i can't believe you've done this

The guy from the ‘I can’t believe you’ve done this’ viral video has finally spoken out

He’s said the punch was unplanned, and really did hurt


The guy from the “I can’t believe you’ve done this” viral video has finally spoken out, saying the only money he made from the video was used to buy a TV.

After years of intrigue and silence, Paul Weedon, writing for VICE, says the punch really did hurt, and was completely unplanned.

For those who have spent the past 14 years living under a rock but miraculously not turned into a woodlouse, here’s a quick recap: an adolescent, sporting long fluffy hair and sunglasses, gets punched in the face by a friend. In an immaculate Home Counties tone of outrage, he tells his friend: “Oh fuck, I can’t believe you’ve done this.”

The origins of the ‘I can’t believe you’ve done this’ video, revealed

The iconic video started life as an “aimless skit”, with Paul adding that the punch was unplanned. However, “in the footage building up to the event, I pushed Tim off the chair, he fell and hit his head on a filing cabinet off-camera,” Paul writes. And so, Tim punched him, and the rest was history.

It went under the radar for a long while, eventually making its way onto 4chan. With an intense, noughties version viral fame knocking at the door, Paul says he decided to “embrace it and try to cash in”.

He says he doesn’t own the rights to the ‘I can’t believe you’ve done this’ clip

He sold the rights to a platform called Break. When TV researchers came in with higher offers “it was all too apparent that I had completely fucked it”. Although he used the money from the rights to buy a TV, he says he “soon started to get the creeping feeling that this was a decision that would come to haunt me.”

Until now, Weedon hadn’t really addressed the “I can’t believe you’ve done this” video, beyond a few references on his Twitter profile. The mystery of the punch, the reason, and the aftermath had remained unsolved.

He now says he has “no clarity whatsoever on my legal rights to the video”.

“I’d be lying if I said that I didn’t regret missing out on a slice of the pie when it came to YouTubers being able to monetise their content sooner,” he added.

However, 14 years on from the upload of the original video, Weedon is making a film about the meme.

Dropping a trailer on YouTube last week, a far less fluffy-haired Weedon sat down in front of a camera to tease something “coming soon”. A series of stitched-together audio clips seemed to promise answers to a whole host of questions around the video.

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