Even though I was born in the 80s I am generally of the opinion that it has a lot to answer for, terrible hair, bad fluorescent colours and Rick Astley. Now the last time I heard anything about Rick Astley was when I bought an Album by DJ Yoda called “How to Cut and Paste: 80’s Edition” and that was several years ago now. All of a sudden recently Rick seems to have been making a bit of a comeback but not in the normal way that 80s popstars might do, but instead through a phenomenon called “RickRolling”.

So what is RickRolling?

Basically “RickRolling” consists of a user following a link to a page on a specific topic but are then confronted with a video of Rick Astley’s 1987 hit “Never Gonna Give You Up”

The UrbanDictionary describes it as the following:

Rick Roll
When what you think is a link to something you want to see actually directs you to a video of Rick Astley singing “Never Gonna Give You Up.” This is common in the WoW community.

Wikipedia describes where “RickRolling” comes from:

The song’s campy music video became the basis of an Internet meme known as “rickrolling”. It took its name from an anonymous message board meme known as “duckrolling”, a prank in which someone would post a blind link to a post, allegedly relevant to the discussion, that upon viewing would prove to be a non sequitur - specifically, an image of a duck on wheels. Similarly, in a rickroll a person provides a link they claim is relevant to the topic at hand which actually takes the user to the Rick Astley video. By May 2007 the practice had become widespread, and it eventually began to receive some coverage in the mainstream media.

Will this ever end?

Apparently this has been going on for over 6 months but it seems to have passed me by, I do however have a recollection of clicking a link and getting a video on YouTube of Rick Astley, but didn’t really think that much of it.

It was brought to my attention last night while watching the news on North West tonight (unfortunately I live in Derbyshire and would prefer to get Yorkshire but I get North West Telly) there was an item about “RickRolling” and how it is making Rick famous again. I presume they were focusing on it due to the fact he originates from Newton-le-Willows in Lancashire. (more…)