If a hacker just went against the official narrative as a knee jerk reaction that would make them more like a rebellious teenager no?

In a sense you are agreeing that this as tragic as it is probable needs no further discussion

The spirit is completely gone, isn't it? When a hacker was mysteriously hanged in 1988, people discussed it for years:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tron_(hacker)

Now everyone is accusing others of "conspiracy theories" and browbeating everyone to follow the party line.

I'll just leave this here: "High conspiracy belief is associated with low critical thinking ability" (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/acp.3790), previously discussed in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27806447.

Most here on HN seem to have fairly high critical thinking ability.

hacker news has always been hacker the same way a hot dog is a dog.