Diabeetus Cat: How a Viral Meme Sparked a Health‑Awareness Trend

The Diabeetus Cat

All right, in trying to explain our title and what the diabeetus cat is, we have to go back to the origin of things. Ok, actually only the origin of the meme only.  As it turns out, the diabeetus cat is actually not an original meme in itself but a consequence of a larger one.

Diabeetus

Experts call the diabeetus an “exploitable soundbite” that comes from a piece of commercial. In this case, Liberty Medical decides to hire American actor Wilford Brimley to advertise how the medical insurance covers treatment for diabetes.

In the commercial, Wilford is explaining to viewers how their insurance covers all equipment for diabetics. During the infomercial, he keeps mispronouncing the word “diabetes” and keeps saying “diabeetus“.

The piece became a too good of an opportunity for the Internet to not exploit and that is how “diabeetus” was born.  But what about the diabeetus cat?  We’ll get to that.

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Spread of Diabeetus

Actor Wilford Brimley has been the voice of Liberty Medical since 1999. After the infomercial with Brimley became viral, it was quickly spread and edited.

One of the earliest remixes was created by Nathan Eldridge and uploaded on YouTube on January 24, 2006. It features pieces of Wilford repeatedly rapping the word “diabeetus“.

The image of Wilford is usually used as a meme along with the word “diabeetus”. Very often, these image macros pair diabeetus with other animals. In this case, we are interested in the diabeetus cat.

Diabeetus Cat

The Diabeetus cat is actually a derivative of diabeetus, the original meme. There is a video of this cat on YouTube that might resemble Wilford. At the end of the 5 seconds, this frowning cat seems to open his mouth, instant in which “diabeetus” is edited in.

Of course, memes with pictures of cats that supposedly look like Wilford showed up.  They all have one thing in common: diabeetus.

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