It's never/rarely the leaders. It's always the followers. This site has a high bar for engagement given the depth of subject matter, but if you check another social medium I promise you'll see this pattern. All over.
You know, it's been well over a decade of seeing the anti-PHP stuff and I still have yet to see a "PHP is evil" argument that doesn't fall apart after a little scrutiny. I proudly use it and am happy to look at it's usage vs. alternative languages in any of the real-world projects I've developed.
Get a mentor. Seriously. I taught myself some programming for about two years, but this last year, I connected with a good mentor and really grew with his help.
I now work for him. I guess it's networking in action.