Welcome to meme fame: you wake up one morning and, though its none of your doing, millions of internet users all over the world have seen your face. And as if your overnight star status wasn't enough to handle, how about this: more often than not, the person making profits off your fame won't be you. It can be a rude awakening, and for one unidentified German raver known as Techno Viking, it's also grounds to sue Matthias Fritsch, the artist who filmed him more than a decade ago during a rave parade in Berlin.
"I am being accused for creation and publication of images connected to the Techno Viking, therefore infringement of personality rights", Fritsch told the Daily Dot when the court case began in Berlin last week. "They also say I am earning a lot of money by that".
Techno Viking became an internet legend in 2007 when Fritsch's footage – filmed at Berlin's Fuckparade in 2000 – went viral. In the four-minute video, the shirtless and pony-tailed man now known as Techno Viking sternly points his finger at a man who bumps into a dancing woman. After striking a menacing pose, Techno Viking marches forward with a crowd of dancers in tow. As the Daily Dot's Kevin Morris describes it, the video comes across as a form of "accidental and hilarious art".
And "art" it spawned, like all memes do nowadays. After the video had collected what Fritsch puts at 40m views, internet users took to creating thousands of parodies, image macros and fan art inspired by the footage. Techno Viking got his own comic book and was turned into an action figure. He inspired paintings and inflatable "tweet-powered" heads . But Techno Viking said he never received a penny for any of it.
While Fritsch certainly didn't create all these derivative works, the lawsuit reportedly accused Fritsch of "giving him the name Technoviking, creating 3D characters, comics and more to constantly increase the popularity in order to market Technoviking and therefore cause damage to the protagonist". Fritsch says that if he loses, he will have to remove all of his Techno Viking related material from the internet (it is unclear whether Techno Viking will also go after the hundreds of copies and parodies circulating on YouTube). It is reported that if he fails to do that, Fritsch could face a hefty fine and some jail time.
When news of the lawsuit broke , digital citizens didn't take the news too kindly: Techno Viking – whom Fritsch refuses to name – was supposed to be a cool dude, and definitely not the litigious type. And as far as meme fame goes, he got a pretty sweet deal: he became the digital embodiment of a Nordic warrior, but not everyone is as lucky.
Twenty-two year old Blake Boston, for example, is known as "Scumbag Steve", the high school or college jerk who is always stealing your stuff. In 2011, a Myspace photo of Boston taken in 2006 when he was 16 spread like wildfire across the web. In the photo, taken by his mother, Boston wears a limited edition Boston Red Sox A-Tooth hat, a faux-fur coat and a spacey expression. And Boston, who stresses he is no scumbag, has a few issues with his internet fame and what he calls "character assassination".
Besides trying to prove he is a decent human being on a daily basis, he deals with "people representing and pretending to be me" every day on social media. Boston cites the twitter user @Steve_Scum, who claims he is the "official Scumbag Steve" in his profile, as an example. @Steve_Scum has 100,000 followers to Boston's 5,000, and you can buy a sponsored tweet from @Steve_Scum for the low price of $340. Boston is at a loss as to how to complain about the account and regrets not buying up all the related domain names when he first got "famous". Even worse than that, he says, is when big companies use his face to sell ads without his permission: "I go to sites and see this banner of me, and I don't get a penny", wrote Boston in an email. "People say lawyer up, but how can I? I'm a single father trying to get by. And you know what sucks? If I do [lawyer up], I'll be seen as a killjoy."
Twenty-year old Laina Walker, on the other hand, got internet famous for being creepy and managed to control some of the profits surrounding the spread of her image. Walker and her wild eyes are known as Overly Attached Girlfriend, the internet's representation of the overbearing, stalker girlfriend.
Walker's been incredibly savvy since day one of her video and image going viral. She was lucky, as the image that was lifted to later become a meme happened to be on her own YouTube channel, meaning she could monetise the video by running ads on it, something Techno Viking was unable to do. Walker also outed herself on Twitter immediately, ensuring no fake parody account would receive more followers than her should she chose to monetise her Twitter. This makes Walker an excellent case study in how to embrace what Boston would call "character assassination": she has gone on to make additional videos, collaborate with other YouTube celebrities, and even did a creepy commercial with Samsung. To date, Walker has collected 54 million video views on her YouTube channel, which at an average payout rate of $2 per 1,000 views comes out to $108,037 in ad revenue from Google alone.
That's some deft damage control of an internet meme that Techno Viking, and meme celebrities to be, can learn from.