History Main / PraisingShowsYouDontWatch

* A good number of ''Franchise/TouhouProject'' fans [[PeripheryDemographic have not played the games proper]], and are only familiar with the games through fanart, doujins, remixes and other fan material. Most fans who ''have'' seen what the games look like praise them for having beautiful [[BulletHell bullet patterns]], but [[ItsHardSoItSucks won't play them]]. Then there are ''Touhou Project'' fans that are only familiar with the games through canon and semi-canon {{gaiden|Game}} [[BonusMaterial works]] by the games' creator (from fantasy-land travelogues up to and including a book-length short story series), and praise the project as a whole because there's no single phrase referring to these works alone. This is perhaps part of why a lot of ''Touhou'' fans who are into the lore and fan works don't [[GatewaySeries play other shoot-em-up series]] and why the general shoot-em-up fanbase is [[FandomRivalry baffled by]] the ''Touhou'' fanbase.

* ''VideoGame/RadiantSilvergun'' is praised outside of Japan for various reasons related to gameplay and story, but [[NoExportForYou the fact it was never released internationally and that it costs a small fortune]] makes it skeptical that many of them have ever seen anything more than a few videos of it. Thankfully it's much more widely (and cheaply) available today due to an international UsefulNotes/XBoxLiveArcade release.

* ''VideoGame/TetrisTheGrandMaster''. For all the attention it gets over two superplay videos, there are very few players outside of UsefulNotes/{{Japan}} who have seen videos of it and played it, due to NoExportForYou combined with [[KeepCirculatingTheTapes arcade-only releases]] (''Tetris: The Grand Master ACE'' on UsefulNotes/Xbox360 [[GaidenGame doesn't count]]), and, like with BulletHell games, the harsh-seeming learning surve.

* Creator/RichardFeynman mentioned in his autobiography a case when one publisher sent a schoolbook to the California State Curriculum Commission, but it wasn't ready for print, so it had ''empty pages''. Six out of the ten members of the commission ''still'' rated the book favorably -- literally judging it by the cover! Ironically, it was one of the highest rated books, and according to Feynman's autobiographical account, none of the other members understood why he hadn't rated the textbook.

* Thanks to the 2010s-era superhero movie boom, as well as the existence of various resources that allow people to learn the basics of a character or storyline without actually reading any comics, a lot of fans of the films tend to declare the films great due to their accuracy to the comics, without actually reading said comics or displaying much awareness of them. One of the stranger cases of this was the Film/DCExtendedUniverse, where fans of Creator/ZackSnyder's various films tended to praise his films for being comic-accurate and then despise the influence of Creator/GeoffJohns for his ExecutiveMeddling--ignoring that much of Snyder's work, ''especially'' ''Film/ZackSnydersJusticeLeague'', was an adaptation of Johns's own work with the team and the universe, and used many ideas and concepts that [[NewerThanTheyThink were no older than 2011]].

Praising Shows You Don't Watch is the inverse of ComplainingAboutShowsYouDontWatch, in which these people somehow know ''exactly'' how good something is, without having ever actually ''seen'' it. Maybe they saw so much praise they feel like they can account for having actually watched it for themselves, or maybe they're just carbon-copying someone's opinions to fit into the group. Or they have seen a fragment of the work, liked it, and assumed the rest is equally good. Or perhaps they've seen the {{Audience Coloring Adaptation}}s and decided they really liked those, which means the original must be just as awesome or even better. Or perhaps they just like the ''idea'' so much that they don't care what the actual execution is like. Who knows? Similar to somehow knowing a show is utter crap without having seen an episode, it's one of the greatest mysteries of human culture, and has only been [[InternetJerk exacerbated]] by the Age of the Internet.

* ''Literature/TheLordOfTheRings'' gets this, too. Mostly for people who haven't exactly read it, but praise it more for what it accomplished. This one is perhaps a very sad example, as most people who claim to love it might never have cracked it open, but ''have'' seen the movies, and therefore think they know the story. The movies were great, but missing Creator/JRRTolkien's classic writing style and a number of the important themes of the work were either truncated or left out. And there's the sheer number of non-Tolkien ideas that were added to the script.

