Bear Grylls / Better Drink My Own Piss

About

Bear Grylls, also known as “Better Drink My Own Piss”, is an image macro series featuring a picture of Edward “Bear” Grylls, the host of UK’s wildlife survival series Born Survivor, also known as Man vs. Wild in the US, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. The original image macros used text to poke fun at all sorts of ridiculous and oftentimes unnecessary tasks that Mr. Grylls will put himself up to in order to “survive” in nature, but eventually focused on the consumption of his own urine.

Origin

Bear Grylls is a British writer slash adventurer most well known for his best-selling expedition memoirs and the host of several wildlife adventure TV shows, including Born Survivor (aka Man vs. Wild) on UK’s Channel 4. Each episode of the series is centered around Grylls’ challenge against mother nature as he lives his life in “survival mode,” from waterfall climbing and running through forest fires to wrestling alligators and eating snakes. Since the on-air debut of Man vs. Wild in 2006, the series has grown into an internationally distributed cable show with over 1.2 billion viewers. According to the show’s wikipedia entry:

The show has featured stunts including Grylls climbing cliffs, parachuting from helicopters, balloons, and planes, paragliding, ice climbing, running through a forest fire, wading rapids, eating snakes, wrapping his urine-soaked t-shirt around his head to help stave off the desert heat, drinking urine saved in a rattlesnake skin, drinking fecal liquid from elephant dung, wrestling alligators, field dressing a camel carcass and drinking water from it, eating various “creepy crawlies” [insects], utilizing the corpse of a sheep as a sleeping bag and flotation device, free climbing waterfalls and using a bird guano/water enema for hydration.^[1]

One of the most popular themes of “Bear Grylls” employs imagery of drinking one’s own piss, in reference to Grylls’ somewhat excessive demonstration of drinking his own urine to prevent dehydration in Episode 13: Kimberley, Australia:

The “sun is going down, better drink my own piss” image macro was posted to Reddit on September 7, 2010.^[2]

Spread

On MemeGenerator^[3], the macro series started to grow in numbers throughout September and October of 2010. The series was soon picked up by the blogosphere and forums including Buzzfeed^[4], Reddit^[5] and Tumblr.^[6]

Bear Grylls Reaction

On May 17th, 2011, Bear Grylls tweeted a response to @replies about drinking his own piss, and included a picture of himself drinking from a tea cup.^[7] The tweet was posted to Reddit shortly after, and hit the front page receiving over 2000 upvotes.^[8] Shortly after a Bear Grylls “ask me anything” (AMA) request was posted to Reddit^[9], and the story was posted to Mashable.^[10]

Bear Grylls’ AMA Thread

Several months after the Reddit request was made, Bear Grylls started an AMA thread on September 13, 2011.^[11] He answered the questions via YouTube videos, which were collected on the DegreeMen channel.^[12] User bonds7 asked him how he felt about being an iconic internet personality^[13] and he responded with a reference to drinking his own pee:

Notable Examples

Template

Search Interest

External Links