In PIE's case, it's more a reference to how the corp basically came across as being in a coma aside from IGS posting until Mitara took over.
Personal experience here: in a year and a half of screwing around in FW space as a pirate, I saw PIE pilots in space maybe a handful of times. I was down that way regularly, several times a week at all hours of the day and night (because lawl college sleep schedules). Maybe it's an outlier, like having only been jammed by ECM drones a grand total of twice (no joke) in two years of piracy, but when you go down to the warzone day in and day out, and never see people from a corp when you know full well they're supposed to be operating in that area, what else are you supposed to think?
And no, there isn't anything shameful about blueballing an opponent. In fact it's the best tactic imo, because the ones seeking tears end up being the ones whose tears fill the jars instead.
Archbishop was a poor example for Sakura to use, I'll give you that, but that doesn't do much to dismiss the reputation PIE accumulated among some groups as never undocking and rarely doing little more than IGS-warrioring for a while. The fact that PIE was largely an insular group rarely interacting with other parts of the RP community for much of that time didn't do much to help either. I remember when seeing a PIE member in an RP channel, whether it was the Summit, OOC, or one of the non-pirate bars or establishments, was as rare as an Alliance Tournament prize ship.
I've had enough fun RP with members of PIE (well, *I* think it was fun) that I vastly prefer this state of things where the corp is less insular and actually sticks its head out of the cave to ask a neighbor what the weather's like.
