Meaning
What does Wilford Brimley Diabeetus mean?
Wilford Brimley Diabeetus refers to the Liberty Medical advertisements, where Wilford Brimley is brining attention to diabetes, pronouncing the word with a southern accent on multiple occasion as “diabeetus”.
The advertisements became a popular meme online, appearing in parody remixes and image macros.
Origin
What's the origin of Wilford Brimley Diabeetus?
Wilford Brimley signed to Liberty Medical as a spokesperson in 1987.
Since that year, the actor had appeared in numerous infomercials for the company, where he would give viewers their daily dose of the special “Wilford Brimley Diabeetus”.
The first time Brimley would be parodied can be connected to the 2005 animation Stewie Griffin: The Untold Story.
Spread & Usage
How did Wilford Brimley Diabeetus spread?
Musical remixes of Liberty Medical infomercials started appearing on YouTube on January 24th, 2006, when Nathan Eldridge uploaded the first remix to the video sharing platform.
“Wilford Brimley Diabeetus” would also appear on YTMND sites as well, in 2006.
Image macros started emerging online in 2008, initially on 4chan, later spreading to sites like Reddit, 9GAG and Facebook.