You had to be there

"You had to be there" is a phrase that one often uses when someone asks about a situation/joke/piece of time.

Basically, it means that it's hard to actually explain what that situation was like and that the person who is asking had to be a part of the situation to understand.

TLDR; You should have been there

For example, when perhaps two of your friends have an inside joke without you, and you're curious as to what that inside joke means, and they tell you, "You had to be there" (meaning, you had to be around them at the time when the inside joke took place to truly understand it).

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