The hypothetical culture of rule-breaking might not be convinced by a culture of rule-breaking surveillance. Seriously, I think government has gone to far with surveillance and that just means that I want to minimize my data collection on a domestic level.
* Some consumer VPN services have been found to be doing sketchy things. And you can imagine the business is attractive to people intending to do sketchy things, since it's a powerful/lucrative position to be in right now. (In addition to the business possibly being attractive to people just wanting to provide a useful and honest service for a fair price.)
* There seem to have long been referral kickbacks by some consumer VPN services, which I assume is the cause of some of the huge amounts of noise on the Web and such about them (e.g., search hits on some non-VPN topics, such as some home theatre search terms, overwhelmed by SEO articles, the purpose of which is to then herd the reader towards particular VPN services with a kickback). Even some endorsements by organizations might essentially be more about revenue than about merits.
* I speculate that it doesn't help if one of the main historical uses of consumer VPNs has been for activity that would be considered copyright-violating in the US (e.g., unauthorized trading of video files, or circumventing region restrictions). Without making any moral judgments, I think it's fair to say that constitutes "conscious rule-breaking" for some, so I wouldn't be surprised if there's an disproportionate culture of rule-breaking around the whole space.