Perhaps in your experience this is true. But I've been on tight RP-focused MUSHes for the better part of a decade, and I've not seen that many people willing to play this kind of a character in that sort of an environment for an extended time.
Because of the nature of the community, players on MUSHes (in my experience) tend to want to be able to be accepted both as the character they play and as the persona of the player behind the character.
Playing a jerk in character in games like this can come with the inherent crossover effect of other players assuming the person behind the character is a jerk too - and thus they treat them accordingly while they're out of character.
After a while, I've noticed, either the jerk character lightens up so the player doesn't get as much grief behind the scenes - or the character just fades out entirely.
In tight-knit roleplaying games, I really haven't seen this "overused" by any stretch of the imagination. What I've seen overused is the "nice" character - because that way they can be nice in character and out of character, and no one has a reason to be mean to them in either incarnation.
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