Rickrolling

Rickrolling is an Internet meme and prank involving the unexpected appearance of the music video for the 1987 hit song "Never Gonna Give You Up", performed by the English singer Rick Astley. The meme is a type of bait and switch and commonly uses a disguised hyperlink that leads to the music video instead of what was expected. The meme has also extended to using the song's lyrics in unexpected contexts or singing it during public events. After the origin of the meme in 2007 and the height of its popularity in 2008, rickrolling has become a very long-lived meme. Astley has seen his performance career revitalised by the meme's popularity. The meme grew out of a similar bait-and-switch trick called "duckrolling" that was popular on the website 4chan in 2006. Rickrolling originated on 15 May 2007, when 4chan user Shawn Cotter uploaded the "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video to YouTube and linked to it in place of the trailer for the video game Grand Theft Auto IV. It quickly became popular and spread to other Internet sites later that year. The meme gained mainstream attention in 2008 through several events, beginning with a campaign by the hacker group Anonymous to protest the Church of Scientology through rickrolling. Awareness of rickrolling increased after two events in April 2008: YouTube used the meme for its April Fools' Day event, and users of several websites voted for "Never Gonna Give You Up" in a poll for the New York Mets' rally song. The meme inspired videos remixing "Never Gonna Give You Up", including "BarackRoll", which combined the song with footage of United States presidential candidate Barack Obama. Astley was initially hesitant about using the meme to further his career; he declined to appear at the 2008 MTV Europe Music Awards,...