Do you mean circlejerk? I'm curious. Some base it off of a group like a clique, and others base it off of a mentality.
I've wanted to talk about this for awhile but I'm assuming you categorize any clique as a circlejerk, so I'll go off of that. Honestly a clique or a circlejerk is really a debatable thing, on one hand, you have connection between the community and a great way to organize group projects, and on the other you have people who go around the forum and stuff it up with their groups and use them to see validation. I don't want to say the clique did it first but I feel the clique actually promoted collected groups in the community, and utterly made a huge unintentional disservice towards the community in the process. I don't like their actions in the past, and while they certainly have changed, traction grew and it became easier to pinpoint the clique itself for their past misdeeds.
A huge fundamental problem of cliques is their sense of collectivism with their lack of exclusivity. Productive cliques on the forum have every right to stay, but groups that I won't name out of respect are unneeded because of their use of instant gratification. Further pinpointing my idea towards the lack of exclusivity, when you have a higher headcount in groups, it drastically increases the chance of issue on the forum itself, which in turn brings the entire group with. This has happened countless times on the clique, and with certain people gone, it's why you don't hear about them anymore. When you associate with a group, you're instantly shed in a negative light for associating with an outlet that associates with the forum indirectly almost indefinitely. I would say hatred towards a group is entirely justified, as it's easier to point at a group rather than an individual, but the instant negativity towards a collected group is unneeded. Without a doubt, a group like the clique wanted no part in being associated with the forum, but it slowly happened because of people bringing it to the website.
In order to have a functioning clique on this website, you have to avoid all drama possible, avoid collectively replying to everyone (which this is p justified, it's annoying), and a few other small things. If you forget one up and you associate with the group, it'll catch on quickly. This is all in my experience, and while it's entirely variable, the forum is pretty closed minded about cliques because of their only exposure being the problem user groups with little to no standards collectively targeting others. I'm not defending the more notorious cliques on this website, I'm moreso trying to say that nobody in a group is on higher ground under certain circumstances. I've been in three separate friend groups, and this has happened every single time.
My entire point is that the mentality towards cliques on this website is partially justified, and while there are some groups that are dedicated towards hatred on the website, others are productive, and others have changed. A group isn't static. That's the point I'm driving here, a clique isn't a bad thing, but it certainly can be.
Again, this is all my experience, but a lot of it has really been the same, and while few have faded, some have stayed.
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