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The Breakfast Question

Added about a year ago / Updated 9 months ago
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Part of a series on 4chan. [View Related Entries]

Related Explainer: What Is 'The Breakfast Question?' How Should You Answer This Viral Conditional?

>MFW I DIDN'T EAT BREAKFAST THIS MORNING Ост
rotating a photorealistic apple in my mind. while hearing my own voice narrate how i'd feel if i didn't have breakfast this morning 31- is
Chudlock Holmes @IWillNameThem "How would you feel if the West hadn't fallen?" "But the West has fallen." "How would you feel if it we were back?" "But we're not back. It's over. I don't understand the question." "What if something happened?" "Why are you saying that things happen? Nothing ever happens." 10:45 PM. Mar 2, 2023 8,680 Views ...
+ Cody Browning @codybpresente "I will ask you again; how would you have felt if you hadn't eaten breakfast yesterday?" "Drop it, Scully. This is pointless." FBI 12:01 PM . Jan 31, 2023 69.5K Views ...
Fugue @fugenvogel "KB how would you have felt if you didn't have breakfast this morning?" "Well it's not a simple question. First you'd have to define "breakfast". And "morning"? Stop being frivolous." 66 99 : "I had 3 meals before lunch. And I'm still hungry, does that answer your question?" 5:16 PM Jan 29, 2023 4,985 Views Philosophy Western
Dr. hbd nrx @HbdNrx POV: You had breakfast this morning 9 MBA, MS, PhD, Esq. 3:01 AM Jan 29, 2023 48.5K Views . ...
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About • Origin • Spread • Various Examples • Search Interest • External References • Recent Images • Recent Videos

About

The Breakfast Question or How Would You Have Felt If You Hadn't Eaten Breakfast? is a bait question and a counterfactual conditional that references a 4chan story of a grad student who allegedly performed IQ research on convicts at San Quentin State Prison. During the research, individuals with low IQ struggled to simulate the hypothetical situation in their minds, instead answering that they did have breakfast. Online, the question has been used in internet arguments as a conspicuous way to indicate that one's opponent is unintelligent, while the posts have often been referenced in memes.

Origin

On June 15th, 2021, an anonymous 4chan user posted a screenshot of an email purportedly sent by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot in which she repeated single sentences several times to emphasize her points.[1] The post ignited a /pol/ debate about intelligence, with one anonymous user claiming to have been a graduate student sharing a story of a time they were part of an IQ research group and performed experiments on convicts at San Quentin State Prison. In a series of five posts,[2][3][4][5][6] the user shared stories of individuals with IQ levels below 90 and 80 failing to perform mental tasks involving hypotheticals, recursion and passage of time (posts shown below, click to enlarge). The first post (shown below, top left) submitted by the user described individuals with IQ levels below 90 being unable to imagine how a hypothetical situation involving them not having breakfast and lunch yesterday would have affected them, instead responding that they had breakfast that day.

