I must agree. "God's Own Programming Language" (not meant as satire) is certainly indicative of the psychological phenomenon of a superiority complex in the Lisp community.
Yeah, even MIT eventually gave up on using Scheme as a first programming language.
The Lisp community may have the worst ratio of self-regard to actual accomplishments in our entire industry. Not one of the great companies is built on Lisp. I don't think it's even a second-tier language at the FAANGs.
Why do you think it's a circlejerk? I'm yet to see an idea in the domain of PLs that's as effective as lisp (dependent types come close). Lisp is a whole package, it solves bunch of problems very elegantly. All "good" languages solve problems one by one by introducing exceptions and rules and features whereas lisp did it by introducing a totally novel, elegant concept. It's hard not to be mystified by lisp. I'm not an old school hacker, but there is certainly something fascinating about lisp.
