By SARAH LYALL
Copyright 2012 New York Times News Service
MAIDENHEAD, England — Visiting the local park not long ago, Shelley Davies-Carr and her four sons were suddenly surrounded by a gaggle of overexcited teenagers wielding cellphones and taking photographs.
“Oh, my God!” the teenagers shrieked, as only teenagers can. “ ‘Charlie Bit My Finger!’ ”
Indeed, it is hard to find anyone in the video-watching world who has not heard of “Charlie Bit My Finger,” a YouTube video featuring tiny Charlie Davies-Carr chomping on his older brother, Harry.
Since it was posted in 2007, the 56-second clip of English-accented toddler indignation and infant bliss has been viewed a mind-boggling 417.9 million times, making it the most successful noncommercial video in YouTube history.
Its appeal is simple. “I have watched this at least 100 times,” a viewer named Hannahjp100 declared on the “Charlie” site, “and I still laugh while watching it.”
Howard Davies-Carr, a 43-year-old information technology consultant who is the father of Charlie, now 5, and Harry, 7, said that though he did not regard his sons as celebrities, they had become a brand, like it or not.
He and Shelley, who runs a nursery school at home, explained some of the repercussions in a recent conversation in their child-detritus-cluttered kitchen.
(They live not far from Maidenhead, but do not want the town’s name made public.)
The family gets recognized in random places — on the subway in London; in the house, by the washing-machine repairman.
Last month, “Charlie Bit My Finger” was mentioned on the TV show “30 Rock.”
Web-savvy children around the world apparently quote from the video when they get hurt, or want to express mock indignation.
There are fan sites, Facebook pages and endless parody videos. A lady in New York volunteered to be the boys’ honorary aunt. Their dentist recently revealed that an acquaintance had named his son Charlie, as an homage.
The video has also changed their life materially. Mr. Davies-Carr will not say exactly how much money they have made, only that it is “in excess of £100,000,” or more than $158,000, and enough to pay for the boys’ education.
Why this particular video?
“Videos are videos. They’re either popular or they’re not,” said Mr. Davies-Carr, who originally uploaded the video as a way to keep a family friend in Colorado apprised of his sons’ progress.
The viral part came later, unexpectedly, he said, when the video was apparently picked up by a college humor site and somehow things took off.
If its charm seems straightforward — Harry’s cute accent, Charlie’s maniacal laugh — its unprecedented global popularity is mysterious.
We are not talking about “Citizen Kane” here, or even “Porky’s Revenge.”
Although videos of cute animals, cute kids and hapless people unexpectedly falling down do better than videos of things that are not cute or funny, figuring out what makes one video touch a viral nerve and another fizzle into unwatched obscurity is one of the great challenges of the YouTube age.
In Britain, some commentators have struggled to fathom the appeal of the video and sequels showing the boys and their brothers, Jasper, 3 ½, and Rupert, 8 months, engaging in nonbiting activities.
“They are not, to put it politely, exceptional,” wrote Terence Blacker in The Independent.
That is not how the world sees it, and Mr. Davies-Carr said he had thought long and hard about how to “monetize” in a responsible way what has become a very valuable property.
He is a YouTube “partner,” meaning that the family shares in advertising revenue generated by the site.
The boys make the odd commercial. A new “Charlie” app is in the works for iPhone and Android devices. There is talk of children’s books and a YouTube channel.
The family is represented by a company called Viral Spiral, whose clients include the people behind the sneezing baby panda video and the babbling twin baby video.
Damian Collier, who founded the company about a year ago — the Davies-Carrs were his first clients — said he had been impressed by their approach.
“When I first met up with Howard, it was clear that he was enormously concerned to protect his boys and make sure anything done was tasteful and not exploitative,” Mr. Collier said.
It has been a hard line to walk. Mr. Davies-Carr did not set out to sell themed T-shirts, for instance, but did it almost as a defensive gesture in response to the marketplace.
“Why on earth would anyone want to wear a ‘Charlie Bit Me’ T-shirt?” he asked rhetorically. “But I found hundreds of different people all over the world selling them already.”
Britons both envy and resent fame and the riches it brings, particularly when it falls on ordinary people, and the family has had its share of sniping.
Jan Moir in The Daily Mail compared people who profit from their children’s videos to Victorian parents who sent their children to work in factories and as match sellers on the street.
“You may as well earn a few bob out of the ungrateful tykes,” she said sarcastically.
It is hard to get your videos to spread widely, Mr. Davies-Carr said, and he does not want other families to harbor false hopes of replicating the success of “Charlie.”
He takes the whole enterprise very seriously, removing abusive comments from the “Charlie” Web site and regularly posting fresh videos of the boys doing things like running around in knights’ outfits.
He does no coaching and no scripting, he said; he thinks of the videos as snippets of family life that just happen to be available for all to see.
As for Harry and Charlie, they did not have much to say about their camera-captured lives, proving more eager to discuss pressing matters like Charlie’s impending Harry Potter-themed birthday party.
When they are old enough, their father said, he will let them decide whether to continue living semiexamined lives.
“It’s not like I’m sending them out or trying to push them to be models or actors,” he said.
Some of the family’s newer videos have millions of views, but nothing like as many as “Charlie Bit My Finger.”
Which leads to another question: What happens to a watched family if no one wants to watch it any more? And are the Davies-Carrs suffering from “the YouTube equivalent of second-album syndrome,” as one newspaper put it, unable to replicate their early, fluky success?
Nothing, and no, Mr. Davies-Carr said.
“I wouldn’t be upset if people stopped watching,” he said. “People bring their own view and make assumptions based on no knowledge of us, but we’ve gone beyond the point where we can be angry at what they say.
“It’s a little like criticizing the queen for being the queen,” he added. “We’re just happy that our video has had the biggest success in the world.”
