About

Deedee Megadoodoo is a mispronunciation of the name Deidre Mengedoht, a police officer who was killed in a car accident, by TV news anchor Brianna Clark in 2018. A video of Clark mispronouncing the name while reporting on the story went viral in early 2019, becoming a classic example of a news fail in the following years.

Origin

On Christmas Eve 2018, police officer Deidre "Dee Dee" Mengedoht, 32, was killed when a semi-truck crashed into her car. The funeral was announced by WSPD^[1] Local 6 News on December 28th, 2018.

On December 30th, Redditor u/dayman789 made a post to /r/videos^[6] titled "Deedee Megadoodoo" sharing a now-deleted video clip (shown below, reuploaded) of WSPD news anchor Brianna Clark reporting on the story of Mengedoht's death and funeral. In the video, Clark starts reporting on the story, mentions officer Mengedoht died, then hesitates as she arrives at the name, quickly mispronouncing it as "deedee megadoodoo." The recording cuts as she begins to apologize. The Reddit post gained over 33,900 upvotes in just over two years.

On December 31st, Mashable^[2] shared the same video in an article titled, "Painful local news fail happens at the worst possible time."

On the same day, Clark issued an apology for the mispronunciation on Twitter,^[3] writing, "What you don’t see in the video is my apology immediately after realizing what I said. I cannot say this enough: I sincerely apologize to everyone I have offended, especially the officer's family and friends. I did not mean to say what I said and I was able to correct myself …" (shown below). Inquisitr^[4] reported on her apology that day.

On January 1st, 2019, the video was reuploaded by YouTuber^[5] mrpeepeepopo, garnering over 35,000 views in two years. This is the earliest available upload of the video on the platform. On January 4th, 2019, YouTuber^[7] Count Dooku reuploaded the video, garnering over 1.2 million views in two years and becoming the most viewed upload of the video as of 2021.

Spread

The video was reuploaded to YouTube and shared across social media countless times over the course of the next two years, inspiring numerous remixes, reactions and posts referencing it.

On January 5th, YouTuber^[8] Jim and Them posted the first reaction to the video on the platform, garnering over 50,000 views in two years (shown below, left).

On January 9th, YouTuber^[9] Moist Turtleneck uploaded a video editing the footage to match the original underground song from the video game Super Mario Bros. (shown below, right).

The video also started to appear in fail and news blooper compilations that year. For example, on March 14th, YouTuber^[13] Michael Norris posted a compilation including the video, garnering over 4.3 million views in two years (shown below, left). Interestingly, the below compilation includes an HD version of the clip including Clark's apology at the end, which was isolated and shared by YouTuber^[14] Matt Elvys in 2020 (shown below, right).

On August 18th, 2019, Ebaum's World's Facebook^[11] page shared the video. On the same date, the video was shared to /r/cringe^[12] by Redditor u/Ayr98, garnering over 12,000 upvotes in just under two years.

On August 20th, 2019, YouTuber^[10] Ethan Klein of h3h3 Productions reacted to the video on the H3 Podcast, uploading the isolated clip to the H3 Podcast Highlights channel on August 22nd, garnering over 875,000 views in just under two years (shown below).

Various Examples

Search Interest

External References