▬ Anonymous ID: Dd8 Hnh0L Tue 15 Jun 2021 21:17:33 No.326113029 Quoted By: >>326113606 >>326126835 >>326129457 >>326133307 >>326136325 >>326143940 >>326108368 NP. I did IQ research as a grad student, and it involved a lot of this stuff. Did you know that most people (95%+) with less than 90 IQ can't understand conditional hypotheticals? For example: >How would you have felt yesterday evening if you hadn't eaten breakfast or lunch? >What do you mean? I did eat breakfast and lunch. >Yes, but if you had not, how would you have felt? >Why are you saying that I didn't eat breakfast? I just told you that I did. >Imagine that you hadn't eaten it, though. How would you have felt? >I don't understand the question. it's really fascinating. We did research on convicts in San Quentin. They're absolute f------ retards, at least 50% illiterate. If every single incarcerated person was summarily executed tomorrow, I think America would be debt-free within 5 years. That's how much damage these people do to the economy. They must cost the taxpayers millions, perhaps tens of millions over the course of their evil lives.
my kategHT Anonymous ID:Dd8Hnh0L Tue 15 Jun 2021 21:22:51 No.326113606 Quoted By: >>326114047 >>326114271 >>326116404 >>326133080 >>326113029 >>326108368 Report Other interesting phenomenon around IQ involves recursion. For example: >Write a story with two named characters, each of whom have at least one line of dialogue. Most literate people can manage this, specially once you give them an example. >Write a story with two named characters, each of whom have at least one line of dialogue. In this story, one of the characters must be describing a story with at least two named characters, each of whom have at least one line of dialogue. If you have less than 90 IQ, this second exercise is basically completely impossible. Add a third level ('frame') to the story, and even IQ 100's start to get mixed up with the names and who's talking. Turns out Scheherazade was an IQ test!
Anonymous ID:Dd8Hnh0L Tue 15 Jun 2021 21:35:51 No.326115041 Quoted By: >>326115378 >>326131278 Report >>326114271 We never did that, but time is practically impossible to understand for sub 80's. They exist only in the present, can barely reflect on the past and can't plan for the future at all. Sub 90's struggle with anachronism too. For example, I remember the 80-85's stumbling on logic problems that involved common sense anachronism stuff. For instance: >Why do you think that military strategists in WWII didn't use laptop computers to help develop their strategies? >I guess they didn't want to get hacked by nazis? Admittedly you could argue that this is a history knowledge question, not quite a logic sequencing question, but you get the idea. Sequencing is super hard for them to track, but most 100+ have no problem with it, although I imagine that a movie like Memento strains them a little. Recursion was definitely the killer, though. Recursive thinking and recursive knowledge seems genuinely hard for people of even average intelligence (although at San Quentin there weren't too many of those!)
Anonymous ID:Dd8Hnh0L Tue 15 Jun 2021 22:05:51 No.326118207 Quoted By: >>326122636 >>326127674 >>326129225 >>326133726 >>326117577 Report Thanks. On the last point, it's the main reason why so many people with sub-90 IQ are sociopathic or psychopathic. They don't have the mental computing power to model other people's thoughts and feelings. I've seen it millions of times with convicts. >How do you think that man felt when you beat him? >Dunno. >How do you think that boy's mother felt when she heard that her son was dead? >Dunno. It comes across as psychopathic, but these people literally don't have the brainpower to build even a crude model of someone else's mind, let alone populate it with events that are in the past. Stupid people should be sterilized and gassed, and the worst thing that can possibly happen to your civilization is a drop of average IQ scores. It's absolutely lethal.

The question fits the definition of a counterfactual conditional.[13]

Spread

On June 26th, 2021, a dedicated thread[7] about the story was then created in /pol/ to discuss details of it further.

On July 19th, 2021, and January 16th, 2022, an unknown Redditor and another with the username Ant1pal posted screenshots of the posts in the /r/4chan[8] and /r/greentext [9] subreddits, where they gained over 1,700 upvotes and 28,900 upvotes, respectively, in roughly a year.

The posts have also been referenced in memes since at least early January 2022. On January 10th, 2023, Twitter[10] user @EndingBigly posted a Freedom of Speech meme that gained over 270 retweets and 3,200 likes in three weeks (shown below, left). On January 21st, Twitter[11] user @catholicspaceem posted a George Floyd meme that accumulated over 110 retweets and 1,200 likes in two weeks (shown below, right).

#1 BEST SELLER Ending Bigly, Eh? @EndingBigly "But I did have breakfast this morning." gros 4:17 PM Jan 10, 2023 102.2K Views DANIEL NANCE
Catholic Space Emperor @catholicspaceem "Ah, my good fellow, there you are wrong. You see, I _did_ eat breakfast this morning." 10:42 AM Jan 21, 2023 31.8K Views :

On January 24th, 2023, Twitter[12] user @thuleanrevenant posted a screenshot of a conversation between Twitter users @schiz0moder and @KalebWilliams00 in which the second user replies to the question "How would you have felt had you not eaten breakfast yesterday morning?" by stating that they did have breakfast, commenting, "The memes write themselves." The post gained over 530 retweets and 6,400 likes on Twitter in one week (shown below).

Astralnaut @thuleanrevenant The memes write themselves ashley @schizOmoder - 6h How would you have felt had you not eaten breakfast yesterday morning? Kaleb @KalebWilliams 00 6h Replying to @animeboobs420 White 2 Kaleb 22 1 1:57 AM 1/24/23 · 17.1K Views @KalebWilliams00 Replying to @schizOmoder Idk because I did eat breakfast 27 Likes 6 Retweets 17 Quotes 100 8:00 AM - Jan 24, 2023 650K Views 3,227 بار ↑ :

The post then triggered a surge in memes referencing the 4chan posts in late January 2023.

