Was the old school sentiment towards characters really as impersonal as the OSE crowd implies?

A common criticism I hear from old school purists about the current state of the hobby is that people now care too much about their characters and being heroes when you used to just throw numbers on a sheet and not care about what happens to it. That modern players try to make self-insert characters when that didn’t happen in the past.

But the stories I hear about old school games all seem… more attached to their characters? Characters were long-term projects, carrying over between campaigns and between tables even. Your goal was to always make your character the best it can be. You didn’t make a level 1 character because someone new is joining, you played your level 5 power fantasy character with the magic items while the new guy is on his level 1.

And we see many of the older faces of the hobby with personal characters. Melf from Luke Gygax for example.

I do enjoy games like Mörk Borg randomly generating a toothless dame with attitude problems that’s going to die an hour later, but that doesn’t seem to be how the game was played back in that day?