Badger Badger Badger Video Officially Preserved by British Film Institute

by · Peta Pixel
Described as an ‘earworm,’ the Badger Song was the kind of low-budget, bizarre video that defined the early days of internet culture.

It’s an icon of early internet videos: 12 badgers doing calisthenics while a mushroom and snake occasionally appear on screen, known as “Badger Badger Badger” or “The Badger Song.”

The flash animation video that first went live on the website B3ta.com back in September 2003 has been officially preserved by the British Film Institute (BFI). Another early viral internet hit, ‘Charlie Bit My Finger’, has also been preserved as the BFI pushes to preserve internet lore.

In a video, the BFI explains that to preserve a video, it first must contact the creator and ask for the original file. “This is often the most challenging part of the workflow,” says Will Swinburne, the Digital Curatorial Archivist at the BFI National Archive. “Especially when the work might have been made almost 30 years ago; it might not even be available online anymore. People have to dig through old hard drives, they have to look in their old cupboards, on old laptops that might be defunct, to try and find what they uploaded to a website in 2001.”

But once the file is discovered and sent over, the BFI builds metadata for it and checks its technical specifications to decide on the best action for preservation. It’s then stored in the data storage solution, which Swinburne explains consists of “two robot-operated tape libraries.” A separate copy is kept 50 miles from the first site in case of a disaster.

The Internet Age Grows Up

In March, PetaPixel reported that the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia was preserving the famous ‘Democracy Manifest’ video, in which police apprehend a confused Jack Karlson while he was eating at a Chinese restaurant in Brisbane. Although the video was filmed in 1991, it was buried until 2009 when it was unearthed by an archivist who posted it to YouTube.

That bodies and organizations dedicated to preserving film history are now turning their attention to early internet memes says a lot about the impact the internet has had in its roughly 30-year history. In the age of TikTok and Instagram, the internet’s hold on people shows no sign of abating.

Institutions like the BFI were once better-known for finding the original recordings of early silent films for preservation. Now, it is asking the creator of Badger Badger Badger for the original file.

Image credits: BFI