Various Examples

calla pichi ヤグアラ♡ @MasacoAtomico Today on mythbusters we find out: How you would feel if you didn't have breakfast this morning 12:54 PM Jan 25, 2023 3,643 Views ...
Fenton Wood @WoodFenton "Hypothetically, if you hadn't eaten breakfast this morning, how would you feel?” "Why are you saying I didn't eat breakfast? I already told you I did." 9:40 AM Jan 27, 2023 · 71.9K Views .
Chudlock Holmes @IWillNameThem "How would you feel if the West hadn't fallen?" "But the West has fallen." "How would you feel if it we were back?" "But we're not back. It's over. I don't understand the question." "What if something happened?" "Why are you saying that things happen? Nothing ever happens." 10:45 PM. Mar 2, 2023 8,680 Views ...
el pulpo i have killed 17 guys so far btw @BullyBluechecks "now hold on, HOLD ON, in science we require proof of things, ok, and i can show you EXACTLY what I ate for breakfast this morning" XX una ܐܐܐܐܐܐܐ 6:35 PM Jan 29, 2023 136.7K Views
Prince Tevildo @GreatKingOfCats Man goes to see Great Pagliacci. Gets to concession stand, says "Robert, I love popcorn with a show, but don't feel hungry." Robert says "Solution is simple. Just imagine how you'd feel if you hadn't eaten breakfast this morning." Man burst into tears. "But Robert..." 1FX Popcor 3:20 PM. Jan 28, 2023 61.3K Views ROBERT ile-77
+ Cody Browning @codybpresente "I will ask you again; how would you have felt if you hadn't eaten breakfast yesterday?" "Drop it, Scully. This is pointless." FBI 12:01 PM . Jan 31, 2023 69.5K Views ...

Search Interest

External References

[1] 4plebs – /pol/ Thread #326096257

[2] 4plebs – /pol/ Post #326113029

[3] 4plebs – /pol/ Post #326113606

[4] 4plebs – /pol/ Post #326115041

[5] 4plebs – /pol/ Post #326118207

[6] 4plebs – /pol/ Post #326113029

[7] 4plebs – /pol/ Thread #327665089

[8] Reddit – Anon researches IQ

[9] Reddit – IQpills from a grad student

[10] Twitter – @EndingBigly

[11] Twitter – @catholicspaceem

[12] Twitter – @thuleanrevenant

[13] Wikipedia – Counterfactual conditional

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How Would You Have Felt If You Hadn't Eaten Breakfast greentext meme.

The Breakfast Question

Part of a series on 4chan. [View Related Entries]

Updated Feb 27, 2024 at 01:05PM EST by Don.

Added Feb 02, 2023 at 05:15AM EST by Philipp.

PROTIP: Press 'i' to view the image gallery, 'v' to view the video gallery, or 'r' to view a random entry.

Related Explainer: What Is 'The Breakfast Question?' How Should You Answer This Viral Conditional?

About

The Breakfast Question or How Would You Have Felt If You Hadn't Eaten Breakfast? is a bait question and a counterfactual conditional that references a 4chan story of a grad student who allegedly performed IQ research on convicts at San Quentin State Prison. During the research, individuals with low IQ struggled to simulate the hypothetical situation in their minds, instead answering that they did have breakfast. Online, the question has been used in internet arguments as a conspicuous way to indicate that one's opponent is unintelligent, while the posts have often been referenced in memes.

Origin

On June 15th, 2021, an anonymous 4chan user posted a screenshot of an email purportedly sent by Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot in which she repeated single sentences several times to emphasize her points.[1] The post ignited a /pol/ debate about intelligence, with one anonymous user claiming to have been a graduate student sharing a story of a time they were part of an IQ research group and performed experiments on convicts at San Quentin State Prison. In a series of five posts,[2][3][4][5][6] the user shared stories of individuals with IQ levels below 90 and 80 failing to perform mental tasks involving hypotheticals, recursion and passage of time (posts shown below, click to enlarge). The first post (shown below, top left) submitted by the user described individuals with IQ levels below 90 being unable to imagine how a hypothetical situation involving them not having breakfast and lunch yesterday would have affected them, instead responding that they had breakfast that day.


