Discussion Main / HumansAreTheRealMonsters

Has anybody noticed that the acronym for the trope's name (ignoring the "the") is actually H.A.R.M.? Quite hilariously fitting, lol!

The most reddit trope ever

Can Half-Humans count in part as Humans Are the Real Monsters, or no?

Wasn't the whole reason Real Life Humans Are Bastards removed because the whole point of the trope is to compare human bastardry to other sentient beings? Since we don't know of any other sentient beings to compare ourselves to, putting a Real Life version would not be in the spirit of the trope?

There should be Real Life Examples in this page. Namely, examples of our own behavior that make us, as humans ourselves, ask whether we are Exactly What It Says on the Tin, "real monsters". Consider, if nothing else: how many sitcoms have laugh tracks that play when something uncomfortable, painful or humiliating happens to someone...and people at home do laugh. In other words, we often see outright cruelty, in myriad forms, as funny.

So what's being done to keep this trope from being a Misanthropic Playground?

What happened to the Live A Live example? Its one of the most triumphant uses of the trope in Videogames.

what about this as a general truth that applies to the human race? In "mars the terminator". the alien characters are disgusted by human history

Should the entire Headscratchers section of this trope be removed or at lease cleaned up? R Ight now it is full of thread with some tropers complaining about how horrible humans are in real life without any relevance to this trope and should be moved to the Humans Are Flawed section instead.

Does it count as this trope if a non-human character holds this opinion about humans, even if they aren't portrayed as such by the work?

Inappropriate examples from the Film section removed:

• The events of Being John Malkovich pretty much require this to be universally true. (As in, if one person with any sort of conscience gets involved in any way, it all falls apart.)
• Evil Vizier (really, are there any other kinds?) Jaffar tries to convince Prince Ahmed that humans are evil in Alexander Korda's The Thief of Bagdad (and makes a good case for it himself):
  "Men are evil, hatred in their eyes, lies on their lips, betrayal in their hearts. You will learn one day, great king, that there are three things that men respect; the lash that descends, the yoke that breaks and the sword that slays. By the power and terror of these you may conquer the Earth."
  • Later, the Genie has his say on the subject, after Abu's third wish goes awry:
    "You're a clever little man, little master of the universe, but mortals are weak and frail. If their stomach speaks, they forget their brain. If their brain speaks, they forget their heart. And if their heart speaks, they forget everything."

Not sure about Cannibal Ferox and Cannibal Holocaust, since their entries are X Just X.

Inappropriate examples from the Comic Books section removed:

• Calvin and Hobbes brings this theme up a lot. One particular strip reveals that Calvin might have gotten his misanthropic viewpoint from his parents, albeit for different reasons. Calvin's parents don't like people because they feel that manners and politeness are declining, whereas Calvin himself doesn't like people because of humanity's conflicted relationship with nature. As he says in one strip, "I think the best sign that intelligent life exists elsewhere in the Universe is that none of it has tried to contact us yet".
  • Or 'do you think Satan exists, that there is a being devoted to making mankind commit evil' Hobbes: 'I'm not sure people need the help'.
  • Hobbes is named after philosopher Thomas Hobbes, known for his misanthropy.
    • It helps to note that Bill Watterson, the artist, is a noted misanthropist and an extremely Reclusive Artist, and most of the characters are simply author avatars espousing his views on things he dislikes in general.
• Pride of Baghdad: Four lions living in the Baghdad zoo get bombed on, talk to a turtle who whines about how human pollution killed his entire family in previous war. They're shot dead by soldiers, who were spooked at the sight of them. The animals, however, were pretty damn bad at this.
• Every single comic made by Jhonen Vasquez. Interestingly, Jhonen is a fairly cheerful guy in real life, which may indicate that this is just the brand of humor he likes as opposed to a statement. He's also stated that he doesn't mean to make fun of any one group in particular, pointing out that you can find a bit of nastiness in every sub culture.
• In The Punisher one-shot "The End," Frank Castle's last surviving act in the wake of a catastrophic nuclear war is to wipe out the architects behind said war - the only known surviving humans in the world. After killing them, he explains his actions simply by saying "The human race. You've seen what that leads to." Possibly subverted by the fact that Frank Castle (usually) isn't portrayed as completely sane.
• Zombies: A Record of the Year of Infection has No Ending, as the Apocalyptic Log, like most such logs, suddenly cuts off. However there's a strong implication that the people in the supposed safe haven the protagonist reached killed him. We also encounter a rather unpleasant gang of raiders who kill and torture for fun, and, if the protagonist's theory about zombies came about is right, we also have the company that was putting C-88 in food.

Not sure about the Seven Soldiers example, since the entry doesn't explain whether the work includes non-human sentients or not. Leaving it in for now; someone who knows the work can deal with it.

OK, starting a clean-up of the examples that don't compare humans to other sentients. (Also, there are a lot of works here that I don't know, so if I cut ones that are valid examples, or leave invalid examples, just fix that.

Inappropriate animé/manga examples:

• Rau Le Cruset from Gundam Seed believes that humans are selfish greedy bastards who will do anything to get ahead even if it means slowly wiping themselves out in the process, and justifies this viewpoint with both Kira's existence and his own existence as both were born through genetic manipulation and cloning respectively, this belief is also what drives him to want to wipe out humanity entirely taking the "I'm taking you with me" ethos to its extreme logical conclusion.
  • The scary part? The show universe itself is so chock full of bigots and assholes he's doesn't really look all that incorrect! In fact, considering all the racism and blind hatred fueling the wars (which both sides are aware of and DEFEND as virtuous, especially at their highest levels of authority), he really has a very good claim for arguing his point is pretty valid, and this is what motivates the antagonist from the sequel to enact a plan to prevent such things from happening again, because he agreed humans became bastards as a result of said hatreds.
    • This is probably the entire point of the Universal Century Gundam series, where there are more selfish and cruel people in the world then kind, noble and selfless ones, and Complete Monsters are incredibly common as leaders. It is also used by Char Aznable as an excuse to drop Axis on Earth. It gets worse right after the disappearance of Zeon.
• The manga series Parasyte seems to believe in this Trope so much that the only way that the horrible damage humans wreak on the environment can be lessened is for nature to introduce a new apex predator to the biosphere to keep humanity in check.

Just so we're clear, A lot of us in the Trope Repair Shop have become unhappy with the unwieldy form this trope has taken as of late. From what we can gather, this trope's original purpose was only to point out humans being evil or showing intentional malicious intent towards other sentient, civilized races but has somehow over-compassed a lot of related tropes over time, including Humans Are Cthulhu, Humans Are Flawed, Humans Are Morons, and Crapsack World, among others.

We're changing the trope description to better show Humans Are Bastards' original purpose as well as better outline the distinction between related tropes that this constantly gets confused for. If anyone wants to help with cleaning up misattributed examples and wicks and direct them to a more appropriate trope page, your assistance will be greatly appreciated.

I swapped this image◊ for the original one on the grounds that it's Just A Face And A Caption. If the original uploader wishes to dispute this, do so here.