“Neville, which part do you have a problem with, the manner of dress, or them calling themselves frum?”
For them, it’s the way they dress.
I don’t think it’s necessarily Five Towns residents perpetuating the myth (maybe it is). I know your question was probably a set up to make the point that this is all just about semantics and silliness etc. but it’s not. The biggest credit one can give to Avi Weiss and his crew is that they’re at least honest; they aren’t pretending to be anything more than what they are. They came up with a new label for themselves. It does bother me that when a one-foot-off the derech community calls itself by a name like Open Orthodox, it gains the obsession of frum news outlets. But, then the same stuff and worse goes on elsewhere without a name to warn onlookers, it gets under the radar and anyone who points it out gets accused of being judgmental.
People can and have said much worse things about the OO on these forums. But, when they talk about people doing the same exact things in the Five Towns, it’s suddenly wrong. Why? What’s the difference? The lack of the word “Open?” THAT, my friend, is just silly semantics.