▬ Anonymous ID: Dd8 Hnh0L Tue 15 Jun 2021 21:17:33 No.326113029 Quoted By: >>326113606 >>326126835 >>326129457 >>326133307 >>326136325 >>326143940 >>326108368 NP. I did IQ research as a grad student, and it involved a lot of this stuff. Did you know that most people (95%+) with less than 90 IQ can't understand conditional hypotheticals? For example: >How would you have felt yesterday evening if you hadn't eaten breakfast or lunch? >What do you mean? I did eat breakfast and lunch. >Yes, but if you had not, how would you have felt? >Why are you saying that I didn't eat breakfast? I just told you that I did. >Imagine that you hadn't eaten it, though. How would you have felt? >I don't understand the question. it's really fascinating. We did research on convicts in San Quentin. They're absolute f------ retards, at least 50% illiterate. If every single incarcerated person was summarily executed tomorrow, I think America would be debt-free within 5 years. That's how much damage these people do to the economy. They must cost the taxpayers millions, perhaps tens of millions over the course of their evil lives. my kategHT Anonymous ID:Dd8Hnh0L Tue 15 Jun 2021 21:22:51 No.326113606 Quoted By: >>326114047 >>326114271 >>326116404 >>326133080 >>326113029 >>326108368 Report Other interesting phenomenon around IQ involves recursion. For example: >Write a story with two named characters, each of whom have at least one line of dialogue. Most literate people can manage this, specially once you give them an example. >Write a story with two named characters, each of whom have at least one line of dialogue. In this story, one of the characters must be describing a story with at least two named characters, each of whom have at least one line of dialogue. If you have less than 90 IQ, this second exercise is basically completely impossible. Add a third level ('frame') to the story, and even IQ 100's start to get mixed up with the names and who's talking. Turns out Scheherazade was an IQ test!
Anonymous ID:Dd8Hnh0L Tue 15 Jun 2021 21:35:51 No.326115041 Quoted By: >>326115378 >>326131278 Report >>326114271 We never did that, but time is practically impossible to understand for sub 80's. They exist only in the present, can barely reflect on the past and can't plan for the future at all. Sub 90's struggle with anachronism too. For example, I remember the 80-85's stumbling on logic problems that involved common sense anachronism stuff. For instance: >Why do you think that military strategists in WWII didn't use laptop computers to help develop their strategies? >I guess they didn't want to get hacked by nazis? Admittedly you could argue that this is a history knowledge question, not quite a logic sequencing question, but you get the idea. Sequencing is super hard for them to track, but most 100+ have no problem with it, although I imagine that a movie like Memento strains them a little. Recursion was definitely the killer, though. Recursive thinking and recursive knowledge seems genuinely hard for people of even average intelligence (although at San Quentin there weren't too many of those!) Anonymous ID:Dd8Hnh0L Tue 15 Jun 2021 22:05:51 No.326118207 Quoted By: >>326122636 >>326127674 >>326129225 >>326133726 >>326117577 Report Thanks. On the last point, it's the main reason why so many people with sub-90 IQ are sociopathic or psychopathic. They don't have the mental computing power to model other people's thoughts and feelings. I've seen it millions of times with convicts. >How do you think that man felt when you beat him? >Dunno. >How do you think that boy's mother felt when she heard that her son was dead? >Dunno. It comes across as psychopathic, but these people literally don't have the brainpower to build even a crude model of someone else's mind, let alone populate it with events that are in the past. Stupid people should be sterilized and gassed, and the worst thing that can possibly happen to your civilization is a drop of average IQ scores. It's absolutely lethal.

The question fits the definition of a counterfactual conditional.[13]

Spread

On June 26th, 2021, a dedicated thread[7] about the story was then created in /pol/ to discuss details of it further.

On July 19th, 2021, and January 16th, 2022, an unknown Redditor and another with the username Ant1pal posted screenshots of the posts in the /r/4chan[8] and /r/greentext [9] subreddits, where they gained over 1,700 upvotes and 28,900 upvotes, respectively, in roughly a year.

The posts have also been referenced in memes since at least early January 2022. On January 10th, 2023, Twitter[10] user @EndingBigly posted a Freedom of Speech meme that gained over 270 retweets and 3,200 likes in three weeks (shown below, left). On January 21st, Twitter[11] user @catholicspaceem posted a George Floyd meme that accumulated over 110 retweets and 1,200 likes in two weeks (shown below, right).


