Original ‘Overly Attached Girlfriend’ Meme Sells As NFT For $400,000 / 200 ETH

Remember Overly Attached Girlfriend, the meme that went mega-viral in 2012 during the peak era of Impact Font memes?

Of course you do. That meme was everywhere in 2012, including on this very site. It’s an early social media meme worthy of induction in the Meme Hall Of Fame.

The screencap came from a song called “Girlfriend”, made as a fan response by a YouTube creator called Laina Morris in response to a contest held by Justin Bieber while promoting the song “Boyfriend”. As a response to the themes of the Bieber song, the video makes fun of a clingy, overly-attached girlfriend who Facebook stalks her boyfriend.

The image macro of Lania, the originator of the meme, went mega viral after Justin Bieber responded to it in a video about the contest. She later appeared on Jimmy Fallon and launched a career as a YouTube creator, building a YouTube following with over 1.27 million followers and famously going viral again by doing the Overly Attached Girlfriend character as a spin on Carly Rae Jepsen’s “Call Me Maybe”, called “Call Me Crazy“.

Now the original creator of the meme – Laina – gets to cash in on her likiness moment nine years ago thanks to the explosion of interest in NFTs – non fungible tokens – right the convergence of cryptocurrency and blockchain artwork.

Laina listed the original Overly Attached Girlfriend pic on Foundation.App as an NFT auction.

It turned into a low six-figure bidding war, with the final bid being 200.00 ETH – worth an estimated $402,944.00 USD at current Ethereum prices.

Overly Attached Girlfriend now joins the ranks of Ja Rule, Lindsay Lohan, Grimes, and the creator of the Nyan Cat GIF to make big bucks on their art and digital likeness in the NFT marketplace.

On Twitter, Laina was clearly a thrilled and shocked to see such an explosion of interest in the Overly Attached Girlfriend NFT auction:

https://twitter.com/laina622/status/1378464341448478722

https://twitter.com/laina622/status/1378484913993707520

https://twitter.com/laina622/status/1378481627374874624

It’s pretty cool to see someone make money on going viral years ago, long after a meme has been sent to the dustbins of Internet history. Makes you think about all the other meme-able moments that will explode as NFTs in the coming months and years – all of which are a part of collective Internet culture at this point.

For those of us who love being online, it’s like owning an original Picasso or a signed, first edition book by a famous author. Love it or hate it, memes are part of our cultural heritage just like albums, movies, and other great works of art – it’s just be difficult to ascribe a specific monetary value to that up until this moment, thanks to crypto.

Here’s Laina talking about how she went so viral back in the day in an AMA on Reddit eight years ago.

Well the first time I saw it was the day after I posted the video on Youtube… that was the day my video got 1,000,000 views, Bieber’s manager tweeted it, it showed up on Tosh.0’s blog, and the first meme appeared. With all of that happening at once, it felt pretty surreal. The meme was probably the biggest thing to come from the video, and I think it’s awesome. Sometimes creepy seeing my face everywhere… but mostly awesome. And hilarious.

Now she’s $400,000 richer thanks to that.

For more about Laina’s backstory, check out this video about how the meme came about.