Brooke Eby didn’t want a pity party. She wanted people to hear the word ALS and actually know what it means. The TikTok star, who built a huge following by cracking jokes about a disease that was slowly taking her body apart, died at 37 from complications of ALS. The ALS Network announced her death on Thursday, Oct. 1.
Eby was living in New York City when she got the news that changed everything. She was 33, back in March 2022, and she’d spent years bouncing between doctors who couldn’t figure out what was wrong. Her left foot had stopped pushing off right when she walked. She was 29 then. Tests came back with guesses. None of them were right. Finally, the answer was ALS, also called Lou Gehrig’s disease. It’s a condition that kills nerve cells and takes away movement, speech, breathing, the works.
Most folks might crawl into a hole after a diagnosis like that. Eby crawled into bed with a giant bag of M&M’s. That was her first move. Then she picked up her phone and started posting. She called herself “Limpbroozkit” online. Her videos weren’t sad. They were funny. She joked about wheelchairs, about dating, about strangers who said dumb things. She talked about leg braces and canes and walkers. She showed the world what it looks like when your body quits on you, but your sense of humor doesn’t.
“Levity is my superpower,” she told TODAY back in 2023. “It’s really how I’m bringing my story to the world. I’m trying to use humor and really let ALS be heard.” That was her whole thing. She made people laugh so they’d stick around long enough to learn something. And it worked. Hundreds of thousands of followers came for the jokes. They stayed for the truth about a disease most people don’t want to think about.
Eby didn’t stop at making videos. She pushed scientists and politicians and donors to move faster. She had a line she used a lot. She told them to “operate at the speed of ALS.” Her point was simple. People with this disease don’t have time to wait around for research that moves at a snail’s pace. She also started ALStogether, an online community where people with ALS and their caregivers could connect. The ALS Network began folding that community into its own operation in 2026. In June of that same year, the group gave Eby its Dean and Kathleen Rasmussen Advocate of the Year Award. “I didn’t choose ALS, but I did choose to get loud, and be irreverent about it,” she said when she found out she was getting the award.
She even got into fashion. Eby worked with an adaptive clothing company called Silverts to create the B.E. Collection. The idea was to make clothes for younger people with disabilities. A lot of adaptive clothing out there looks like it belongs in a hospital or a nursing home. Eby wanted something better. Part of the money from that collection went to Team Gleason, a group that helps people living with ALS.
Eby spent about ten years working in tech at Salesforce. Marc Benioff, the CEO there, spoke up after she died. He called her an “amazing warrior” and talked about her attitude. She was born Dec. 22, 1988, and grew up in Maryland. She moved to New York later and built her career there. One story she told a lot was about a friend’s wedding. She showed up with a walker that looked just like the one the bride’s grandmother used. She felt embarrassed at first. Then she and the wedding party just went with it. They made the walker part of the party. That moment stuck with her. It proved that humor can bust through the awkwardness and get people talking about disability and death without running away.
She never wanted to be just an inspiration. She said that over and over. Her “North Star,” as she put it on the Brain & Life podcast, was “giving a face to ALS.” She wanted people to see the disease, not just her. She wanted them to support research and understand what it does to families. The ALS Network said her legacy isn’t about follower counts or video views. It’s about the community she built and the conversations she started. Eby died from complications of ALS. She was 37.
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