The creator of the viral 'Honey Badger Don't Care' video said he auctioned it as an NFT to honor his friend who died

• The "Honey Badger Don't Care" viral video was sold as an NFT.
• The video's creator told Insider he sold the NFT to honor his friend who died in March 2021.
• The creator will be selling the original video, as well as the trademark to the phrase.
• See more stories on Insider's business page.

The person behind the viral "Crazy Nastya– Honey Badger" video joins the legion of creators to sell a piece of viral content as a non-fungible token (NFT), a digital property stored on a blockchain and purchased with cryptocurrency.

The 2011 video, which currently has over 97 million views on YouTube, features National Geographic footage of a honey badger with a voiceover by Christopher "Randall" Gordon, which he described to Insider in a recent interview as "a wildlife narrator who was absolutely terrified of other animals."

As the footage rolls, Gordon can be heard saying things like, "Ew! What's that in its mouth? Oh, it's got a cobra? Oh, it runs backwards?"

But in the decade since, the video has been mostly remembered for one iconic line: "Honey Badger don't care. It just takes what it wants."

Gordon told Insider that he created the video in 2011 and posted it to YouTube as a birthday gift for his friend. That friend died in March of this year, Gordon said, so he decided to sell the video along with the trademark to the phrase "Honey Badger Don't Care" (he obtained trademarks for the phrase in 2012, according to US Patent and Trademark Office records, and went to court to fight others trying to capitalize on the video's success) as a way to "move on" after the death.

"I'm 10 years removed from posting a video, it has over 97 million views, the person I made the video for passed away and I felt the time was right," he told Insider of his decision to sell the footage as an NFT.

The 'Honey Badger' NFT was auctioned alongside other viral videos

Gordon said NetGems, an agency working with viral creators to sell their videos as NFTs, reached out to him in April and offered to help him put the video up for auction. The auction began on June 2 with two other viral videos also available for bidding: the viral "I ain't never seen two pretty best friends" TikTok video from 2020 and the 2004 pre-YouTube video hit, "Numa Numa."

A NetGems representative did not disclose the final sale price of the "Honey Badger" NFT, but said the company was working with "private buyers."

"Numa Numa" was a 98-second video of Gary Brolsma lip-syncing and bouncing along to a 2004 Moldovian pop song called "Dragostea Din Tei." The video was posted to Newgrounds, a pre-YouTube-era video site, in 2004. The "Numa Numa" video, as it came to be known, became a major online meme.

The 'Honey Badger' creator joins the growing viral-video-to-NFT pipeline

The creators of the "Numa Numa" and "Honey Badger" videos are part of a large swath of content creators who have already sold their videos as NFTs.

Creators like the family behind the "Charlie Bit My Finger" video and Chris Torres, creator of the "Nyan Cat" gif, have each made more than half a million dollars – over $760,000 and $590,000, respectively.

The "Doge" meme, a photo of a Shiba Inu that became one of the biggest memes of the last decade, earned a record-breaking $4 million in its sale as an NFT.

Gordon, the "Honey Badger" creator, told Insider that he intended to remove the video from YouTube to give the NFT more value after the final sale. Jordan Scott, the creator of the "Two Pretty Best Friends" TikTok, said he planned to do the same.

Gordon said he planned to use money from the NFT sale to put money away money for his two children and donate a portion of the money to Animals Asia, a nonprofit organization based in Hong Kong working to protect animals across the continent.