alt title(s): YMMV
Your Mileage May Vary, or YMMV, is a generic warning that the person giving an opinion recognises that not everyone agrees with them. It is commonly used in two types of cases concerning an expressed opinion on a work of fiction:
- An opinion that does not reflect consensus might be thus qualified to prevent the triggering of Internet Backdraft. For example, someone might say "I thought the Lord Of The Rings movies were pretty good, but your mileage may vary" or "YMMV, but I can't stand Arrested Development."
- A second opinion that contrasts with a previously stated one may be prefixed with Your mileage may vary, as a retroactive disclaimer, acknowledging stated opinions are not comprehensive of all points of view. Example:
From Man Of A Thousand Voices #1: ...he has taken uncounted characters...and given them each unique, appropriate voices.
#2: Your Mileage May Vary, while he is very funny and does a lot of characters, he only has about three or four voices between them.
Use caution when adding commentary worthy of this warning. There is, at all times and on every subject imaginable, always someone who disagrees with you on the internet. No matter how popular it may be, there is someone
somewhere who didn't like it. What you are saying may be
redundant,
obvious or representative of a sparse (if not singular) minority. General use of this phrase is an observation of
mostly agreed upon fandom trends (
Transformers fans are probably the most self-aware of their tendency to scream
Trukk Not Munky), not simply because the individual editor has a bone to pick.
If your opinion is in the vast minority it will likely be deleted. This is also to cut down on
Natter.
The title of this trope comes from US car ads in the 1970s and 1980s which was stuck in to indicate that the customer might not get as much fuel efficiency as the ad claimed. The phrase has since been adopted to mean 'you may not get the same thing out of this as me'. The kids' show
Beakmans World made the actual phrase into a mini-
Catch Phrase as well.
Compare
Love It Or Hate It, where the mileage is broken into two separate chunks and are measured on different dials. Also compare
Broken Base, where the fandom can't even agree on what kind of car to buy.
Eight Point Eight is a directly related trope, where the reviewers and fandom disagree on the car's mileage.
As a rule of thumb, if a topic's
Wall Banger and various
Crowning Moment entries contain the same items (which is frequent in more popular works) you probably have all three.
Contrast
Opinion Myopia.
