[imagesource: YouTube / HDCYT]

The real people behind famous memes and viral videos were more often than not the unsuspecting victims of the weird ways that the internet does comedy.

With their images and videos watched and shared across the globe over the decades, they’ve never really had a way of getting compensated.

Until the rise of NFTs (non-fungible tokens), that is.

Now, all the characters that we’ve come to know and love over the years are reclaiming their faces and selling them for absolute bank via these tokens of ownership.

Zoe Roth, the girl behind the ‘Disaster Girl’ meme, recently cashed in, selling her picture for close to half a million dollars.

A few others are following it seems, with the next moneymakers being the family behind the viral “Charlie bit my finger!” video that was first posted in 2007.

Since then, the adorable video has been watched over 883 million times:

Now, the Davies-Carr family have sold the video as an NFT for $760 999 (around R10,5 million), CNET reports.

They will also take it one step further by removing the original footage from YouTube, which is different from many other creators, who have allowed their original content to remain on the internet after selling it as NFTs.

It’s been delisted from YouTube, and will soon be removed from the site.

The auction for “Charlie bit my finger!” started at $99 999 and climbed from there until the bidding war between two users, ‘3fmusic’ and ‘mememaster’, broke out, with the NFT eventually selling to ‘3fmusic’.

Not only will ‘3fmusic’ be the sole official owner of the clip, but they’ll also get the opportunity to recreate it:

“The NFT winner will have the opportunity to create their own parody of the video featuring the original stars, Harry and Charlie,” reads a blurb on the auction page.

“Star in it yourself, or give the honor to the biggest Charlie Bit My Finger fan you know, and re-create a hilarious modern-day rendition of the classic clip.”

In case you were wondering, this is what the boys from the video look like now (Charlie is on the right of his brother Harry Davies-Carr):

Image: www.charliebitme.com

The picture was taken from their auction website.

The brothers won’t have time for finger biting with all the investments that they have to start making now.

[source:cnet]