* Plenty of fans of ''VideoGame/Persona5'' on social media haven't played the game. They only get their experience from fan-made content and clips on [=YouTube=]. Joker's inclusion as a DLC fighter in ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosUltimate''[[note]]Since Smash Ultimate is on the Nintendo Switch, while P5 was not at the time of the former's release, it resulted in many new fans who didn't own the consoles that could play Joker's home game.[[/note]] is blamed for heightening the {{newbie boom}}, leading to HypeBacklash. Hence the recurring joke among the P5 player-base, "Don't mess with us Persona 5 fans, we haven't played the game."

** In France, there's a lot of this happening with [[UsefulNotes/FrenchNewWave Nouvelle Vague]] films.

* This is a trend with the Franchise/DCExtendedUniverse, with fans being dismayed at these films receiving more lukewarm critical reaction than the more widely-praised Franchise/MarvelCinematicUniverse. For example, after ''Film/SuicideSquad2016'' received mostly negative reviews, a [[https://www.change.org/p/don-t-listen-to-film-criticism petition]] was creating asking Rotten Tomatoes[[note]]a company Warner Bros. ''co-owns''[[/note]] to be shut down. Note that over 18,000 people signed it ''before'' the movie was actually released, meaning that thousands of people assumed the criticism was unfair, without actually watching the movie.

* Classic Russian writers fall into this in Russia as well. Ask any Russian what do they think about Creator/LeoTolstoy, Creator/FyodorDostoevsky or Ivan Turgenev, and they would say that these writers are good, great and classic. Ask them why do they think so, and they won't be able to answer. The only things most of them can remember about their books are that ''Literature/AnnaKarenina'' is about a girl who killed self by jumping under a train, ''Literature/CrimeAndPunishment'' is about a guy who killed an old woman with an axe[[note]]What do you mean, he murdered TWO old women?[[/note]] and ''Mumu'' is about a deaf guy who drowned his dog. Somehow even the fact that two of these books are included in the school curriculum doesn't help much.

** The Franchise/UniversalHorror Classics -- ''Film/{{Dracula 1931}}'', ''Film/TheWolfMan1941'', ''Film/TheMummy1932'', ''Film/{{Frankenstein 1931}}'', ''Film/CreatureFromTheBlackLagoon'', etc.

* ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour''. Many phrases from the book, like "[[BigBrotherIsWatching Big Brother]]", "thoughtcrime", "doublethink", and "{{Room 101}}", have [[PopculturalOsmosis entered pop culture]], so quoting these phrases and being aware of the general theme of "totalitarianism and censorship are bad" is probably enough to convince someone ''else'' who hasn't read it that you have. Ironically, his essay ''Politics in the English Language'' specifically advises people from using "dying" metaphors that one is used to seeing in print, and parroting them off without taking the time to fully understand what they mean in an effort to look smart. Now ''1984'' is one of the biggest sources of that.

** ''{{Film/Brazil}}'' was inspired by ''Literature/NineteenEightyFour'', despite director Creator/TerryGilliam having [[HalfRememberedHomage never read the book until after the film's production]].

* ''VideoGame/TearRingSaga'', ''VideoGame/BerwickSaga'' and ''Vestaria Saga'' were created by Shouzou Kaga, the original creator of the ''Franchise/FireEmblem'' games before he left Intelligent Systems. As such, they're held in extremely high regard by the OnlyTheCreatorDoesItRight side of the fandom... the number among them who've actually ''played'' those games being very small. Those who ''have'' tend to believe they're decent games, but not flawless masterpieces.

* Plenty of fans of ''VideoGame/Persona5'' on social media haven't played the game. They only get their experience from fan-made content and clips on You[=Tube=]. Joker's inclusion as a DLC fighter in ''VideoGame/SuperSmashBrosUltimate''[[note]]Since Smash Ultimate is on the Nintendo Switch, while P5 was not at the time of the former's release, it resulted in many new fans who didn't own the consoles that could play Joker's home game.[[/note]] is blamed for heightening the {{newbie boom}}, leading to HypeBacklash. Hence the recurring joke among the P5 player-base, "Don't mess with us Persona 5 fans, we haven't played the game."

->''"I love this book so much I nearly read it!"''