Word.ws English Dictionary

competence porn

Syllables: com·pe·tence porn

competence porn noun: entertainment featuring competent characters carrying out difficult tasks with great aptitude.

Noun

competence porn (uncountable)

  1. Entertainment featuring competent characters carrying out difficult tasks with great aptitude.
    • Good Lord, how we agonized over spending so much time in the briefing scene in this ep. Ironically, this episode arrived just as we were collating feedback off the 'net and found, stunningly, you people love the briefing scenes. For we writers, it was always X pages of pipe we tried to make as...2009 August 11, John Rogers, “LEVERAGE #204 ‘The Fairy Godparents Job’ Post-game”, in Kung Fu Monkey (blog), archived from the original on 31 Mar 2016
    • Turn on the TV right now and you'll probably find an avalanche of competence porn. Think about the fast-talking dialogue and political strategising of the characters in House of Cards, the medical acumen of House, the deductive brilliance of Sherlock Holmes (in any of the recent BBC, CBS or Warner...2014 April 9, Lewis Dartnell, “Are you hooked on competence porn?”, in The Daily Telegraph, London, archived from the original on 07 Oct 2015

Examples of competence porn in a sentence

  • "Competence porn" as we started calling it.2009 August 11, John Rogers, “LEVERAGE #204 ‘The Fairy Godparents Job’ Post-game”, in Kung Fu Monkey (blog), archived from the original on...
  • Turn on the TV right now and you'll probably find an avalanche of competence porn.2014 April 9, Lewis Dartnell, “Are you hooked on competence porn?”, in The Daily Telegraph, London, archived from the original on 07 Oct...
  • “Competence porn” is a truly excellent phrase for an old phenomenon; the frisson of watching smart people tackle tasks with freaky aptitude dates as far back as Robinson Crusoe.2015 October 9, Sharan Shetty, “The Martian is not ‘competence porn’”, in Slate, archived from the original on 25 Mar 2016:

Origin of competence porn

From competence + porn (“material, usually visual, presenting something desirable in a lurid, garish, or sensational manner”), coined by John Rogers in a blog post in 2009 about the TNT drama Leverage which he created.

Questions about competence porn

What does competence porn mean?
Competence porn means entertainment featuring competent characters carrying out difficult tasks with great aptitude.
How do you use competence porn in a sentence?
"Competence porn" as we started calling it.
What part of speech is competence porn?
Competence porn is a noun.

Words near competence porn in the dictionary

  1. compesces
  2. compescing
  3. compete
  4. competed
  5. competence
  6. competence porn
  7. competence-competence
  8. competences
  9. competencies
  10. competency
  11. competent

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: competence porn (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

Last updated:

Pronunciation audio from Wikimedia Commons, each file under its own free license: en-au-competence porn.ogg.

Cite this entry: “competence porn.” Word.ws, https://word.ws/competence_porn. Based on Wiktionary, CC BY-SA 4.0.