The internet's most amusing creations are now being archived for posterity. The British Film Institute has saved approximately 430 online videos in a collection designed to safeguard important internet cultural moments. This spans about three decades of British online culture, from initial livestream tests to memes that entered common speech.

Memes as modern history

Obvious classics feature in the collection. Charlie Bit My Finger from 2007 shows a toddler biting his brother's finger, becoming an early YouTube sensation with nearly 900 million views and turning a simple family moment into a global reference.

Badgers is included, the looping Flash animation with dancing badgers, a snake, mushroom, and catchy tune that stuck in minds from the early 2000s. Culture spread via emails, forums, and personal sites before modern short video apps took over.

Beyond just memes

The collection goes further than funny clips. It includes the Trojan Room Coffee Pot, an early livestream from Cambridge University researchers who pointed a camera at a shared pot to check levels remotely, proving both quirky and forward-looking.

Online Caroline, a 2000 interactive drama using webcam-style storytelling and email updates, also makes the list. The Liz Truss lettuce livestream from the Daily Star is preserved too, capturing the gag about whether a head of lettuce would outlast the prime minister.

Reasons for archiving memes

The effort exists because culture fades quickly. The internet does not preserve well amid platform changes, dying formats, link rot, and vanishing content when no one deems it worth saving.

Examples include the end of Flash, the disappearance of Vine with its videos, and clips that get deleted, blocked, or lost to shifting services despite once seeming permanent.