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"Mankind can keep alive
Thanks to its brilliance
At keeping its humanity repressed"
Bertolt Brecht, "What Keeps Mankind Alive?"

"Lady, people aren't chocolates. You know what they are mostly? Bastards. Bastard-coated bastards with bastard filling."
Scrubs (the one thing both Cox and Kelso agree on)

You Suck taken to the extreme.

When compared to other civilizations, or another species, Humans are a bunch of bastards. They are all greedy, heartless, violent, cruel, selfish, egotistical, thoughtless, and in extreme cases, evil, as opposed to the other species, which will be better if not far superior: they are all peaceful, live in harmony with nature, are naturally good, floss after every meal, etc. Ironically the species in question almost always looks and acts just like humans anyway.

In reality, the human race can (and often does) run the entire Character Alignment spectrum. Not so in Fiction Land. In there, the whole human race seems to consist of nothing but Corrupt Corporate Executives who would love to destroy every rainforest on the planet, evil ruthless soldiers, and evil hunters whose favorite pastime is shooting mothers of cute little animals. They don't beat each other up or go to war for ideology or material gain or to protect their country or any of that, they do it purely because they're all ruthless sadists who get off on slaughtering and murdering for its own sake. Oh, and they all pollute everything, too. In especially extreme cases, nature effectively decides it's better off without us.

In many recent works, a blanket assumption that all people suck is given as a point of view held by animals towards humans, and it's a markedly different point of view from animals who simply avoid humans for safety's sake. The view is largely based upon the animals' few encounters with humans, which didn't go well. Sea creatures, in particular, are susceptible to this philosophy. Often in such cases, the animals will learn that, in actuality, many humans are good.

Increasingly, a more honest approach seems to be gaining in popularity: humans are now often depicted as thoughtless instead of outright malicious. At worst, we're shown as morally ambiguous (and frustratingly so as far as animal characters are concerned). Oftentimes, in order to lighten the blow, a character will point out the Humans Are Bastards criteria, to which another character will respond "Were we any different?" (usually when the characters having the conversation hail from a race that also had a troubled history, and also with the implication that humans may, like the other race, eventually grow out of their problems as well). It may even be pointed out that though Humans Are Flawed, we're overcoming those flaws.

There's no doubt that humanity has a history of going to war for stupid reasons, killing groups of people for silly ideals, burning witches, experimenting on still-living people, raping, torturing, and leaving the toilet seat up. Simply pointing out the recorded evils of man in history doesn't invoke this trope. To really reach full Humans Are Bastards territory, you have to present these atrocities as unique to humans above and beyond all other races and that such behavior cannot be explained or excused as the growing pains of a maturing race, but rather as evidence that the whole lot of us are self-evidently irredeemable on face value. It also helps to act as if other, non-Human races are the only ones to truly understand (or the only ones that actually have) art, peace, caring, love, medicine, compassion, mercy, and so on... you know, all those things that humans in the real world also have, because otherwise the writer wouldn't have them as reference points for giving to the saintly aliens or whatever. The fact that, thus fare, we have no other sapient species to compare ourselves to means that any value-judgement of Humanity's character is at best, speculation. More realistically it seems unlikely that any ethical label can be applied to an entire species.

Often crosses over with Humans Are Cthulhu, What Measure Is A Nonhuman, A Mind Is A Terrible Thing To Read, Crapsack World and subtropes. Compare Humanity On Trial, Humanity Is Superior, Humans Are Special, and Boomerang Bigot. Contrast Rousseau Was Right and Patrick Stewart Speech. When it's aliens, see Aliens Are Bastards. Not to be confused with You Bastard, although you may be, if you are human.

Note: when a villain holds a Humans Are Bastards viewpoint, it's usually reserved for Nietzsche Wannabes, Well Intentioned Extremists and Knights Templar; it wouldn't really work if the villain in question is already a crazy maniac who just wants to kill people, The Joker notwithstanding.

Note 2: Every single 'Humans are Bastards' story cited below was written by Humans. Think about that.

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