Humans Are The Real Monsters misuse?

I've been noting that there's a lot of misuse of this trope. It's supposed to be for humanity is portrayed as worse than other species, but I see it used for whenever an individual or even a group of people are morally inferior compared to other species, it's not saying anything about humanity as a whole and there's enough morally decent people in humanity to offset them. It's called Humans Are the Real Monsters, not Human Is The Worst Monster. For example of the misuse I'm talking about:

• In Adventure Time, this trope is played completely straight with Dr. Gross. Basically, in a show inhabited by strange creatures, humanoids, Eldritch Abominations, demons and aliens this woman (a mere human) manages to be one of the cruelest, most evil characters.

I'm curious if I'm wrongfully deleting entries and the trope can be used that way, or if I should take action in some way like starting a cleanup thread in Short Term.

EDIT: I do have a feeling this contrast with the good non-human vs the evil human could be a trope in its own right, if it doesn’t already exist.

Edited by PlasmaPower on Feb 19th 2022 at 4:50:49 PM

Does anyone have anything to say about what I just said?

It sounds fitting to me, but I've never really used that trope.

Ah, hmm... I'm split.

On the one hand, one can read the trope as specifically covering the case in which humanity is worse in overall behaviour than other species. Under this reading the example would appear to not fit.

On the other, one can read the example as indicating that humanity has a greater capacity for evil, and that this then makes it worse than other species.

So I'm not sure, myself...

Edited by ArsThaumaturgis on Feb 20th 2022 at 5:29:27 PM

The trope (laconic aside, which I think is inaccurate to the description) seems to be more about a reveal and reversal situation and Perspective Flip on a species level. Not really about who is worse, or has the capacity to be worse.

So I think the example wouldn’t count, likely.