(A semi-regular NMS feature that explains the history and logic behind various web sensations.)
Before I get started on this blog post, there’s some background information that I need you to check out, so click here. Go ahead, do it!
Now, if you decided not to click on that link, then you may already know about the internet phenomenon that I’ll be explaining in this post. If you did click on the link, then congratulations…you’ve just been RickRolled.
Not to worry, I didn’t infect your computer with some new virus. RickRolling is an innocent prank in which someone provides you a link promising to take you to a site that you’ll find interesting (examples: “Great article!” “Bikini pics!”), but clicking on the link actually sends you to a music video. Not just any music video, though – Rick Astley’s 1987 hit, “Never Gonna Give You Up.”
The prank started as an inside joke on an image-sharing community called 4chan, where posters – following the same protocol listed above – would misleadingly send their peers to an image of a duck on wheels, which became known as “duckrolling.” The very first RickRoll originated on the same site in May 2007, when one clever user linked to the Astley video, telling his peers that it was actually a link to the trailer for the video game “Grand Theft Auto IV.” By the next year, RickRolling had become a bonafide internet hit, garnering mainstream notability when the clever staff at YouTube RickRolled their users on April Fool’s Day of 2008. By the end of the day, the hoax had been repeated on several major sites like Sports Illustrated and Live Journal, the video was viewed 6.6 million times and the song reached No. 77 on Amazon.com.
It’s possible that this was not your first RickRolling experience. According to Survey USA, an estimated 18 million Americans had been RickRolled as of April 8, 2008. As I write this post, the most popular version of the video on YouTube has been viewed nearly 21 million times and has generated almost 109,000 comments.
And you can’t escape getting RickRolled offline, either. Live RickRolling events have taken place in recent years at college basketball and professional baseball games, as well as the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
So what does the man himself have to say about his music video’s place in internet history? “I think it’s just one of those odd things where something gets picked up and people run with it,” he told the LA Times last year. “But that’s what's brilliant about the Internet.” But what is so brilliant about this particular artist, this song, this video?
As Philadelphia Weekly aptly pointed out, “the real genius of RickRolling has gone totally unexamined.” It may be the personal nostalgia one feels when they hear this song, taking them back in time to the 80s, when big hair ruled, the clothing was always unflattering and everyone danced to the beat of the synthesizer. Or maybe it’s the video itself – a 21-year-old Astley passionately belting out the lyrics while his questionably-talented female back-up dancers writhe behind him (and let’s not forget the random dancing bartender). Perhaps it’s the lyrics – the rhyming, similar in style to grade-school poetry, that makes the joke that much more hilarious.
However, I think the power of the RickRoll lies in its catchy tune. If you are on the receiving end of the prank, you will most likely have the song stuck in your head all day. Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing depends on your musical taste, but it’s been running through my mind the whole time I’ve been writing. And if you’ve been diligently clicking on the many links sprinkled in this story, you’re probably singing it now too. Consider yourself sufficiently RickRolled.