Because their society and governments have let them down and they feel betrayed by the bourgious exploiters who run the companies that they do back-breaking work for.
One of the things that drew me to this forum to begin with was the general friendliness of the members. Sometimes I don't feel the love, but that happens everywhere...
I think you are definitely right. This is about the only forum that I've come across in all of my internet life that has order and a good community. The members are mature and you can have an intelligent conversation. But, yes, we should definitely extrapolate it across the planet but it's unlikely.
For some reason I lol'd (not really, it was more of a chuckle, but YGTP)
This forum is pretty awesome as far as atmosphere goes.
As for angry/smarmy (interesting word) from my experience I think they generally don't understand, or aren't where they want to be in life. I wish I could understand the motivation behind a lot of human actions... but to quote a friend of mine, "Thus is life." <-(perhaps an unnecessary quote)
IMO a lot of the attitudes, in life but especially on the internet, come from self declared experts wanting to sound like they know what they're talking about. They act rude by talking down to you so they can dig at your insecurities; because lets face it you could work at a job for 20+ years, fix every problem and answer every question but you won't get rid of that feeling that there is SOMEONE out there who is better at your job then you are. The reason this attitude propagates is because experts don't spend their time on the internet calling these "trolls" out on their BS.
This site has the benifit of REAL experts who come here and honestly want to help people learn. They know this language, and in many cases it's predicessor, well enough to solve the issues in their heads and explain why some trolls answer was nothing more then evidence that they don't know what they are talking about. There's no need for them to throw insults around, I can tell you from first hand experiance that when people like chrisname, Duoas, Albatross, Helios or two dozen other regulars, (named for no particular reason) at this site correct something you posted, you feel it. I can't imagine how some troll who doesn't know C++ from their mailing address feels when they get shot down here.
This is a fairly friendly forum, that's probably the main reason I come here. I can't remember what attracted me in the first place but that is definitely it's main long-term attraction. Further to that, the site itself is simple and easy to use, not an eyesore of fancy graphics like most other websites. At the same time, it's still fairly easy on the eye.