Beetlejuicing

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About

Beetlejuicing is a commenting phenomenon observed on the social news site Reddit when a user replies to a post or comment whose username is contextually relevant to the topic of discussion at hand, especially when it occurs by coincidence and the commenter is unaware of the connection being made.

Origin

On April 4th, 2010, Urban Dictionary^[1] user tankedgirl submitted an entry for "beetlejuiced," defining it as a phenomenon that occurs when a person appears after they have been mentioned several times in conversation. The earliest known use of the term "beetlejuicing" in the context of a discussion thread conversation was posted in the /r/AskReddit^[4] subreddit on January 13th, 2013. In the thread, Redditor bigfrank84 replied to a comment containing the name "Big Frank," to which Redditor tynosaur responded "One of the best instances of Beetlejuicing I've ever seen" (shown below).

Etymology

The term is derived from the 1988 American horror comedy film Beetlejuice in a scene where the titular ghost explains to the protagonist character Lydia Deetz that she can summon him anytime by repeating his name three times (shown below).

Betelgeuse: I can't help you from this side, but here's how we do it. So simple. Say my name three times. That's all. I'll be all yours. Then I'll bring you over here in style.

Spread

The same day, the subreddit /r/beetlejuicing^[2] was launched for examples of comments threads in which a user replied to their handle being used. On June 28th, 2013, Redditor CaterpillarPromise submitted a screenshot of a beetlejuicing example to /r/TreesSuckingAtThings^[5] (shown below).

On September 3rd, 2015, Redditor ShankingTonberry recommended /r/beetlejuicing in a post on the /r/JustUnsubbed^[6] subreddit. On December 8th, Redditor BruceXavier submitted a post titled "Why is /r/beetlejuicing called that?" to the /r/OutOfTheLoop^[3] subreddit, to which Redditor cathalmc cited the 1988 film Beetlejuice as the origin of the name.