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The New York Times has a short profile on the “Charlie Bit My Finger” family today. Did you know that video has more than 417 million views? That is so many views! It is the “most successful noncommercial video in YouTube history”! The article does the normal things that articles like this do: it gives completely unsatisfyingly vague information on how much money the family has made from the video, it talks about child exploitation, and features plenty of quotes from the boys’ father about how hard he is trying to stay on the morally right side of that fuzzy line. It sounds like he’s doing OK. Sort of. Like, he explains that he only started making “Charlie Bit My Finger” t-shirts after he saw lots of other people selling them, which makes a lot of sense. Seriously. Why should other people with dubious intentions and/or affiliations be profiting from your children? At the very least you can either use that money to “pay for their education” (an old warhorse explanation for this stuff) or you can donate it to charity, but certainly it’s better. I was listening to an interview with Brad Pitt recently and he was talking about selling the baby photos of Shiloh to People magazine for millions of dollars (all of which he and Angelina Jolie donated to charity) and he was explaining that someone was going to get paid millions of dollars for them, so he’d rather they could control what happened with the money and use it towards a good cause rather than it just ending up in the pocket of some stupid paparazzo and I agree! (See also: this week’s news about Jay-Z and Beyonce trademarking “Blue Ivy.”) Although, the article also talks about how the dad is still posting videos of the boys on-line, and he never really explains why. It’s fine, lots of people post videos of their children. Except you can’t really complain about all the untoward attention and how hard it is to keep your children safe from the negativity of that experience in one breath, and then keep posting videos of them every five minutes when you know that there are millions of people ready to watch them? It’s a little odd. But whatever. Good luck raising your family. Not my problem.
This, though, is definitely my favorite part of the article:
The family gets recognized in random places — on the subway in London; in the house, by the washing-machine repairman. Last month, “Charlie Bit My Finger” was mentioned on “30 Rock.” Web-savvy children around the world apparently quote from the video when they get hurt, or want to express mock indignation. There are fan sites, Facebook pages and endless parody videos. A lady in New York volunteered to be the boys’ honorary aunt. Their dentist recently revealed that an acquaintance had named his son Charlie, as an homage.
“Their dentist recently revealed that an acquaintance had named his son Charlie, as an homage”????? Uh, time to get a new dentist. Something’s wrong with your dentist. For one thing, your dentist has shitty acquaintances. For another thing, your dentist apparently doesn’t know when a story crosses deeply into weird-out creepazoid territory. He might be sociopathic? Have you ever experienced empathy from your dentist? But actually that’s not even my favorite part. Nor is the washing-machine repairman, although he’s up there. No, my favorite part is WHAT THE FUCK IS AN HONORARY AUNT? You guys ever heard of an HONORARY AUNT before? Maybe that’s a totally normal thing and I’M the crazy one. Lock me up. Throw away the key. I might hurt myself or others. Because the fuck is that? Haha. CHARLIE BIT MY HONORARY AUNT! Ding dong the Internet. (Thanks for the tip, Lizz.)
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Now son let Charlie bite your finger again for the nice couple
But papa it’s bleeding and it hurts
It’s the price of fame son
Isn’t that what this community is? Just a group of honorary aunts, looking out for each other?
I would like to think I’m an honorary uncle, unless someone isn’t telling me something
It Takes A Village (of honorary aunts)
“Old Auntingswothtownshire. Yes, I know it well. Many a great lass harkens from those parts. All of them spinsters. So sad. Was just called Swothingtownshire until the Internet was deregulated for public use. Damn Yanks. Well, time to sell my fish fingers and custard before my shift as a chimney sweep begins. Tidy-ho!”
In England, and honorary aunt is called a Laurie.
So that’s his plan, post-House?
We few, we happy few, we band of honorary aunts.
I didn’t start selling stickers of Calvin peeing on my children until I saw other people making doing it and making a profit.
Your plan and your “likeness rights” killed my retirement, Facetaco.
Ouch Charlie
I could live to be a million years old and still not understand this video’s popularity.
Really, huckabeast? A million years? Come on.
? Half of the views came from Videogum links.
This has become a pretty big part of Charlie’s life. I’m a little worried about his dating years.
One day in the not too distant future, there’s going to be a freshman class in college and during the awkward introductions where you have to go around saying something interesting about yourself, there’s going to be a kid named Charlie and he’s going to say “I bit my brother’s finger.”
And all the other young adults are going to be jealous.
He’s British so they call it university
He’s British and young, so he just calls it Uni.
He’ll never make it to University. The fame will cause him to spiral into drugs and he will sever all family ties. With no one left to turn to, he’ll knock on his honorary aunts door asking for help. She’ll say, “I’m sorry, Charlie, but I’ve moved on. I’m Ray William Johnson’s honorary aunt now.”
The only thing I learned from this is that this family apparently does not own a Maytag. #sponsoredcomment
Not necessarily. With nothing else to do, the Maytag repairman finally found a hobby as a nazi hunter, only instead of nazis, he’s hunting down viral video stars.
you watched the PBS show on Nazi hunters last night too?
Haha, PBS? No way, that’s total nerdsville!
More Classic Internet!
What goes up must come down, and once Charlie’s popularity wains and he becomes a troubled adult full of dashed hopes and broken dreams, don’t be surprised if he gets stuck in a downward spiral of drugs and debauchery, and then a new video will spark a new scandal, and that new video will be called “Charlie Bit My Dick.”
That’s a long way to go for a It’s Always Sunny In Philadelphia reference, but I did it for me.