"In the post-Honey Badger era, it’s become increasingly common for large corporations to appropriate viral memes for their own marketing purposes."

"Critics argue that the creators of these memes, who are often teenagers and frequently people of color, rarely have the opportunity to monetize their work. 'Want to profit of[f] your meme? Good luck if you aren’t white,' read a 2017 headline in Wired magazine after Kayla Lewis, who goes by Peaches Monroee on social media and is credited with creating the phrase 'eyebrows on fleek,' launched a GoFundMe campaign asking for donations so that she could start her own cosmetics line. Before launching the campaign, the magazine noted, Lewis hadn’t made any money off the phrase, even after companies like IHOP, Taco Bell, and Forever 21 used it. And meme creators only have a small window of time to monetize their viral fame before the Internet moves on to something new, [argued the lawyer for Christopher Gordon AKA Randall]. 'My client is a creative genius,' he said. 'He had a bolt of lightning, 86 million views on YouTube, was basically a celebrity around the country for about three years and he had a brief window of time to strike while the iron was hot on that. He should be the one — not the defendants in this case — to capitalize on that.'"

From "Honey Badger may not care, but the ‘creative genius’ who took him viral just won a big victory" (WaPo). Gordon was sharp enough to have trademarked the lines "Honey Badger Don’t Care" and "Honey Badger Don’t Give a S—."

Note that Gordon's original viral video wasn't made by him at all. It was National Geographic video. He just provided the audio track.

ADDED: It's inherent in the nature of memes and virality that people repeat something. "Honey badger don't care" would be nothing if people hadn't passed it on and found it fun to repeat. I'd be very careful about letting people own catch phrases. How are the rest of us supposed to speak? All our words are stolen if you get too picky about what it means to steal.

IN THE COMMENTS: Laslo Spatula says:

There is a nascent post to be made in analyzing the Honey Badger video now in the context of The Era Of That's Not Funny.

The pseudo-gay voice is obviously problematic.

He is also appropriating the Honey Badger's culture for his own benefit, and mocking it in the process.

The celebration of an animal for its violent and selfish tendencies is also troublesome: indeed, the video could be seen as a Trojan Horse for celebrating the American Conservative White Male.

To begin.