Python forums in contrast to me included neverending justifications for why whitespace and indent formatting was critical and this kind of odd (to me) imperfect type system implementation, like the whole thing was some toy language pretending to be more than it was (in the sense that if you wanted something more complete in language or performance you'd go elsewhere).
Perl just seemed to know its place and not take itself too seriously.
Things changed though. I haven't touched Perl in years but use Python all the time. I never understood why Python got the traction it did given its performance limitations compared to some other languages (except as part of a broader trend for people to use whatever language they leaned in introductory comp sci) but I do think I understand why people stopped learning Perl.