect, the Perl community (and maybe even the language in general) was cringe-worthy and perhaps even toxic.
But at the time, that elite and esoteric language drew me and many others to it in much the same way that *BSD and arguably even Linux did. The way that programming computers in general did.
It wasn't a pleasant vibe that anyone should strive to recreate, but Perl was something that felt cool to many nerds back then. Perl's decline being cultural is a good thing: it's because the industry grew and matured.