Brooke Eby, who after being diagnosed with amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, or A.L.S., at 33 brought her story to social media, using her dry wit and irrepressible charm to raise awareness and build connections among the hundreds of thousands of people who also struggle with the fatal disease, died on Thursday in Maryland. She was 37.
Her sister, Sarah Eby, said the cause was complications from A.L.S., also known as Lou Gehrig’s disease. She did not provide a specific location.
Through videos posted daily to TikTok, Instagram and other sites under the handle @LimpBroozkit, Ms. Eby (EE-bee) discussed the daily surprises, difficulties and moments of levity she encountered as her disease progressed, in the process amassing about half a million followers.
She incorporated social media tropes to get her message across — one of her first videos to go viral was a “GRWM,” or “get ready with me,” a style of post in which someone discusses hair, makeup or clothing while getting ready.
Except Ms. Eby, while casually applying makeup, says, “Let’s get ready while I tell you how I got a death sentence before my 30th birthday.”
Recruiting her friends and her parents as walk-ons, she posted about dating, decorating her wheelchair and picking out clothing as her disease steadily reduced her ability to get dressed herself.
The videos were about more than getting laughs and likes, she insisted, and said she gave about half of what she earned online to A.L.S. research.
“It’s not inherently fun to follow a disease story, especially these days when everyone is a content creator and you could spend all day scrolling through videos of dogs doing cute things and girls in pretty fashion outfits,” she told BrainHealth.com in 2025. “But maybe now when you hear about ALS, you picture me instead of just thinking about statistics.”
Ms. Eby was just 29 when she first noticed a tightness in her calf. She initially dismissed it as a result of a strenuous workout, but when it persisted, her sister, a doctor, encouraged her to see a doctor.
By the time she received her diagnosis, four years later, she was using a walker to get around New York City, where she lived at the time.
A.L.S. is a fatal degenerative disease that attacks a body’s ability to control muscle movement. While it can occur in anyone of any age, a person’s average age at diagnosis is around 50; it is rare for people under 40.
Her youth made Ms. Eby all the more eager to share her experience.
“I have ALS at a relatable age,” she wrote in a 2025 essay in People magazine. “I could be someone’s daughter, sister, mom, girlfriend, wife. I think people see me and it’s a little more real. It’s more like a shock to the system, and then they start caring more.”
At first, she said, she was depressed, and tried to hide her condition. At a wedding, she was so embarrassed by the sneakers she had to wear under her dress that she decided to leave. But a friend persuaded her to stay and make the most of it, and soon the whole party was dancing the limbo under her walker.
“The wedding taught me early on that everyone was a lot more comfortable with my situation when I was laughing, and that came back around to make me feel more comfortable too,” she wrote in People. “It was a welcome realization after a really grim period of uncomfortable interactions with my friends and family.”
In addition to her social media posts, Ms. Eby founded ALStogether, a community based on the Slack app that connects people with A.L.S. with caregivers, researchers and families.
“She had a capability for making people around her feel less alone,” said Sheri Strahl, the chief executive of the A.L.S. Network, which gave Ms. Eby its advocate of the year award in June. “Brooke took her own visibility and translated it into real community.”
One of her last projects was a collaboration with the clothing brand Silverts, in which she helped design outfits that accommodated the needs of people with A.L.S. and similar diseases.
In a video posted the day of her death, she presented some of her items.
“I finally get to show you the new adaptive pants from my B.E. Collection,” she said, using a text-to-voice system developed by ElevenLabs. “Or if you prefer my mom’s suggested opener for this video, ‘Exciting Bottoms.’”
Brooke Elizabeth Eby was born on Dec. 22, 1988, in Potomac, Md., where her father, Clifford, was an engineer and her mother, Eugenia (Eiselman) Eby, worked in politics.
After graduating from Lehigh University in 2010 with a degree in business information systems, she lived in New York and San Francisco, where she began working for Salesforce.
Along with her sister, she is survived by her parents and her brother, Chris.
She first noticed her calf tightness in San Francisco, but it was not until she moved back to New York that she began to worry.
“In New York, people will notice when you’re walking slow, and they’ll make sure you know about it,” she told BrainHealth.com.
She was still working for Salesforce, and as her condition evolved, the company helped her create an adapted working arrangement to accommodate her declining mobility, including flying her to work conferences on a company jet. She moved home with her parents in 2024.
Ms. Eby was struck by the wide variety of responses she received to her posts, though almost all of them were positive.
“One question I get asked often is, ‘Why do people grieve for people who die that they’ve never met?’” she told The New York Times in 2025. “And it’s because you’ve gotten to know this person, and you’ve developed familiarity with the hallmarks of human interaction, which are the face and the voice.”
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