Regardless, as an outsider peering inside, it does seem a bit strange. One of the things effecting my perception is the simple question I ask myself looking at posts like the one you describe. "Does this have any chance of making money?"
Because if it doesn't, I always wonder what the motivation was for making a service for which there are 50 implementations already. I've probably written under 500 lines of code in my life, because I can't justify it to myself to build an application nobody needs, even for practice.
At any rate, the "hack" itself is it's own sort of art. With an almost intangible feeling of delight when executed successfully. I can't really quantify it myself to be honest. And I've only experienced it once.
TL;DR: The short answer is, people here find that stuff fun.
PS. Quit trolling HN.
At any rate, calling yourself a hacker (Without chops to back it up if your using it in the heroes of the computer revolution sense.) to anyone who knows better is either some serious bragging, or braindead stupid depending on which definition you're using.
In fact, the last thing anyone who does stuff like Lulzsec should admit to being is a "Hacker" (Even if they mean it benignly.) because you can bet the farm that the first people the Feds look at are self described "Hackers". I just can't believe the kind of information these people leak about themselves. Doesn't "I trust you today, but not necessarily tomorrow..." mean anything to black hats?
EDIT: Saying anything about the state of the real world should be considered an incredibly bold release of entropy or invasion of privacy if the only thing that keeps you safe at night is your mask.
EDIT2: Sorry, thought the above quote was from Jeremy Hammond's blog. At any rate most of my points still stand from the hypothetical perspective of "If I were a blackhat..."