The Internet Is Remembering Brooke Eby — the Creator Who Used Humor to Talk About ALS

Brooke Eby built an audience by doing something difficult: talking about a devastating disease without allowing the disease to erase her personality.

The 37-year-old creator and ALS advocate died October 1, and tributes are now spreading from people who followed her videos and from public figures who interviewed her.

Eby’s online presence mixed humor, frustration, education and everyday life. That approach helped make ALS understandable to people who might never otherwise have encountered the realities of the disease.

The story is not viral because of a manufactured controversy. It is viral because a creator used the internet to make a frightening medical reality feel human and communal.