That sounds plausible. I worked with hundreds of people in Pac 12 academia. The brightest and even less bright people I knew/know from my time at those reputable institutions aren't members of that AFAIK. The most insecure, barely gifted I believe tend to be and advertise it. I'm not implying anything about the parent commenter, but this has been my experience with those who proudly-tout their membership. (Roommates or people I ran into randomly in public.)
Personally, I would never join because it seems to confer no advantageous signal or merit. I can just convey my corpus over to one of the university areas and be around an increased-density of higher-order thinkers anytime.