#1 BEST SELLER Ending Bigly, Eh? @EndingBigly "But I did have breakfast this morning." gros 4:17 PM Jan 10, 2023 102.2K Views DANIEL NANCE Catholic Space Emperor @catholicspaceem "Ah, my good fellow, there you are wrong. You see, I _did_ eat breakfast this morning." 10:42 AM Jan 21, 2023 31.8K Views :

On January 24th, 2023, Twitter[12] user @thuleanrevenant posted a screenshot of a conversation between Twitter users @schiz0moder and @KalebWilliams00 in which the second user replies to the question "How would you have felt had you not eaten breakfast yesterday morning?" by stating that they did have breakfast, commenting, "The memes write themselves." The post gained over 530 retweets and 6,400 likes on Twitter in one week (shown below).


Astralnaut @thuleanrevenant The memes write themselves ashley @schizOmoder - 6h How would you have felt had you not eaten breakfast yesterday morning? Kaleb @KalebWilliams 00 6h Replying to @animeboobs420 White 2 Kaleb 22 1 1:57 AM 1/24/23 · 17.1K Views @KalebWilliams00 Replying to @schizOmoder Idk because I did eat breakfast 27 Likes 6 Retweets 17 Quotes 100 8:00 AM - Jan 24, 2023 650K Views 3,227 بار ↑ :

The post then triggered a surge in memes referencing the 4chan posts in late January 2023.

Various Examples


calla pichi ヤグアラ♡ @MasacoAtomico Today on mythbusters we find out: How you would feel if you didn't have breakfast this morning 12:54 PM Jan 25, 2023 3,643 Views ... Fenton Wood @WoodFenton "Hypothetically, if you hadn't eaten breakfast this morning, how would you feel?” "Why are you saying I didn't eat breakfast? I already told you I did." 9:40 AM Jan 27, 2023 · 71.9K Views . Chudlock Holmes @IWillNameThem "How would you feel if the West hadn't fallen?" "But the West has fallen." "How would you feel if it we were back?" "But we're not back. It's over. I don't understand the question." "What if something happened?" "Why are you saying that things happen? Nothing ever happens." 10:45 PM. Mar 2, 2023 8,680 Views ...
el pulpo i have killed 17 guys so far btw @BullyBluechecks "now hold on, HOLD ON, in science we require proof of things, ok, and i can show you EXACTLY what I ate for breakfast this morning" XX una ܐܐܐܐܐܐܐ 6:35 PM Jan 29, 2023 136.7K Views Prince Tevildo @GreatKingOfCats Man goes to see Great Pagliacci. Gets to concession stand, says "Robert, I love popcorn with a show, but don't feel hungry." Robert says "Solution is simple. Just imagine how you'd feel if you hadn't eaten breakfast this morning." Man burst into tears. "But Robert..." 1FX Popcor 3:20 PM. Jan 28, 2023 61.3K Views ROBERT ile-77 + Cody Browning @codybpresente "I will ask you again; how would you have felt if you hadn't eaten breakfast yesterday?" "Drop it, Scully. This is pointless." FBI 12:01 PM . Jan 31, 2023 69.5K Views ...

Search Interest

External References

[1] 4plebs – /pol/ Thread #326096257

[2] 4plebs – /pol/ Post #326113029

[3] 4plebs – /pol/ Post #326113606

[4] 4plebs – /pol/ Post #326115041

[5] 4plebs – /pol/ Post #326118207

[6] 4plebs – /pol/ Post #326113029

[7] 4plebs – /pol/ Thread #327665089

[8] Reddit – Anon researches IQ

[9] Reddit – IQpills from a grad student

[10] Twitter – @EndingBigly

[11] Twitter – @catholicspaceem

[12] Twitter – @thuleanrevenant

[13] Wikipedia – Counterfactual conditional

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Ten Shadows
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Ten Shadows

in reply to MyScorpion42

It's always shit like this. Start out with something that sounds like it could make sense, sounds like it could convince me on things and give me some more insight in human condition… and then you rip the mask off and go completely bonkers, and now I feel like I'm either forced to blanket-disregard the entire thing or join you on an eugenics crusade.

Can't we all just remain rational?

Killing them won't solve anything anyway. It's snipping off the branches instead of going down to the root of the problem: more and more dumbasses will continue to show up until you dig out the sickness at the base. Put some more money on education instead.

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