Unclear Description: The Man

(This is ~Eiryu's OP. I am starting this thread for them because they said they were fine with the thread starting without them on Sandbox.TRS Queue)

What even is this trope? A character trope, the existence of a shadowy government or oppressive organization, a dialogue reference? The description and laconic seem to perhaps indicate a character trope representing a greater system, but it also suggests at an Evil Overlord-type figure.

The troping body as a whole doesn't seem to know, either.

The wick check shows very little in the way of a pattern—the biggest category only clocked 24%, and that was "Tropers using the term as a Wiki Word without any clear intention to use it as a trope." Basically, it's just tropers using "The Man" instead of "the Man" when writing entries the way they do with Not So Different and similar tropes, or Useful Notes pages. Even combined with references to an oppressive agency, that's only 35% of the trope use, which is atrocious.

There's also nearly 20% categorized in "Unclear" because I couldn't make heads or tails of what the usage was even trying to do. But even assuming all of those are oppressive-agency use to add to the 35%, that's still only just over half. I can't find a way to lump the folders of use into something cohesive.

Recommendation? Maybe a disambiguation could work; we have quite a few "Shadowy organization" tropes. If we don't have a trope for what I think the trope is meant to be—a character who represents a greater system—we can maybe Yard that, but I don't actually think trying to enforce that definition here will work given the prevalence of the pre-existing term.

Edited by MacronNotes on Mar 22nd 2022 at 8:42:53 AM

Disambig, maybe yard what the trope is supposed to be (character representative of the greater system) if nothing fits it already.

Disambig it between Anthropomorphic Personification, The Man Behind the Man, He Who Must Not Be Named, Planet Baron and Mouth of Sauron. (Potentially, I too have little clue what the trope has in mind even after reading the wick check)

The Authority Mascot and The King Of The Conspiracy ideas sound yardable.

Edited by Amonimus on Mar 21st 2022 at 10:59:28 PM

I wouldn't say it's a snowclone. "The Man" is a pre-existing insult term.

As in both men in The Man Is Sticking It to the Man.

Well, today I learn, since I've heard no other uses of "the man" before besides "the top leader of an organization" or "a reliable guy".

Disambig

Disambig and yard any possible tropable concepts

It’s stereotypically used by hippies as a term to describe “the establishment” in general. Like this:

Disambiguating this trope is our way of sticking it to The Man!

Disambig.

/shows up several hours late with hot chocolate

Well, I think...we should disambig it and Yard any tropeable concepts 'cause I don't wanna sponsor them.

Disambiguate between tropes in Amominus's post + anything else with "The Man". in the title

(add and remove tropes from the disambig as needed later)

I am good with disambiguation with the tropes mentioned above by Amonimus.

Disambig

Normally I'd make a push for defining it as something along the lines of "systematic factors that are rightly or wrongly perceived as keeping some group or the masses down", but I'm fear that might be redundant with other tropes, so I'd be okay with disambiguating if that's what we decide.

I think the issue with the trope is that the term itself is ambiguous by design. It's a boogeyman that can mean anything from "establishment powers and authorities" (which in of itself is vague and can mean representstives of the government/the government itself as an institution, police officers, a superior at work, etc) to "the shadow network that REALLY controls society" making it closer to modern use of the term "The Deep State". Because no one knows for sure what's really the cause of the issues to properly name and shame them, The Man is used in lieu of a more concrete entity.

While I do think there's something there to trope, 1) I'm not quite sure what it is, given how it is used and 2) I'm not certain it isn't already covered by other tropes. Powers That Be feels close, just replace the magical and mystical elements with more mundane and bureaucratic ones. (Also, I feel like adding Conspiracy Theorist to any future disambig is a good bet.)

Edited by amathieu13 on Mar 22nd 2022 at 3:19:24 PM

Aye, this trope is about an ambiguous authority figure that characters or culture blame for something but which may not even actually exist.

Powers That Be does not have the conspiracy/oppression aspect and also implies that they actually have the power. It's not even close to being a suitable merge target. None of the other merge targets are even remotely appropriate, either.

Disambiguate

to a disambiguation to be clear. Despite what people here are claiming, none of the proposed disambiguation tropes are more than occasionally overlapping concepts:

• Anthropomorphic Personification is principally about personifications of abstractions, "the system" is not usually an abstraction.
• The Man Behind the Man has nothing to do with The Man at all - it's about villains being revealed to be actually under the influence of other villains.
• He Who Must Not Be Named is about names specifically.
• Planet Baron is a specific level of authority.
• Mouth of Sauron is a spokesperson.

Disambiguate

I was not putting forth Powers That Be as a merge target, just using it to illustrate a trope similar in concept of "shadowy authority figures that may refer to a person or an organization" since part of the issue here is figuring out what this is even supposed to refer to

I do agree that the tropes offered for a disambig right now aren't really covering the trope though. I'm not opposed to a disambig in general, but the tropes currently suggested don't really cover the concept of this trope well. And on that note...

Consider The Conspiracy and Government Conspiracy which are in the right ball park, but again not 100% sure it covers the idea exactly

Edited by amathieu13 on Mar 22nd 2022 at 7:36:23 AM

Out of curiosity Septimus, what would you suggest doing then?

I guess the other option (if we don't really have closely related tropes) is making a better concept description and name (may be done in TLP).

Edited by Amonimus on Mar 22nd 2022 at 2:56:25 PM

thinking about this more and since the thing itself is ill-defined and may be too inconsistent to trope itself, we could try to trope the invocation of "The Man", i.e. when a character blames some amorphous authority for their problems. That's kind of why I suggested adding Conspiracy Theorist to any disambig list since these characters are the most likely to blame something on "The Man."

I'm not fully sold on that trope idea (partially because Conspiracy Theorist might just cover it already), but I'm putting it out there for yall's consideration

Edited by amathieu13 on Mar 22nd 2022 at 7:58:34 AM