The UK has formally declared Badger Badger Badger worthy of preservation
This is either a triumph of digital preservation or compelling evidence that even the archivists have given up.
In a move that confirms the internet is no longer a youthful experiment but a fully historicized source of collective psychic damage, the British Film Institute has officially preserved Badger Badger Badger, the hypnotic early-web earworm featuring crudely animated mustelids, occasional mushrooms, and whatever passed for humor in our flash-animation era.
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.
This is either a triumph of digital preservation or compelling evidence that even the archivists have given up.