First of all, in case you have no idea what Rickrolling is, I’m going to have
you click again on this video to find out. Go ahead, click it. You’re going to love it.
(“Never Gonna Give You Up” clip) (laughs)
Uh yeah, so that’s Rickrolling. If you’re still confused, rickrolling is an internet meme that
took the world by storm in the late aughts. Heck, rumor has it, the kids are still doing it today.
Rickrolling is a bait and switch prank, almost always using a disguised hyperlink that leads to
the music video for Rick Astley’s hit song, “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Usually there is some sort of
build up to get you to click on the link. Like, “look who was in the news!” I mean, it’s difficult
not to be tempted to click on something like that. So you do, and (“Never Gonna Give You Up” clip)
So how did this all get started?
Well first, let’s go back to the year 1987. That was the year “Never Gonna Give You Up” turned
the English singer-songwriter Rick Astley into a star. Even though it was his very first single,
it was a number one hit in 25 countries and a big reason why his debut album,
Whenever You Need Somebody, went on to sell more than 15 million copies. In the following years,
Rick Astley followed up “Never Gonna Give You Up” with several hits, but after he shifted from dance
pop to soul in the 1990s, his popularity declined. He even retired from music for a while. Although
his core group of fans were there for him when he returned to the music industry in the early
aughts, it was likely clear to Rick at that point that his popularity had peaked in the late 1980s.
Rick probably accepted that he was never, ever gonna be as popular again as he was back then.
But boy…was…he…wrong. Boy were we all wrong.
On August 31, 2006, this dude, the YouTuber Erik Helwig, said he pranked a Michigan radio
station by playing “Never Gonna Give You Up.” However, few people actually heard it
or knew about that at the time.
In March 2007, the video game company Rockstar Games posted the trailer for
Grand Theft Auto IV (4), and it was so popular that it crashed their website.
Charles: You see, Rockstar didn’t use platforms like YouTube to promote their content back in
2007. You wouldn’t have been able to see major corporations trying to use Youtube back then.
Instead, they wanted to try and get people to visit their own website. But this was,
unfortunately, to their detriment. Mr Beat: Who are you?
Charles: I’m Charles from Geeks Welcome. I
pretend to know quite a bit about video games and internet culture.
Mr Beat: Are… You going to talk about Rickrolling?
Charles: Precisely!
Around that same time, an American named Shawn Cotter, who was in the Air Force and stationed in
South Korea at the time, had been looking up songs that came out the year he was born- 1987. He came
across the music video to “Never Gonna Give You Up” and couldn’t help but laugh at how cheesy it
was. On May 15, 2007, he decided to start a prank on the anonymous and often terrifying imageboard
website, 4chan. He posted a link to the “Never Gonna Give You Up” music video that he had posted
on his own YouTube channel, cotter548, but SAID it was an exclusive sneak peek of the video game
Grand Theft Auto IV. Due to the aforementioned hype of that game, many Grand Theft Auto fans
fell victim to the bait and switch prank. These were innocent times. People who clicked on his
link TRULY thought they were about to see a GTA video. But instead they saw Rick Astley.
Mr Beat: Can I go back to doing my own voiceovers now?
Charles: I mean, it’s your channel. You can literally cut me off at any…
Cotter named the video “RickRoll’D.” Cotter called it that after mixing Rick’s name with an earlier
4chan meme called “duckrolling.” That was another bait-and-switch prank in which people would get
others to click on a link that was nothing more than a picture of a duck with wheels.
Anyway, the people who first got Rickrolled were quite angry to be tricked,
but soon enough people on 4chan LOVED this prank and thought it’d be hilarious to trick
others with it. Soon there were hundreds and then thousands of copycats pulling off
this bait-and-switch to get people to watch Rick Astley, and “Rickrolling” became a viral
sensation. One week after Cotter first posted his “RickRoll’D” video, it already had 250,000 views.
Cotter’s original “RickRoll’D” video is in fact…still there,
even though from time to time YouTube has taken it down due to
record labels pressuring it to do so. Yep, it now has nearly 95,000,000 views.
By 2008, Rickrolling had already become a mainstream phenomenon. In February,
protesters against the Church of Scientology blasted “Never Gonna
Give You Up” through boomboxes in cities across the United States.
In March, four Eastern Washington University women’s basketball games were Rickrolled,
although it was later revealed the whole thing was a stunt.
By then, several remakes and parodies had shown up especially on YouTube.
Speaking of YouTube, for April Fool’s Day that year, the site featured nothing but
links on its homepage that directed to the music video. Soon after that,
a SurveyUSA poll estimated that at least 18 million American adults have been Rickrolled.
When the New York Mets polled fans online about what song they should use for their
eighth-inning rally song, fans chose “Never Gonna Give You Up,” of course.
Amazingly, it was only AFTER this that Rick Astley truly realized just how big Rickrolling was. He
had originally found out about it only because he was Rickrolled himself by a friend …twice.
After Astley finally realized how big the phenomenon was, he was overwhelmed by it,
and avoided capitalizing on it since he thought it’d be odd to
do since his video was often the butt of a joke.
Rickrolling had become so mainstream that Rick Astley was named the “Best Act Ever”
at the 2008 MTV Europe Music Awards, but only after he got more than 100 million votes-more
than all other nominees combined-from a huge online campaign. So basically, the internet
Rickrolled the MTV Europe Music Awards, ok? Astley wasn’t there to accept the award,
likely still because he was still wondering how to deal with this new fame, but that quickly
changed when he made a surprise appearance at the 2008 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade.
Yep, he was now officially in on the joke. He Rickrolled the parade.
Later he reflected about the whole experience. “It was a bit bizarre,
to be honest, in lots of ways. I was like, ‘What the hell is going on?’ But listen,
don't get me wrong: I got paid a bunch of money to do it. I'm honest enough to
admit that. I've tried really hard not to embrace the Rickrolling thing, but,
to be crude about it, there have been times when people have just offered me so much
money. And maybe I had a leaky roof that week or whatever, so I've just gone, ‘Oh, f*** it.’”
After that, Astley embraced his new fame. In 2009, his record label, RCA,
made sure he had a YouTube channel and posted the “official” “Never Gonna Give You Up” video
on it. It now has 1.3 billion views. Based on this evidence, more than a billion people
have been Rickrolled…or at least least listened to “Never Gonna Give You Up.”
Rickrolling has had more staying power than most internet memes ever since. Its momentum never
really slowed down. In fact, while Rickrolling was mostly a Millennial thing for many years, now it’s
way more popular with Generation Z, and Generation Alpha is quickly catching on to it, likely in part
to the Never Gonna emote in Fortnite. Why do the young folks still love Rickrolling today? Because
Rickrolling has basically become a genre. You see, not only are there still parodies and sketches
that continue to thrive around Rickrolling, there are sitcoms based on the meme. SITCOMS.
Today, it’s clear that Rickrolling is no longer about making fun of the song or Rick Astley,
but honoring him. He has more fans today than ever before, and it’s all because of
the meme. It’s now 2023, and it’s quite clear that we are never gonna give this meme up.
Thanks to Charles from Geeks welcome for appearing in this video be sure
to check out their Channel I've linked it in the description of this video and
you know what Rick Astley he's quite an accomplished singer-songwriter you should
check out the rest of this stuff for real and for the record my daughters love Rick
Rolling actually they're just fans of Never Gonna Give You Up they're always playing
the song and singing it around the house it's incredible hey thanks for watching