You Know Nothing About X

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Man in Theater Line: Wait a minute, why can't I give my opinion? It's a free country! Alvy Singer: He can give it... do you have to give it so loud? I mean, aren't you ashamed to pontificate like that? And the funny part of it is, Marshall McLuhan, you don't know anything about Marshall McLuhan! Man in Theater Line: Oh, really? Well, it just so happens I teach a class at Columbia [University] called "TV, Media and Culture." So I think my insights into Mr. McLuhan, well, have a great deal of validity! Alvy Singer: Oh, do ya? Well, that's funny, because I happen to have Mr. McLuhan right here, so, so, yeah, just let me... [pulls McLuhan out from behind a nearby poster] Alvy Singer: Come over here for a second... tell him! Marshall McLuhan: I heard what you were saying! You know nothing of my work! You mean my whole fallacy is wrong. How you got to teach a course in anything is totally amazing! Alvy Singer: Boy, if life were only like this! —Annie Hall

A character, in order to make a point, invokes thing/person/place/event X. Another character then says something to the effect of "you know nothing about X" in rebuttal. The implication is, of course, "I know all about X in a way that is more accurate/intimate than you do, and it's nothing like what you're saying. Therefore, your argument is invalid." In extreme situations, the second character is the invoked X - which can be quite embarrassing for the first character. In terms of Logical Fallacies, the first character invokes Appeal to Authority, and the second character replies to the first character's Appeal to Authority by invoking Irrelevant Authority.

The late 2010s introduced the term "mansplaining" to denote situations where You Know Nothing About X overlaps with Double Standard, when a man incorrectly explains a subject to a woman who knows more about the field being explained simply because he's a man and she's a woman. The underlying trope is the same; it's just coated with a layer of sexism.

Compare with Death of the Author, where invoking person X is summarily dismissed as being irrelevant.

Examples of You Know Nothing About X include:

Anime and Manga

• Played around with in Magical Girl Lyrical Nanoha the Movie First. When Precia's Familiar, Lynith, learns about Alicia and confronts her master about it, Precia grabs Lynith and starts screaming that she doesn't know anything about Alicia and how much she meant to Precia. Lynith immediately retorts that of course "I don't know anything. You were the one who made me forget".

Film

• In Wolfgang Petersen's Troy, Hector tells Paris that he know nothing about either death or love when the latter claims he is willing to kill or die for Helen, stating that he has killed and it is neither glorious nor beautiful. Justified as Paris is very naive at that point.
• As seen in the page quote above, Annie Hall takes this to the ultimate, where Alvy Singer pulls from nowhere Mr. McLuhan himself to point out that the man knows nothing about McLuhan's work.
  • This scene was parodied by Mad TV in their sketch "Crimes, Misdemeanors, and Payback", when one of the terrorists holding schoolgirls hostage pontificates to "Woody Allen" that he teaches a class at Columbia in International Terrorism and therefore knows about Yasser Arafat's works. Cue "Woody Allen" reaching behind a door and pulling out "Yasser Arafat" to tell the terrorist, "You know nothing of my work".
• Pirates of the Caribbean has this in the first movie: when Jack comments to his (former) crew that "the deepest circle of hell is reserved for traitors and mutineers", one crew member grabs him by the throat (and reveals his skeletal arm in the moonlight), hissing "you know nothing of hell."

Literature

• In Little House on the Prairie, Misplaced Kindergarten Teacher Eliza Jane Wilder claims on her first day at Laura Ingalls' school that she intends to rule by love, not fear, and states that "birds in their little nests agree". Laura's thought is that she obviously knows nothing about birds. Ironically, Miss Wilder ends up as a Sadist Teacher.
• In The Secret Garden, when Martha lets it slip that she'd hoped Mary would be a native Indian, Mary flies into a rage and screams that "You know nothing about India. You know nothing about anything!"
• A Song of Ice and Fire: The third book A Storm of Swords has the Wildling Ygritte respond to Jon Snow wondering why she was crying after hearing a song about "the last of the giants" when he had just seen hundreds of them with the now-infamous line "You know nothing, Jon Snow", clearly referring to Wildling culture and general life north of the Wall.

Live-Action TV

• Game of Thrones:
  • The phrase from the Storm of Swords examples above also appears quite a few times in the TV adaptation, with the first instance in "A Man Without Honor". It also ends up being Ygritte's Famous Last Words.

Web Comics

• The Inexplicable Adventures of Bob: Bob points out that Riboflavin's motivations for his crimes don't make sense. Riboflavin screams, "YOU DON'T KNOW ANYTHING, YOU LITTLE &%!!&!! AND THE PENALTY FOR IGNORANCE IS DEATH!!!" (indicating, of course, that Riboflavin knows Bob is right and refuses to admit it to himself).

Western Animation

• In Family Guy, Peter once claims to be Poseidon: God of the Sea! The real Poseidon walks up behind him and admonishes "No you're not, I am! And you know nothing of my work!"

Real Life

• In the 1988 U.S. vice presidential debates, Dan Quayle compared his experience to that of John F. Kennedy. His counterpart, Lloyd Bentsen, responded with the following:

Bentsen: Senator, I served with Jack Kennedy, I knew Jack Kennedy, Jack Kennedy was a friend of mine. Senator, you're no Jack Kennedy.