You're Just Jealous
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Fry: This is so unfair! I liked you back when you were a cyclops! That guy's only interested now that you have two eyes. |
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A character has just won something which appears to be extremely valuable. But the character's friends will warn that the prize isn't as good as it seems—or is actually dangerous.
If the character brushes the friends' concerns off by saying, "You're just jealous," these concerns will inevitably turn out to be true. This trope can be weakly justified provided that the friend doesn't have any evidence to support their claims, but oftentimes they will have, if not outright evidence, at least a fairly well-reasoned argument that You're Just Jealous just brushes off.
Also note that a skeptic will often say this just before a Skepticism Failure, which may or may not be justified along the same lines as above.
See also What Does She See in Him?.
Examples of You're Just Jealous include:
Anime and Manga
- In one episode of Samurai Pizza Cats the Monster of the Week attaches himself onto Speedy. The robot's special power is to bring lots and lots of money to whoever it attaches to. When he quits his job and goes around acting like a complete douchbag Guido and Polly call him out and along comes the "You're jealous, aren't you?" line.
- In Ranma ½ this comes up whenever Akane gets a dangerous powerup. For example:
- Relatively early on, she ate a bowl of "super soba," which increased her strength to godlike levels, with her lording said strength over Ranma. The side effect? Increase testosterone production that would have eventually given her a full beard. When Ranma tried explaining this to her, she completely ignored him and claimed he was just jealous... until she sprouted whiskers. She couldn't devour the antidote fast enough.
- Much later into the manga, Akane came into the possession of a magical martial arts gi that gave her fighting skill surpassing even Ranma's. Ranma attempted to confess to liking Akane as a means of getting her away from the gi, and it almost worked until the family intervened (because of how Status Quo Is God and all), causing Akane to, you guessed it, accuse Ranma of just being jealous.
Comic Books
- Reed Richards tried to warn Victor von Doom about a mistake in an experimental setup; Doom decided that Richards was trying to hold him back out of jealousy and ignored the warning. The experiment proceeded to literally blow up in Doom's face, scarring his features (and his ego). Unable to admit that he could have possibly been wrong, Doom decided that it must have been someone else's fault; namely, Reed's. His entire vendetta against the Fantastic Four started with this.
- As for what keeps it going, Doom continues to blame Reed Richards for everything that has gone wrong with his life. He justifies his belief by insisting that Reed is envious of Doom's genius. It is, of course, Doom who is bitterly envious of Reed, and Reed mentioning this usually sends Doom into an Unstoppable Rage involving a lot of stretchy torture, since deep down, Doom knows it's true too.
- The Pre Crisis version of Lex Luthor always maintained that Superman was jealous of his genius.
- The Post-Crisis version also thinks that Superman is jealous that Luthor has more power over Metropolis than he does. Luthor is, of course, completely deluded.
Fanfic
- Fan Fiction writers use this so much in response to negative reviews that the community has come up with its own name for it: Not Bob's Law.
Live Action TV
- In Seven Days. Olga will commonly express this when Frank has just jumped back through time and warned her against seeing the week's male guest star. Unusually for this trope, there tends to be a 50-50 chance that Frank really is just jealous as opposed to giving her a legitimate warning.
- Scrubs did this when J.D. was dating someone Elliot didn't approve of. Of course Elliot was justified in her suspicion but afterward she admitted she was actually jealous.
- Also annoyingly done when the genders were reversed in Season Three. JD got to a coding patient first, Elliot accuses him of only doing it because he's jealous of her and Sean and what's worse? The show thinks she's right!
- And they did it again, when JD sided with Dr. Cox in his disdain for Elliot clocking out at 5 as a private practice doctor. JD gives no hint whatsoever that he actually is jealous, and by all indications agrees with Cox just because he agrees with Cox of his own freewill. Until Elliot basically blackmails him into "admitting" he was jealous by having Keith beat him up and wasting the time he would have spent talking to his then-girlfriend. And, again, she's treated as 100% in the right.
- Also annoyingly done when the genders were reversed in Season Three. JD got to a coding patient first, Elliot accuses him of only doing it because he's jealous of her and Sean and what's worse? The show thinks she's right!
- Happens on Smallville pretty much every time Clark tries to warn Lana about the Freak of the Week.
- And also to a certain extent when Chloe warns Lana about Clark actually being Bizarro.
- You'd think they'd learn to just sit back and laugh when Lana is being stupid.
- And also to a certain extent when Chloe warns Lana about Clark actually being Bizarro.
- In a Monk episode, Monk warned the lieutenant about his new lover and he accused Monk of being jealous. But he should've listened to Randy: MONK IS NEVER WRONG!
- In the Friends episode "The One With The Screamer", Ross is accused of this when he tries to warn the rest of the friends about Rachel's new boyfriend.
- This parody of Hannah Montana had the unfortunate luck of fans stumbling across it and accusing Mad TV of being jealous of Hannah Montana's success, never mind that Mad TV makes fun of everyone, because it's supposed to be a parody show.
- In Season 2 of Supernatural, Dean has reached a new level of infamy (FBI database) and Sam attempts to lecture him on it, finding that he is not on the list. Dean recites the trope title.
- This phrase gets thrown around a few times in an episode of H₂O: Just Add Water in which the main characters are infatuated with a Casanova Wannabe because of a cologne that makes him stink to everyone else but acts as a pheromone for mermaids.
Music
- From "Cable TV" by "Weird Al" Yankovic, about a guy who becomes obsessed with television after getting cable installed:
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My friends are getting kinda worried, |
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- Unintentional example from Bratz The Movie Rock Star by Prima J.
