Just What is an "'80s Jerk?"

I recall years ago happening on the Teen Titans, Go! episode "Nostalgia is Not a Substitute for an Actual Story." For the most part the episode was up to the standard of the show's very good best, but I was confused by the discussion of "'80s jerks" as a particular, distinctive, type.

That confusion did not prompt me to look into the matter--but more recently I found myself running across items that discussed '80s pop culture as featuring mean-spirited characters out to wreck the hero's effort to attain some goal, often without there being much practical gain in it for them, and wondered whether there was any substance to this at all.

Assuming that there is indeed such substance one possibility is that this truly standard storytelling element seems '80s because after the '80s the big movies that had a chance to make a significant pop cultural impression had less room for such jerks--because of the way big splashy action movies crowded out the littler comedies and light dramas where they tended to feature. Thus the bad guys were not mere jerks, but rather something grandiosely malevolent in very high-stakes situations (like a Thanos).

It may also be that as the "cult of the asshole" grew and grew the default level of "jerkiness" we came to take for granted meant that even where they could possibly have made an impression jerks of the old kind would scarcely be noticed--the more in as the hero themselves was now likely to qualify for "jerk" status themselves. (How else would you characterize Tony Stark, certainly in his Marvel Cinematic Universe incarnations? Or the more recent incarnations of Batman as Hollywood embraced the idea of "Batman as unhinged fascist?")

Considering all that, even granting that unlike some others I do not think film is exactly suffering from a lack of small-time villains motivated by petty or pointless meanness, it does seem to me that the way "jerk characters" have become less conspicuous reflects how film has become a good deal more limited than it used to be--all as the threshold for what constitutes insufferable behavior keeps rising.