About

You Become What You Feed Your Mind refers to a series of exploitable image macros based on an image captioned "You become what you feed your mind" showing two side-by-side anthropomorphized brains sitting in front of plates, the unhealthy left brain in front of a plate of poop labeled with words that have negative connotations and the healthy right brain in front of a plate of fruits and vegetables with positive labels on it. The meme was originally posted in mid-2020 and became the subject of ironic meme edits in the following months where users label things with perceived negative connotations under the healthy brain and positive ones under the unhealthy brain.

Origin

On July 9th, 2020, Instagram^[1] page @successpictures posted an infographic captioned "YOU BECOME WHAT YOU FEED YOUR MIND" showing two brains sitting side-by-side in front of plates. The left brain, which is a dark color with a long tongue, sits in front of a plate full of poop labeled, "drama, bad news, negativity." The right brain, which is pink and smiling, sits in front of a plate of fruits and vegetables labeled, "discipline, dreams, positivity." The meme gained over 50,700 likes in three years (shown below).

The earliest known edit of the image was posted by Instagram^[2] user Tony Zaret on July 19th, garnering over 40,000 likes in three years (shown below).

Spread

The image became an increasing subject of memes over the following years, also inspiring copycat images applying the same idea to new images, often by motivational pages.^[9][10] On March 13th, 2021, Instagram^[3] user herrfloppa posted a Big Floppa version of the meme, garnering over 5,700 likes in two years (shown below, left). On May 12th, 2022, the basedarchives Instagram^[4] page uploaded a version of the meme replacing the words on each plate, garnering over 4,700 likes in 10 months (shown below, right).

On February 5th, 2023, iFunny^[5] user minnesotistan uploaded a version of the meme that gained over 12,000 smiles in a month. On February 13th, Instagram^[6] user daddy_chungles posted a version replacing the plates, garnering over 141,000 likes in a month (shown below). It was reposted by Instagram^[7] user yourlordandsaviorlesionjesus on February 28th, garnering over 20,000 likes, and by Twitter^[8] user @ShitpostGate on March 28th, garnering over 79,000 likes and 7,600 retweets in a day.

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References