I could be wrong but I think those were referred to as Junk not Jank and the term was a bit tongue-in-cheek; the decks just played the strongest cards, not necessarily caring about synergy.
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Junk is White-Green-Black, Jank was the 4+ colours decks (some of which became zoo).
Jank because they were beyond Junk.
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I know it when I see it. Mostly its combos of bad cards, or any deck that ever tried playing Sage or Ekomind.
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you beat me to it ! 
This exactly because language is descriptive, not prescriptive.
It’s true though that when a word covers such a broad range of meanings it can seem very diluted, or difficult to tell which the user means. I think there are a couple of clear versions that are probably the “parents” of all the versions you listed:
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a deck that lacks something essential to ever contend for a top spot in a serious competition. This one is usually where all the pejorative versions come from: for someone who follows competition trends, it can be frustrating to lose to a deck they know would get ground to dust against a field of Astrobiotics or PPVP Kates but just happens to be a hard matchup foir the deck you’re playing. Unfortunately because of this, it can easily get applied to decks that may actually be good but are simply untested or unfamiliar (“not hivemind”)
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a small group or subset of cards that are notoriously under-powered or hard to use (usually because they require large combos to work). This is where the word can leak into even established decktypes; everyone has their own definition for how many “off-key” cards you have to put into a PPVP Kate shell before you say “yeah,this deck has some jank in it.” This version is most often used as a pejorative when an unexpected include works well by catching a player by surprise; the implication, again, is that in a competitive setting the surprise wouldn’t last as word got around.
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one last tidbit, I think it’s already been touched on, but jank is related but entirely distinct from the MtG term “junk” or “junk deck” (sometimes known as a Zoo). In this case it refers to decks that have little or no overall synergy, but simply include a large number of strong, reliable cards (“good junk”). In can be pejorative since it implies lazy or un-creative deckbuilding, but in general these types of decks can be very strong (see also: 2014 Andysucker).
Andysucker lacked synergy? The whole thing was built on the run-conomy engine of Desperado/Sucker/SecTest/Masanori.
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I think jank is sometimes used in netrunner to mean what would be called “Timmy decks” in magic- decks that are less competitive because they go for some huge and impressive play that is exciting when it comes together. Monolith decks, mandatory upgrades decks, government takeover decks, and so on are jank by this definition, and to a lesser degree all the apocalypse decks floating around now (less so only because these are more competitive).
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Yeah, I mean it as trying to make bad cards work, usually to assemble some combo or just make a pet card work. Build around “Timmy” cards are a good signal, including identities.
I like people trying them out though; we wouldn’t have e.g. PE if someone didn’t try to make it work.
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Jank was a seperate term from junk. Junk was derived from the B/G/x (favoring White, and almost exclusively white after Jund appeared as a term) archetype where you just tossed strong cards together in a pile. Junk shares similar roots to Rock, although Rock is tied to a specific deck.
The earliest instance of “Jank” terminology colloquially applied to a magic deck was R/W back around the time of revised-6th ed, as you played a lot of cards that were individually unimpressive, and seemed to (and often did) have anti-synergy.
Swords to Plowshares in a deck full of Savannah Lions and Lightning Bolts with no form of card advantage? Was pretty much Heresy back then, since it went against both the “Card Advantage Uber Alles” school of thinking and the “Measure every card in how fast it kills them, any left-over cards in their hand when they die is card advantage for you” school.
This anti/lack-of -synergy aspect is often what people refer to when they call a deck Jank. When referring to individual cards, the anti-synergy descriptor tends to go out the door and the term defaults to a stand in for “seems pretty bad.”
If I were to play a Big Rig Apex deck with 3 Apocalypses, I’d call it a Jank Deck.
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I’ve always used ‘Jank’ to mean something akin to ‘Rube Goldberg-esque’. Anything that takes a lot of work to put together, and then gives a very large benefit when it goes off.
Notorious BAG, and all DLR decks fit into this definition of Jank, so it doesn’t mean ‘bad’ or ‘uncompetitive’ to me. That said, Snitch-Au Revoir and False Echo-DDoS also fall into the ‘Jank’ category. Conceivably 24/7 Philotic also is Jank, as is Turtlebacks NEH. There’s also an old Josh B + Demolition Run + Medium deck that qualifies as Jank.
So, to me, Jank describes a Combo deck. Something that will get applause when it goes off and does the thing, or that elicits a response of ‘Wow… that was amazing!’ from your opponent.
The Val DLR deck is the most on the line deck when it comes to Jank-ness. It’s got a weird combo, but it’s so absurdly powerful even without getting the combo out that it’s hard to say that it’s Jank. It just has a janky part that happens to work very well in the lategame.
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Jank is defined as belonging in tier 3.8437
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Jank means: Individually useless items that combine to form some sort of combo. Often, the combo is unrealistic in it’s complexity or consistency, but doesn’t have to be.
It has nothing to do with how ‘good’ it is, aside from the fact that Jank tends to be bad anyway objectively. Exception: Those early ‘CI Shutdown Insta-Wins’ were Jank that were actually fairly solid, before ways to play around it became common.
So stuff like ‘Whizzard using good cards’ is not Jank. Each thing has value in of itself. Likewise ‘Kit using decoders for early aggression then swapping to AI or full-rig’ isn’t Jank. Those are each valuable.
Shit like ‘I will use Dr. Lovegood on some Apex Cards so that I can blah blah blah’ is Jank. As is ‘I will defeat my opponent using Chums and Cell Portal Infinite Combo’.
Fun thread. Yes there are 8 non jank decks in netrunner period. And that list rotates every cycle or so, but yes everything other then top tier is jank sorry. If you wiki jank it talks about it being related to the gaming community it pretty funny.
Jank or Not Jank doesn’t mean top.
A Chaos Theory deck that just uses econ and breakers and MO isn’t top-10 material, but it isn’t Jank.
DLR forever deck is Jank, and it’s currently top-notch. Because none of that crap (papparazi, pavillion, DLR) does anything except when all of them are around.
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I also think of mechanics that break or ignore the typical circuit of play. Iceless Corp decks or breakerless runner decks, Power Shutdown combos that score 7 points in one turn or Medium-Hivemind decks that access 20+ cards in a single run. Jank decks reach toward the game’s various extremes and subvert expectations.
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A Jank Corp deck is a deck that requires your opponent to do a specific thing for you to win (it loses to a player who just mashes Opus for 8 until they have 60 credits and then rig-builds and wins).
A Jank runner deck is a deck that has overly complicated solutions to simple problems, i.e. “Fuck, a Wall of Static! I need to set up my whole combo to get through that!”
Jank on either side can also be a combo deck that folds immediately to a fairly common card (Hivemind combo vs CVS, some 7-point combos vs Clot/Hades Shard).
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Jank is what the people that play the same shit over and over again consider everything else just because they believe “it can’t win” games with a good, stable ratio.
You’re welcome. Now go play butcher shop.
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I thought jank was shorthand for Jankteki 
This sounds more like bitterness than anything meaningful.
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