In fairness...the original crowd playing White Wolf products was mostly made up of goths. I originally met violin virtuoso Paul Mercer (whose work everyone should check out) through Vampire LARP. Unfortunately, a lot of gamers started seeing "Vampire" as the game "the cool people played," and started playing, despite a lack of interest in vampire literature or gothic music. This coincided (hmmm...) with the spike in people who thought they were goths but listened to nu-metal and Marilyn Manson. Many of these people were vocal about "hating Anne Rice," which makes one wonder why they would even bother playing a game heavily indebted to her work (I've always suspected it was unspoken homophobia, and they were too insecure to enjoy a book series whose hero was obviously bisexual). Since many of these people didn't read vampire fiction or watch vampire films, their closest correlation was the "Highlander" franchise. Enter: Highlander-ninjas in dusters. Who also happened to be vampires.
Eventually the goths left, and others remained. The coolness factor of vampires crumbled, and the mainstream entertainment biz started appealing to this new mindset, e.g. "The Queen of the Damned" movie (ironically, loosely based on Rice's work).
Not that I really blame White Wolf. Most of their actual books were ok I suppose, and I find it funny that a lot of the gamers hate their newer books - which force players to create characters and utilize atmosphere, instead of creating Highlander-style power fantasies.
Yeah, I'm bitter. It blows to see something near and dear to ones heart ruined.