A lot of the snobbery is more than likely just word of mouth, like "Advanced being full of elitists", so when new people go - they assume being elitist is the norm. Honestly, I never really ran into any elitists in Advanced. Douchenozzles? Yes. But otherwise, it was perfectly fine to me. 

It's pretty easy to adjust to Advanced, or any section really. Though, I've never done Free and have no plans on doing so.