Wednesday, April 01, 2009

Give You Up

Today I came across an absolutely fantastic video that I think everyone should watch. Click here to check it out.

If you actually watched it, you probably realize that I was only kidding about the fantastic part--although it was pretty fantastically bad. Now that you're completely confused, let me be the first to explain that you've just been Rickrolled. Despite the fact that Rickrolling has apparently been an Internet sensation for almost 2 years, I had never heard of it until today. Wikipedia claims that 18 million people in the US have been Rickrolled, so clearly I'm fairly culturally illiterate.

Still confused? I don't blame you, because it really doesn't make much sense. Apparently Rickrolling is simply telling people you're going to link them to one site when instead you link them to a video of Rick Astley's song "Never Gonna Give You Up". Completely bizarre, I know. The practice supposedly started a couple of years ago when some person or persons anonymously hijacked some popular website and made every link point to this video. I guess on April 1 last year Youtube hijacked every one of its own videos so that they all linked to Rick Astley as well. Quite the April Fool's Day joke, don't you think?

I guess the video itself is kind of funny, and maybe this would have been funnier had I omitted the long and boring explanation, but this is still such a weird joke. I'm so curious as to whose idea this was in the first place and why they chose Rick Astley. Random!

2 comments:

amber said...

So crazy...I just learned about this phenomenon today too! I saw the tribute on the Cake Wrecks blog, then had to investigate what it meant! I promise to never Rickroll you! :)

cw said...

Weird. Very weird.