I think defining this trope as a plot where a character clones themself to get a bunch of things done would still be distinguishable from Self-Duplication as not all instances of this trope involve a character who already does have Self-Duplication powers (a good example of this I can think of is Kirby & The Amazing Mirror, where Kirby gets unwillingly cloned but makes use of the clones to traverse multiple parts of the mirror world at once).
i'll be honest i thought Me's a Crowd was "the self-cloning trope" and had no idea Self-Duplication existed until today. considering it has zero correct usage i guess that's not an uncommon sentiment either. it's odd since Me's a Crowd has the slightly less obvious name, but maybe it sticks in people's heads better because of that? since it aligns with the other superpower pun tropes like Playing with Fire, Shock and Awe, etc
edit: since it was mentioned earlier Me's a Crowd is older than Self-Duplication (the former is from 2007, the latter from 2011), i dug a bit more; from pre-2011 usage, evidently Me's a Crowd was originally just "the self-cloning trope" until Self-Duplication was created (pre-2011 Me's a Crowd
, Self-Duplication
, post-2011 Me's a Crowd
). the weird thing is that Self-Duplication's description was partly copy-pasted from Me's a Crowd, but Me's a Crowd wasn't edited, and neither of them linked to each other. it seems like in practice Me's a Crowd was never used specifically for "using clones to get chores done"; that was just the first line of the description when it was created. Self-Duplication was created to hold the non-"using clones for chores" examples, but that was assuming Me's a Crowd was narrower than it actually was, when today we'd probably just redefine it. i almost wonder if it would be worthwhile merging the two under Me's a Crowd and then making a new "Clone Chores Plot" trope.
Edited by NoUsername on Sep 18th 2024 at 2:42:32 PM
I went a bit into the history earlier, including a TRS thread
leading to the creation of Self-Duplication and with some interesting discussion of what the definition of Me's a Crowd should be.
So wait, if Me's a Crowd is when someone clones themselves for chores and Self-Duplication is when someone clones themselves as a superpower, then do we even have a trope for any time a character clones themselves, or heck just for the mere concept of cloning as a whole, because if not then that might be Missing Supertrope Syndrome, right?
"This forum signature likes to refer to itself, as well as to the fact that it likes to refer to itself"Making sure that Self-Duplication is the high-level supertrope seems like a good idea, to include things like Calvin's duplicator box. Hell, I can even think of a handful of "duplicate others" examples, and I'm not sure we have a trope for that one yet. Me's a Crowd probably needs a rename, as most examples on the wick check are "duplication as a superpower," so they'd just be moved to Self-Duplication.
Anyway, usage stats:
Related Main / Me's a Crowd
Found in 2749 articles, excluding discussions.
Since January 1, 2012 this article has brought 7,674 people to the wiki from non-search engine links.
Related Main / Self-Duplication
Found in 1265 articles, excluding discussions.
Since January 1, 2012 this article has brought 13,167 people to the wiki from non-search engine links.
In my TRS queue OP, I did list renaming as a proposal due to the misuse, considering there's nothing in the name that's indicative of what the definition is supposed to be (i.e. "me's a crowd" reads like it's just about excessive duplication, but the definition uses a specific application of cloning instead). Cloning as a plot element seems sufficiently tropeworthy, e.g. the character gets cloned and this causes a conflict, anything else may better belong in a different trope but I did feel at least a couple examples from my sample felt very chairsy (i.e. stuff like "this character has clones" without noting the significance if there's any).
Okay, at this point I'm just going to copy what I have in my notes that I intended to put in an eventual TRS thread.
This page is older than Self-Duplication, which was split from it as a result of this
2011-13 TRS thread. Most of the posts there don't seem to read too much into the use of "chores" in the description either; one of them quotes the description as it was then in full, then summarizes it starting with "[t]he first paragraph sounds like it's attempting to be about a plot where a character duplicates himself via external means", with the rest "fit[ting] better on a Self-Duplication Super-Trope". That said, one of the proposed names for the plot was My Clones Do My Chores, and there's some discussion starting here
about how important the "chores" part of the description is and whether or not it even matters. While the other trope was created as a result of the thread, there wasn't any real consensus for what to do beyond that (partly because the first and possibly only crowner to be created was a single prop that didn't cover all the options) and there didn't seem to be a whole lot of effort to move over incorrect usage, so the thread pretty much died. A 2014-15 TRS thread
also tried to figure out what the trope should be, with a general sense that "chores" is needlessly specific, but didn't really go anywhere either.
The usage check doesn't distinguish any examples that use it as a plot rather than a power or in other circumstances, though a cursory look at it suggests a) most of the "clones being used for things besides chores" folder seems to be video game bosses using it as an ability and b) the folder above that doesn't have a lot of use as a plot trope either. I do think there are a handful of examples that use it as a plot trope, and there are so many references that even a tiny number of examples should pro-rate to a viable trope, but there might be so few that the sample size might be too small to help us define it.
A common through line in the TRS threads, the Trope Talk thread, and even the archived discussion
is that the name sucks and doesn't suggest anything in particular. I personally don't think it's a terrible name for a "character has problems stemming from having too many clones of themselves" plot if we can sweep out all the usage for other things and fix the description, but I wouldn't be opposed to making it a disambig or even a redirect to Our Clones Are Identical. (The Trope Talk and previous TRS threads noted that the offsite inbounds were way too high for a straight cut, and they've only grown since then.) There probably is a plot trope here that's less specific than being about "chores" and should be a viable trope, but we'd need to nail down what its definition should be first, and it seems like that's where the previous TRS threads went off the rails.

Edited by Eggy0 on Sep 15th 2024 at 8:39:58 PM