On Monday, August 7, The Ringer launched the first round of the Best Pop Culture Jerks Bracket. (Don’t boo—vote.) It’s a competition full of some of TV and movies’ greatest characters whom you love to hate, and maybe also some who are just so freaking annoying—looking at you, Caillou—that you can’t do anything but appreciate their ability to be annoying. We really do think it’s a tremendous assortment of 64 jerks—the best ones, in our humble opinion.
But as happens anytime anyone assembles a collection of anything on the internet, we expect “Why isn’t [insert character] in here?!” to be a pretty common knee-jerk (get it?) reaction. And that’s probably even more true of this tournament, as the word “jerk” has invoked myriad connotations over the years and its usage has been vast and various. We’re all deploying “jerk” a lot, and we’re meaning it in a lot of different ways. If you’ve ever uttered the sentence “Bro, Thanos, what a jerk,” I really can’t fault you—jerk is a hilarious word, and there’s something undeniably funny about reducing a giant alien who wants to eliminate half of all living things to it. But—[pushes glasses back up nose like a friggin’ nerd]—the fact is that Thanos is not a jerk, even if it kinda works colloquially. Jerk has a pretty specific definition, and “one who commits genocidal acts” is not part of it.
There’s nothing quite like a character you love to hate. Ladies and gentlemen, it’s Jerks Week at The Ringer. Vote for your favorite ones in the Best Pop Culture Jerks Bracket, and check back throughout the week for a selection of stories on one of the most underrated archetypes.
In reality, there are a lot of words to describe the differing degrees of bad and annoying behavior. The English language is a marvel, and since its inception we’ve been coming up with extremely specific terms for people you don’t wanna be friends with—that’s just what happens in a world full of fuckfaces (to use one such example of a specific term). Some are very serious, some are not at all; some describe premeditation, and others do not. So as we spend this week talking about pop culture jerks, we figured it’d be helpful to break down these gradations of assholery in order to illuminate what a jerk truly is and isn’t. Hopefully this explainer will stop you from bombarding our profile on X with complaints, which would be a pretty jerky thing to do. (One note is that we haven’t listed every single term for a bad or annoying person, merely the main markers on the scale within which the rest of the terms fall.) (And speaking of X, Elon Musk is not a jerk; he’s way worse than that.)
The Gradations of Assholery
War Criminal
We probably don’t need to spend a ton of time on this one. It describes those characters who genuinely want to destroy the world or eliminate or imprison an entire segment of the population. I hope I don’t actually need to state this, but: These characters are legitimately horrible, and in no case do you gotta hand it to them. Think Thanos, Voldemort, Emperor Palpatine.
Straight-Up Evil
Just a step below the tier above, these characters still commit actual crimes against humanity with reckless abandon, but their aims are perhaps lower in scope, less genocidal. Many Game of Thrones villains fall into this bucket; so does, like, Ursula from The Little Mermaid, and Lotso from Toy Story 3. (Kids movies are full of straight-up evil characters.) None of these characters possess a moral compass, and all of them would be convicted in a court of law.
Menace
Many Game of Thrones villains also fall into this bucket, so explaining who falls into which will hopefully highlight the distinctions between the two. Cersei Lannister is straight-up evil; Ramsay Bolton is a menace. Walder Frey is straight-up evil; Joffrey Baratheon is a menace. (And the Night King is a war criminal.)
It comes down to a matter of will. Characters like Cersei are evil in a calculated way, acting with clarity, control, and consciousness. Ramsay and Joffrey, on the other hand, are evil in an impulsive way—they feed people to animals and kill sex workers with bows and arrows because of a multitude of psychological issues not even decades and decades of therapy could resolve. To quote another menace, the Joker, they are like dogs chasing cars. They just do stuff. That’s not to say they’re more forgivable than the straight-up evil people—they’re just different.
Piece of Shit
Put it this way: Everyone above the POS line is going to criminal court; everyone below it is going to civil court, if they go to court at all. Pieces of shit are committing torts, not crimes. To cite a very recent and hopefully very illuminating example: Tom Sandoval from Vanderpump Rules is a piece of shit. He did something egregious and morally reprehensible, but beyond that, there’s something just downright detestable about him. He’s sniveling, pathetic, lazy, and aggravating—you dislike him for what he did, but you also just generally dislike him. And you hate his stupid mustache.
(And to anyone wondering: Yes, it is true, pieces of shit aren’t necessarily pieces of shit forever. People can change.)
