I dunno, things like this make their way to more mainstream media too, making "the general public" more conscious of security, and making them wonder whether their passwords will be secure at parties they leave them at.

The spin in mainstream media always puts the blame squarely on the hackers, and in my anecdotal experience typical users have no interest in the argument that the companies that were hacked are to blame.

Because most people have not even thought of the possibility that password can be stored in anything but plaintext, and take it as granted that all websites do. Thus the websites can't possibly be blamed, and the hackers must be the bad guys.

Not necessarily. If a relatively mainstream news site reported the event and quoted a security professional saying: "Website X didn't even try to keep your love life and dating profile a secret. Every single user's password is now publicly available. If you use the same password on multiple sites, be sure to change it quickly!"

I think even the most non-tech people would react to such a news story.

The adobe breach was fairly widely reported, but how many designers have sworn off adobe products? The same thing could be said about Linkedin or Microsoft products in the 90s.

It means being shamed among tech professionals and that's exactly the community in which those responsible for the disaster have to spend the rest of their professional lives. Peer pressure is very effective.

We don't even know specifically who is responsible for this particular thing, as I've mentioned in other comments it's likely this came from some non tech person anyway.

True, but I think this is one of those instances where you kind of have to take what you can get in terms of negative PR for Cupid Media and other companies that store passwords stupidly.