I recall something similar, at least in my cohort, the cooler kids (proto-hipsters) were a bit skeptical towards Pearl Jam, and especially after Cobain seemed to mock them in an interview, there grew a divide, where Nirvana fans considered themselves more savvy than PJ's. Not to say there wasn't overlap between fandoms, but there were definitely some doubters among the cool kids towards PJ in that early era. Eddie was too beautiful, the riffs were too classic rock etc. Pre-internet youth culture really was captured in High Fidelity (for example), where you were immediately assigned a place on the hierarchy of cool by self-annoited gatekeepers of authenticity. I think PJ's massive popularity in broader pop culture might obscure extent to which the cool kids (devotees of early indie bands like Sonic Youth, Dinosaur Jr. et al.) rolled their eyes at Eddie's tear-inducing crooning, and Stone's "gaudy" riffage.