About
“You Are Now Breathing Manually” is an expression meant to cause the reader to experience a sense of self awareness regarding the involuntary action of breathing. It is often used interchangeably with other suggestive statements which are meant to trigger specific thoughts in the mind of the reader, in a similar vein to “read this in my voice” suggesstions.
Origin
On February the 14th 2001, Everything2[1] user phenylketonurics submitted a post titled “Blinking and Breathing,” in which he lamented being conscious of involuntary bodily functions.
Try to think about blinking and breathing. Come on, do it. Seriously, don’t just read this, but actually do what it says. No, Really. Think about it. Think about blinking and breathing. Welcome to my hell. Now you’re totally fucking screwed, because now that you’re thinking about this crap you have just taken the reigns of your involuntary bodily functions.
The earliest known mention of this type of of suggesstion used as trolling tactic was posted by Slashdot user ThinkAboutYourBreath[2] on February 1st, 2004:
Hello, and THINKABOUTYOURBREATHING. Yes that’s right, THINKABOUTYOURBREATHING. Why you might ask? Well it’s simple! Your brain usually takes care of breathing FOR you, but whenever you remember this, YOUMUSTMANUALLYBREATH! If you don’t you will DIE.
Spread
On January 3rd, 2005, the mind game was posted in a thread titled “You Are Now Breathing Manually” on the Xgenstudios[3] Forums. On January 13th, 2008, a “self consciousness thread” was started on the imageboard 4chan,[4] in which many users left various mental suggestions, including “you are now aware of your tongue” and “you are now manually breathing.”
On December 8th, 2009, a Facebook[5] page titled “You Are Now Breathing Manually” was launched. On July 28th, 2011, BuzzFeed[8] published a list titled “15 Ways To Really Annoy Someone,” which included mental suggestions for breathing and blinking manually. On December 7th, Redditor Cordl3ssPen submitted an animated reaction GIF titled “My friends reaction when I said ‘You are now breathing manually’” to the /r/trees[6] subreddit (shown below, left). On April 26th, 2012, Redditor Gamer_Stix submitted a animated GIF of the cartoon character Spongebob Squarepants rapidly breathing titled “When I realize I am manually breathing” to the /r/gifs[7] subreddit (shown below, right).
On February 26th, 2013, NeoSeeker Forums[9] member Benedict started a thread titled “You are now breathing and blinking manually.” On June 17th, a similar thread was posted by Body Building Forums[10] member skarms.
Search Interest
External References
[1]Everything2 – Blinking and Breathing
[2]Slashdot – Hello and Think about your Breathing
[3]Xgenstudios – *YOU ARENOWBREATHINGMANUALLY*
[4]Wayback Machine – self consciousness thread…
[5]Facebook – You Are Now Breathing Manually
[6]Reddit – My friends reaction
[7]Reddit – When I realize I am rapidly breathing
[8]BuzzFeed – 15 Ways to Really Annoy Someone
[9]NeoSeeker – You are now breathing and blinking manually
[10]BodyBuilding – You are now breathing manually