Asshole
An asshole is a legitimately contemptible person—rude, mean, selfish, morally questionable—though it’s important to note that their crimes don’t rise to the level of being prosecuted in the eyes of the law. The only things they’re really violating are social codes of decency and the teachings of most religions. Assholes aren’t likable, but they can seem likable—many of them possess a certain charisma that allows them to perpetrate their assholery without commensurate reproach. Don Draper is an asshole; Regina George is an asshole; Ari Gold is an asshole; any character Denis Leary has ever played is probably an asshole.
Prick
A prick is just an asshole with Small Dick Energy. Let’s move on.
The Ringer’s Streaming Guide
There’s a lot of TV out there. We want to help: Every week, we’ll tell you the best and most urgent shows to stream so you can stay on top of the ever-expanding heap of Peak TV.
Brat
We have reached the petty portion of this scale: Everyone in this vicinity acts badly and annoyingly, but their offenses are comparatively minor and mundane.
This is a person who’s generally poorly behaved, spoiled, and immature, to the point of seeming like a child. Frankly, there is a healthy amount of overlap between brats and jerks—the main difference is that jerks are generally amusing, while brats are just irritating. You don’t laugh at a brat; you shake your head at them. Take the show Girls as an example: Hannah Horvath is a brat, while her friend Marnie Michaels is a jerk.
Jerk
Here we finally are, at the character type that’s set to propel a whole week of content on this website. By now you should have a pretty good idea of what a jerk isn’t, so let’s talk about what a jerk is. A jerk is a nuisance, a pain in the rear; a jerk might even be somewhat morally reprehensible. But underneath that, a jerk also possesses an ineffable, distinguishing quality: They are, often despite your best efforts to feel otherwise, entertaining. They can be silly, idiotic, buffoonish, unintentionally and intentionally funny, and sometimes even likable. And while a jerk might often elicit a reaction of “Man, fuck that guy,” crucially, that sentence is uttered begrudgingly—because you just know there’s something undeniable about them.
Jerks make the world go round. We love a suave jerk (Han Solo), a mean jerk (Selina Meyer), a dumb jerk (George Costanza), an irksome jerk (Larry David), a jock jerk (Kenny Powers), and even a jerk who’s obsessed with jewelry (Gollum). We also can’t stand any of those jerks. It’s that unique tension that makes this type of character so indispensable in pop culture.
If you’d like to see some more examples of jerks—and to even, I don’t know, vote on which ones are your favorites—click here.
Dirtbag
To anyone wondering why there aren’t any characters from It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia in the Jerks Bracket: Well, that’s because they’re dirtbags (with Charlie falling into the bucket just below). They’re messy, unpleasant humans with low moral character. Their offensiveness derives not from any cognizant or impish needling, but from the way they break all codes of general decency. Don’t get me wrong, dirtbags are as fun to watch as jerks are, but there’s just enough difference between the two to demand distinction.
Dumbass
I mean, you’re not a dumbass; you can figure this one out.
Hard Exterior, Soft Inside
Roy Kent. Ron Swanson. Severus Snape. Khal Drogo. These are characters who act like assholes or jerks or pieces of shit, but only as a defense mechanism to protect their own very breakable hearts.
High-Energy Dude You Just Don’t Like
These last two are more about you than them. They aren’t really doing anything to you, and nothing is really their fault—you’re just a regular human being who gets irrationally annoyed by things. We all know the well-meaning person who’s just so energetic or intense that it bugs you. Like, when I was in Little League, there was this kid who would sprint to first base every time he got walked, and my 12-year-old self would look at him from the infield with pure contempt. Like, dude, calm down. But now I’m old enough to understand that there’s nothing wrong with trying hard. I accept that, in that situation, I was the asshole.
This one is particularly important to remember when skimming the Jerks Bracket because keen observers and fans of The Office will notice that Jim Halpert is in the running, but Dwight Schrute is not. That might seem like a scalding-hot take at first, but I promise you it isn’t. Dwight is a high-energy dude you just don’t like: His passion for paper sales is off-putting, as is his penchant for having sex in the warehouse, and his gullibility is extreme. But that doesn’t make him a bad person, or even a jerk—most times, he’s a victim, to a sarcastic guy with swoopy hair who low-key hates his own life. (And while we’re on the subject: Michael Scott is a dumbass, Ryan is a piece of shit, Jan Levinson Gould is an asshole, and Kelly is a brat.)
Dweeb
Dweebs are nice—it’s not their fault that they were born with a mild temperament and not an athletic bone in their bodies. Get over yourself and hang out with one sometime.