New Media
- Naturally Played for Laughs on the YouChewPoop website, when one of the members said the legendary line:
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Professional Wrestling
- Slightly subverted in Sting's warnings that Hulk Hogan and Eric Bischoff were up to no good in TNA. He received much of the same reaction, but knowing this would happen, instead of ineffectively shouting his concerns to Dixie Carter and not being allowed to yield any results before the trope title and crackdown came calling, he made a necessary turn against Hogan and spoke in hinting language knowing the smarks would understand. Kevin Nash and The Pope caught on as well towards the end. Now Pope is one of the main characters fighting against Immortal.
Western Animation
- The Futurama example at the top of the page hangs a lampshade on this, but the trope still goes through legitimately.
- The Toaster claims that this was the Air conditioner's motivation on why he is backtalking their owner, since he spent more time with the other machines. He denied it first but when Kirby says "'Cause you're stuck in the wall", The air conditioner can't take it, and an sudden moment of released repressed rage, exploded.
- He gets better.
- In an episode of KaBlam!, Henry says this to June when she lies about telling him that Dawn liked him (she just wanted to save time). He was right.
- Batman the Animated Series gives us this piece of dialogue between Harley Quinn and DA Janet VanDorne in the episode "Trial":
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VanDorne: Sad, isn't it? Harleen Quinzel was a doctor here at Arkham, until The Joker twisted her mind. |
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- Danny Phantom, "What You Want":
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Tucker: Oh sure. Phase the car through the building! You *had* to save the day, *didn’t you*? |
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- Fiona tries to use this on Shrek in Shrek, but it doesn't work so well.
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Fiona: You're just jealous that you can't measure up to a great ruler like Lord Farquaad! |
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- My Little Pony Friendship Is Magic gives us two examples, with the same pony on different sides of it: In "Griffon the Brush-Off," when Pinkie Pie denounces Gilda as a Jerkass, Twilight Sparkle attributes it to jealousy over Rainbow Dash wanting to catch up with an old friend. Then, in "A Canterlot Wedding: Part 1," when Twilight Sparkle thinks something is up with Princess Cadance, just about everyone—up to and including Princess Celestia—accuses her of being overly possessive of her brother. In both cases, the "jealous" pony was right all along: Gilda really was horrible to everyone except Rainbow Dash; and Cadance really had been ponynapped and replaced by an imposter.
Real Life
- Anybody who criticizes a celebrity of any sort will have a jealousy card pulled on them, even if it's perfectly reasonable that they just flat-out hate what they do.
- Mike Nelson wrote a great article for the original IronMinds.com (sadly defunct) calling bullshit on this defense, pointing out that Blackbeard the pirate was very successful and Henry VIII made a ton of money, but both were still horrible people.
- Anyone who's spent any amount of time perusing comments on blogs that this phrase will inevitably show up as an "argument" against those who criticize the blog—you're just jealous that Maddox has a better blog than you!
- When it comes to debates over video games or their consoles, it is guaranteed that someone will play the jealous card to put down their opponents' arguments or even going as far as saying something like "You can deny it all you want, but I know how you really feel." Hard to tell how someone feels through the blandness of text on a screen.
- Anyone who's spent any time on a camwhore site is familiar with this trope. Criticism of camwhore X is simply because the critic is fat and therefore jealous of the camwhore's amazing body / legions of fans / raging hotness. Especially obnoxious if the "You're just jealous" comes from the camwhore him/herself. 7chan's /men/ board used to ban anyone outright who invoked this trope because it got so ubiquitous.
- In politics, every time a member of the opposition says something critical about the current administration's politics (which is what the opposition is supposed to do anyway), there is a member of the majority who claims that the opposition is just jealous because they lost the last election, usually without making the effort to try to justify his own point of view.
- On this article about the reality show Jon & Kate Plus 8, some of the commenters question the Gosselins' parenting abilities due to Kate's obsession with cleanliness and all-around bitchiness toward her husband and Jon's passive-aggressiveness. Obviously, according to their defenders, anyone who hates them is just jealous of their success and must get a life.
- And, thus, their current breakup had nothing to do with the above mentioned problems.
- It looks like Petrarch really was jealous of Dante, despite his claim to be "unimpressed".
- Anyone who advocates higher taxation, social programs, or wealth redistribution is frequently accused of being jealous of the upper class' wealth. Whether or not these accusations are correct will not be addressed here.
- Many Twilight fans use this as a rebuttal towards anyone who dislikes the series, often citing the financial success of its author.
- Or ad hominem comments about the critic, e.g. "You're too fat to get a boyfriend as gorgeous and amazing as Edward!"
- Amazingly enough, one of the people who Twilight fans have declared "jealous" is Stephen King. Read that back to yourself again as many times as you need to.
- Some Justin Bieber fans do this.
- Some fans of Korean Pop music love to throw this one around whenever someone else criticizes their favorite artist.
- Some people who get picked on at school are told by their parents that the bully is just jealous of them. Sometimes, however, this can be true and it is widely believed that bullies just have very low self-esteem.
- Criticism of Stripperiffic costumes in media tends to garner roughly the same response as criticism of Twilight.
- Criticism of any starlet, model or other female celebrity who happens to be dating the hot guy of the moment with lots of fangirls is invariably dismissed using this trope as a defense, at least for as long as she's with the guy. Regardless of the nature of the criticism, the gender or sexual orientation of the critic or whether or not the critic even gives half a crap about her SO, you ARE just a "scary" fangirl and you ARE just jealous because she has the guy you want. No exceptions. The gender-flipped version of this is not often seen.