That's just like, your opinion, man

About

“That’s just like, your opinion, man” is an expression used in discussion forums and imageboards to retort or dismiss someone else’s point as entirely subjective or too verbose, similar to the usage of TL;DR and Didn’t read, LOL.

Origin

The phrase originated from a memorable dialogue scene in the 1998 cult comedy film The Big Lebowski.^[1] In the scene, the main characters The Dude (played by Jeff Bridges) and Walter (played by John Goodman) are approached by Jesus Quintana (played by John Turturro) who taunts them both before, to which The Dude replies “…that’s like, your opinion, man.”

Jesus Quintana: You ready to be fucked, man? I see you rolled your way into the semis.
Dios mio, man. Liam and me, we’re gonna fuck you up.
The Dude: Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion, man.
Jesus Quintana: Let me tell you something, pendejo. You pull any of your crazy shit with us, you flash a piece out on the lanes, I’ll take it away from you, stick it up your ass and pull the fucking trigger ’til it goes “click.”
The Dude: Jesus.

The Big Lebowski

The film was generally seen as a disappointment upon its box office release in 1998, but it gradually grew into a cult-favorite for its idiosyncratic characters and offbeat dialogues. The Dude’s quote also gained the status of fan-favorite with its earliest known iteration found in a StraightDope forum^[2] discussion about the “most memorable movie quotes” posted on August 15th, 2000.

In addition, the main character The Dude also became an icon of college stoner culture with the launch of Dudeism (also known as “The Church of the Latter-Day Dude”) in 2005, an online religion with a following of 130,000 “priests” devoted to spreading the philosophy and lifestyle of The Dude through the website.

Spread

Google search for “That’s just like, your opinion, man”^[6] yields hundreds of thousands of forum discussion threads in which the phrase is used as a retort against another poster during debate. It has been also referenced in the title of various op-ed columns, discussion threads and blog posts, ranging from political discussions on Democratic Underground^[10] to music related discussions on Metafilter.^[8]

The Urban Dictionary^[7] entry for the acronym TJLYOM was submitted on December 9th, 2006. The Facebook page^[4] for “Yeah, well, you know, that’s just, like, your opinion” has more than 871 likes as of April 2012. The quote was eventually adapted into image macros based on still shots of The Dude from the movie as well as other notable characters found in popular culture.