About

“I Happen To Be An Expert On This Subject” is an expression used to declare one's advanced level of knowledge or expertise within a particular topic or subject field. On image boards and discussion forums, the phrase is typically iterated in the form of reaction images featuring various anime and manga characters, similar to the use of the expression "let me tell you why that's bullshit".

Origin

The earliest known use of the phrase in image macros was posted in a thread on the Canon Digital Photography Forums^[2] on December 21st, 2008^[2], which featured a photograph of science educator Bill Nye with the caption "I happen to be an expert on this subject" (shown below).

Spread

On June 6th, 2010, the anime news blog Re-Jinx^[3] highlighted an image macro featuring the character Cirno from the Touhou Project shooter games with the caption "Excuse me, / … but I happen to be an expert on this subject" (shown below, left). On August 24th, the image macro was reblogged by Soup.io^[4] user penpen. On February 22nd, 2012, an image macro featuring the character Rias Gremory from the anime series High School DxD was posted on the /a/^[6] (anime and manga) board on 4chan (shown below, right).

On May 31st, 2014, Redditor ravenex submitted an illustration of the character Madoka Kaname from the anime series Puella Magi Madoka Magica with the title "I happen to be an expert on this topic" to the /r/awwnime^[5] subreddit (shown below).

Notable Examples

Additional image macros have used illustrations of other anime characters from a variety of franchises, including Fate/Stay Night and Katawa Shoujo.

Search Interest

Not available.

External References