No, I am annoyed about any situations where people criticize something for being "academic" or decry people as living in an "ivory tower". This sentiment takes many forms and is certainly not limited to programming languages!
Obviously you never met any of these people, but you will find many negative stereotypes coming to mind. Are many of them true? Perhaps they are. Was the old Versailles full of charming, brilliant, talented, wonderful people? It most certainly was.
You might also have some stereotypes of PHP programmers. Perhaps they're true as well. No set of human beings is without patterns of fault. However, the PHP programmer is a peasant and cheerfully accepts the daily rain of mockery that falls on his head. He knows he is not above being laughed at, indeed he knows he is laughable, as all human beings are in some way laughable.
The distinctive feature of a privileged class, always and everywhere, is that it can't accept being mocked. Unfortunately this always increases the temptation to mock it, which I agree is a low and unproductive pastime. But anything to make type inference seem fun...
Some PLs, are therefore academic in the same sense that Esperanto is academic, and are rightly criticized for that. They may be "perfect languages", but the fact they are not widely adopted is conclusive proof that they're a failure, at least in some respects. Sometimes this failure could be mere marketing; usually it's much more than that.
Often the financial backing is very conservative. It does not like to take risks. So they go with what is familiar.
Second, I can't think of a single academic I know that set out to create "the perfect language". Often one is created to explore an idea. That does not mean the language isn't incredibly valuable for the lessons it provides - but it likely was never meant to hit mass adoption.
Hence "academic". Design for idea exploration rather than widespread adoption is a crucial property of a language, and a valid target for criticism.