Thread: Difference between тоже мне and вот тебе и

A couple of examples to illustrate what I mean:

вот тебе и капитализм

тоже мне учёный

The first is said in response to something like "They promised us freedom and prosperity and we got poverty and oppression".

The second is said in response to a story about an academic getting a bonus even though he only wrote one small article in 10 years

My loose translations are:

"That's capitalism for you"

and

"Typical scientist"

What though are the different use cases for these two expressions? Is it that вот тебе и is used for things and/or abstract concepts and тоже мне for people?

спасибо

These are similar a lot.
"Тоже мне ..." has shift into doubt/critic in/of someone/something.
"Вот тебе и..." has shift into disappointment about someone/something.
Sometimes they can be used interchangeably.

Just wanted to add that вот тебе и is awfully often about sarcasm. Saying вот тебе и учёный would most likely have the vibe of sarcasm. You'd still want to rely on the speaker's intonation and/or context to figure it out, but it kind of readily associates with sarcasm if you don't have those.

There is another important thing to note here. "Вот тебе и +subject" is strictly third-party. By that I mean that the subject cannot actually be that subject. E.g.

Вот тебе и учёный

I can say that to another person who's not the scientist, but I can't really say that to the scientist face to face, because that wouldn't make any sense. I think that's because of тебе and no, you can't just exclude it from the phrase, it will change its meaning in that case. Anyway, face to face I'd most likely switch to тоже мне учёный to convey pretty much the same thing. I guess this is where the 2 can be interchangable.