The “Charlie Bit My Finger” video is set to be taken off YouTube, so watch it as much as you need to get your fill before that link up top becomes a blank box.
The reason for this internet scrubbing? The family behind the footage sold it as an NFT for more than $760,000. Let the record show it had more than 883 million views between the time it was put up in 2007 to the time it will be taken offline.
In the clip, which runs 56 seconds, Charlie Davies-Carr (see: the Charlie behind the finger biting) clamps his teeth down on the finger of his brother, Harry. Harry then tells his brother it hurts while crying “Ow, Charlie! Ow! Charlie!” in a British accent. Charlie laughs about it, and Harry adds “Charlie bit me. And that really hurt, Charlie, and it’s still hurting. That really hurt!”
The Davies-Carrs family auctioned the clip on Sunday night, as CBS writes that an anonymous account going by “3fmusic” won out in an intense bidding war that drove the final price to $760,999. Note that “3fmusic” seems to be amassing some sort of collection, as they also own the “Disaster Girl” meme (spending almost $500,000 to obtain it last month) and the “Overly Attached Girlfriend” meme (also purchased for $411,000 in April).
A previous statement from “3fmusic” claimed it as a Dubai-based music company, telling the New York Times: “Our management team is always in cooperation with some highly knowledgeable and experienced art advisers who believe that we must grow with technological movements that help us to not only promote our business but also to support artists and the art market.” The “Charlie Bit My Finger” clip can still be downloaded and watched, but the winner holds the original’s rights. The auction says the original video (again, up top) is “soon to be deleted.”
The auction site also writes that the NFT buyer, now identified as “3fmusic,” has “the opportunity to create their own parody of the video featuring the original stars, Harry and Charlie.” Those two babies are now teens. In speaking about what the money means to the family, Davies-Carr patriarch Howard told CBS News, “It means that Harry goes to university and has a nice place to stay and doesn’t have to have a bar job.”
Charlie added to that, saying, “Education takes priority.”
This all comes in addition to a 2010 report that said the family got enough dough from the clip to get a new house. The bar for other babies has been set really high.
