circle jerk

English

Alternative forms

• circle-jerk, circlejerk

Pronunciation

• Audio (AU)

  (file)

Noun

circle jerk (plural circle jerks)

1. (vulgar, slang) A group of males masturbating ("jerking off") together (with or without interpersonal contact).
   • 1977 August 20, Robert Etherington, “John Horne Burns and His Enemies”, in Gay Community News, volume 5, number 7, page 11:

     Three screaming queens, the Abbot, the Abbes an the Bishop, who hold circle jerks in their rooms for other students with similar proclivities.

   • 1990, Camille Paglia, Sexual Personae, Yale University Press, →ISBN, page 587:

     This is Melville's real heaven, an all-male platoon, each with his hand in someone's pocket. The circle jerk is another Romantic uroboros.

2. (vulgar, derogatory, slang) Any group or group activity indulging in excessive mutual praise.
   • 2022 October 27, Carol Midgley, “The Love Box in Your Living Room review — Harry and Paul toast the Beeb with a roast”, in The Times‎:

     When organisations celebrate their anniversaries you can usually expect a dull circle jerk of self-congratulation, so the BBC played a blinder in getting Harry Enfield and Paul Whitehouse to do it for them. Patting yourself on the back looks better when you send yourself up.

3. (vulgar, Internet slang) An environment (especially an online community) in which people express or validate a narrow set of ideas and feelings.

   The template Template:rfex does not use the parameter(s):

   2=Are there examples of "narrow set of ideas" but not "excessive mutual praise"? In other words, does this word mean either of these things, the overlap of these things, or just one of these things, which sometimes happens to include the other?

   Please see Module:checkparams for help with this warning.(Can we add an example for this sense?)

4. (vulgar, derogatory, slang) A situation in which a group of people engage in self-indulgent or self-gratifying behavior, especially by reinforcing each other's views or attitudes.
   • 2020 January 20, Suzanne Moore, “I’d never heard of Laurence Fox until he started lecturing us about racism”, in The Guardian‎:

     There is a long line of these types, some cleverer than others: Rod Liddle, Richard Littlejohn and Jeremy Clarkson, with Toby Young, James Delingpole and Martin Daubney on the subs’ bench. They present as dissenting voices, speaking truth to the elite. In reality, they just preach to people their age. To call this circle jerk of intolerance a culture war is to ennoble it.

5. (vulgar, drug user slang) A person who shares syringes when injecting drugs.

   (Can we add an example for this sense?)

Synonyms

• (environment which validates a limited set of ideas and feelings): echo chamber, filter bubble, hugbox (offensive), mutual admiration society

Related terms

• mental masturbation

Translations

Verb

circle jerk (third-person singular simple present circle jerks, present participle circle jerking, simple past and past participle circle jerked)

1. (vulgar, slang) to participate in a circle jerk

References