# Diabeetus Diabeetus is a soundbite meme built around actor Wilford Brimley's southern drawl mispronunciation of "diabetes" in Liberty Medical infomercials that aired from 1987 onward. The clip fueled YouTube music remixes, YTMND pages, and 4chan image macros of Brimley's mustachioed face throughout the mid-2000s. ## Overview Diabeetus is an exploitable soundbite pulled from Liberty Medical television infomercials in which actor Wilford Brimley pronounces "diabetes" with a heavy southern drawl that lands closer to "dia-beetus"[3]. The clip powers music remixes, YTMND loops, and image macros that pair Brimley's mustachioed face with the misspelled caption[3]. The joke works because the delivery is so earnest. Brimley reads a straight pitch for testing supplies and the odd vowel turns a serious medical word into something goofy[2]. That gap between the deadpan spokesman and the mangled pronunciation is the whole meme, and it is why every remix leans on the audio rather than reworking the visual[3]. ## How It Spread On January 24th, 2006, YouTuber Nathan Eldridge uploaded "The Beetis," a musical remix of a Brimley Liberty Medical ad that pulled in more than 1.9 million views over the next decade and a half[3]. Eldridge followed it on April 5th, 2006 with "Wilford Brimley's Beetix Extravaganza," which cleared 382,000 views on the same channel[3]. On July 30th, 2006, a YTMND page swapped the word "Amadeus" for "Diabeetus" over Falco's "Rock Me Amadeus" and racked up more than 35,000 views, kicking off a wave of copycat YTMND sites[3]. Image macros of Brimley captioned "diabeetus" started showing up on 4chan by April 23rd, 2008, with one of the earliest known variants posted anonymously on the site[2]. By the 2010s the word had leaked into everyday slang. Urban Dictionary entries described it as an unofficial spelling of diabetes propped up by the Brimley ads, flagged as jokey but risky to use around people actually living with the disease[2]. ## Frequently Asked Questions ### What is Diabeetus? It is a soundbite meme based on Wilford Brimley's drawled pronunciation of "diabetes" in Liberty Medical television commercials, remixed into songs, YTMND pages, and image macros[3]. ### Where did Diabeetus come from? Brimley began fronting Liberty Medical ads in 1987, and the pronunciation broke into meme territory after a September 27th, 2005 Family Guy parody in Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story[3]. ### What does Diabeetus mean? It is a jokey misspelling of diabetes that mimics Brimley's southern accent, treated by Urban Dictionary as slang popularized by the Liberty Medical ads[2]. ### How do you use Diabeetus? People typically drop the soundbite into remix videos, caption Brimley reaction images with "diabeetus," or use the word as a humorous stand-in for diabetes in conversation[2]. ### Is Diabeetus still popular? It is a classic 2000s soundbite whose big traffic came from mid-2000s YouTube and YTMND uploads, with Eldridge's "The Beetis" alone passing 1.9 million views over roughly 16 years[3]. ## References 1. [https://www.nytimes.com/1987/07/07/business/advertising-oatmeal-battle-heats-up.html]() 2. [https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Diabeetus]() 3. [https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/diabeetus]() 4. [https://ytmnd.com/]() 5. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YXQaMaBxwRg]() --- Source: https://meme.com/memes/diabeetus Published by meme.com — The Internet Meme Library