Badger Badger Badger
You might remember it as Badgers Weebl, The Badger Song
The archive has not found a surviving copy.
2003·Early web, before YouTube
The looping Flash animation that defined the pre-YouTube meme format.
At a glanceThe facts
- Remembered as
- Badgers Weebl
- Began as
- A web animation
- Where it started
- b3ta
- Made by
- Jonti Picking, who animates as Mr Weebl
- First posted
- On B3ta.com, on 2 September 2003
- What it said
- A voice sings the name of whatever is on screen: badger, mushroom, snake
- Origin
- Not an upload originally
- Available
- Not held by ViralWorld
What this wasThe story
A other classified under wildlife.
Why it matteredWhat changed
A Flash loop with no beginning and no end: twelve badgers, a mushroom and a snake, repeating indefinitely. The British Film Institute has since preserved it.
TimelineIn order
- Posted
The animation goes live on B3ta.com at one minute to four in the morning.1
- Record
PC World lists it among the top five internet fads of all time.1
- Came back
Picking releases Save the Badger Badger Badger, with Brian May and Brian Blessed.1
- Later
A twentieth-anniversary version is released.1
- Later
The British Film Institute preserves the animation.1
LegacyWhat it left behind
- Picking has said the idea came from Whigfield’s Saturday Night, a pop song with a duck quacking all the way through it.1
Why it is here: something the internet still knows by name · a moment that changed what the internet did next · it got out of its own corner of the internet fast · still being watched and quoted years later
This began as a web animation, not as a video upload. Originally published on b3ta.
Where it came fromWhat we know
There is no original upload to identify: this did not begin as one. There is no copy of it here either — what it was, when it appeared and what people called it is what this page can tell you.
Nothing here is claimed to be the first publication of this Moment, because the first publication was not an upload. This began as a web animation, not as a video upload. Originally published on b3ta.
Not established. This index only names a creator where the evidence supports it.
- Where
- Known on YouTube.
SourcesWhat was read
Sources last read on . That date is about the history on this page. Whether the media still plays is checked separately and can change any day. How ViralWorld documents things