Charlie Bit My Finger

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About

Charlie Bit Me, also known as "Charlie bit my finger", is a homemade movie of a playful interaction between two British brothers that ends with an adorable quote by the three-year-old Harry, who goes on to say "Charlie bit me. And that really hurt" after getting his finger bitten by his one-year-old toddler brother on camera. Upon entering online circulation in May 2007, the video quickly went viral spawned a large collection of remix and parody videos on YouTube.

Origin

On May 22nd, 2007, British IT sales consultant Howard Davies-Carr uploaded a homemade movie of his two boys playing around on a chair to his YouTube channel. Filmed on March 19th, 2007 and titled "Charlie bit my finger – again," the minute-long video shows Harry putting his finger into Charlie's mouth several times, and getting bitten each time, though not long before Harry yells out "ouch" and complains about it to his father behind camera.

While Howard originally intended to share the video with the boys' relatives living in the United States via email, he ultimately decided to share it in private on YouTube, because the file size was too big for email attachment. As the video made the rounds within his personal network, Davies-Carr switched the viewability of the video to public for the sake of convenience.

Spread

In the following months, the video remained largely undiscovered until early November, when a string of re-enactment parodies began surfacing on YouTube. On November 22nd, the video was featured on CollegeHumor, ^[1] giving a major boost in mass exposure of the video.

Between November and December 2007, the video quickly reached the milestone of one million views. By early February 2008, the video had amassed 2.6 milion views on YouTube, which subsequently multiplied nearly five times to 12 millions in March. In December 2008, Howard's video was the twelfth most viewed video on YouTube with 65 million views. By April 2009, the video had garnered 92 million views, and the number had increased to more than 130 million views in November. As of May 22nd, 2017, the video has accrued over 849 million views on YouTube, making it the fourth most viewed video in non-music category.

Records

In October 2009, after racking up hundreds of million views between 2008 and 2009, the video officially became the most viewed video in YouTube history by surpassing the previous record-holding video, Evolution of Dance, a title which it held claim to for nearly two years until 2011, when a number of music videos by popular recording artists began entering circulation on the website. In addition, the video also took the distinction of being "most favorited" and the second "most discussed" video on YouTube in the United Kingdom.

Examples

The video has spawned many spoofs, typically with adults performing the roles of Harry and Charlie, as well as musical remixes featuring auto-tune and the Dear Sister.

Parodies

Remixes

Authenticity

In the similar vein of many other record-breaking viral videos, "Charlie Bit My Finger" has come under accusations being staged by the father in the comments section of the video. In response, Howard Davies-Carr released a video in May 2009 in which he denied the allegations by saying:

[This video has been removed]

"I don't think any number of words will convince the conspiracy theorists that the clip was totally natural…However I am working on 'Charlie Bit Me – again ! 'The prequel' which I think will have enough in it to put these questions to rest. Unfortunately I do not the editing skills yet to finish the clip as I would like it."

Gerber Ad Deal

On July 19th, 2011, Gerber uploaded a video to their official YouTube^[2] channel with and edited version of the "Charlie Bit Me" video as an advertisement for their baby food products. The news of the advertisement deal was covered by Social Times^[3] in an article titled "Charlie Bit My Finger Sells Out; Now Promoting Gerber Finger Foods."

The campaign, ‘Why Charlie Bit My Finger by Gerber’, is simply a copy of the original YouTube hit with pop-up video style captions that let parents in on how to know if their own baby is ready for finger foods.