It depends on where you stand.

The media and even some dictionary publishers only focus on the "Brilliant bad guy from the networkz" and are lazy to differentiate activities into more terms, like cracker, phreaker, security researcher or even simply criminal, to mix everything into their own lurid definition of hacker. Propably derived from late 80s movies.
Also, they completely leave out the important "playfull joy in fiddling" characteristics.
The wellspring of hacker culture was the Tech Model Railroad Club at MIT after all .

I go by the loose and yet spot on Wau Holland definition of hacker.
"Someone who tries to make coffee using a toaster."

Yes, we all are more or less.
Is there really something to be proud of if you exactly match the tiny media proposed fraction of the definition?