Viral ‘Badger Badger Badger’ video officially added to BFI archives

If you grew up in the early 2000s, you may remember whiling away the hours after school watching and re-watching a video called ‘Badgers’.

Also known as ‘The Badger Song’ or ‘Badger Badger Badger’, the viral animation features 12 badgers bouncing to music featuring the profound lyrics, ‘A badger, badger, badger’, ‘Mush-mushroom,’ and ‘A snake, a snake snake, a snake, oh, it’s a snake.’

Now – in news that might make you feel old – the short film has officially been preserved by the British Film Institute (BFI).

Created by British animator Jonti Picking, better known as MrWeebl, the clip first appeared on the website B3ta.com back in September 2003.

It quickly became an online sensation, namely on YouTube. A version of the video posted to the platform by Picking’s account, Weebl’s Stuff, 17 years ago, has amassed more than 35million views.

Badgers isn’t the first viral video to be added to the BFI archives.

Charlie Bit My Finger, a 2007 video which at one point was YouTube’s most-watched, has also been added to the collection.

It comes as part of a push to see more mainstays of early internet culture given the recognition many argue they deserve.

In order to preserve the video, the BFI must first obtain the original video file from its creator, who must give the organisation permission to add it to the collection.

Will Swinburne, the BFI National Archive’s digital curatorial archivist, said this is ‘often the most challenging part’ of the process.

‘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.’

Once the file is found and sent to the BFI, the company checks its technical specifications and builds metadata for it to ensure it is preserved properly.

It is then stored in the data storage solution, which is made up of ‘two robot-operated tape libraries’, Swinburne said.

In case of a disaster destroying the clip – or, worse, wiping out the entire data library – a separate copy is kept 50 miles away to ensure the video lives on.

Other archives around the world are also doing their part to honour ageing internet culture. In March, the National Film and Sound Archive of Australia announced it was preserving the famous ‘Democracy Manifest’ video.

The clip shows the late Jack Karlson being apprehended by police while eating at a Chinese restaurant in Brisbane in 1991.

Karlson can be heard saying: ‘Gentlemen, this is democracy manifest,’ as he is dragged away. He then adds: ‘Why did you do this to me? For what reason? What is the charge? Eating a meal? A succulent Chinese meal?’

The video resurfaced in 2009 when it was posted to YouTube by an archivist, and quickly shot to fame.

Karlson died in 2024, just four years after identifying himself as the star of the video.