Most sites I visited yesterday were busy Rickrolling their visitors in some form. The first time I got Rickrolled, I could not figure out what was so amusing about clicking a link and redirecting your reader to a music video and shouting out loud – hey! you got rickrolled! Apparently Rick Astley is more famous than I thought…
For newbies (like me) to this new internet hobby – Rickrolling is an Internet meme involving Rick Astley music video for his song “Never Gonna Give You Up“. In a Rickroll, a person provides a link they claim is relevant to the topic at hand which actually takes the user to the Astley video. Never Gonna Give You Up is a song originally performed by Rick Astley, released as a single from Astley’s multi-million selling debut album Whenever You Need Somebody.
Though the incidence of Rickrolling is usually limited, April Fools day pranks led to an uncontrollable level of rickrolling in the blogosphere. In fact, YouTube RickRolled its own users on April 1 where all of the featured videos for YouTube UK and YouTube Australia actually linked to the Rick Astley videos!
In fact I got stuck on a never ending Rickroll on John Chows April Fools prank, which was mixed with a jumping window with the video, and any attempt to closure was met with a continuous stream of pop up alerts which would not let you close the window. Eventually CTRL+ALT+DEL was needed to turn off firefox from the Task Manager (Here is the url freeppcsecrets.com – I warned you).
Apparently getting Rickrolled and sending someone Rickrolling is very cool, and everyone ends up chuckling and enjoying the fun (Hey! I rickrolled you, Oh! I got rickrolled). I am somehow still not amused. Have you sent someone Rickrolling? Did you enjoy getting Rickrolled?