Rickrolling

Background performing in 2008 "Never Gonna Give You Up" is a song written by songwriting trio Stock Aitken Waterman and recorded by English singer Rick Astley. Many memes originated on the imageboard website 4chan, which was also the origin of the hacker group Anonymous. Another precursor of rickrolling occurred in 2006, when rural Michigan resident Erik Helwig called in to a local radio sports talk show and, instead of conversing with the DJs, played "Never Gonna Give You Up". Caldwell said there was no confirmation of whether it had inspired the 4chan use of the song, and Helwig said he did not claim to be the "founder" of the meme. YouTuber Harrison Renshaw listed both Helwig and ''It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia'' as contributors to the popularity of the rickroll. Origin pranks among 4chan users in 2006, making it the predecessor to rickrolling. The use of "Never Gonna Give You Up" for rickrolling originated on 4chan. The image caught on across 4chan, becoming the target of a hyperlink with an otherwise interesting title, with a user clicking through being said to be "duckrolled". In March 2007, Rockstar Games released the first trailer for the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto IV. Viewership was so high that it crashed Rockstar's site. Several Internet users helped to post mirrors of the video on different sites, but one 4chan user linked to the "Never Gonna Give You Up" video on YouTube claiming to be the trailer, tricking numerous readers. describing himself as "the one who inadvertently became the biggest troll on the internet". Cotter is generally agreed to be the originator of the rickroll. Rickrolling became popular on YouTube, with videos featuring people lip-syncing to the song or rickrolling public events, Participants in the meme were too young to remember the original song. In March 2008, two employees of the athletics department of Eastern Washington University, Pawl Fisher and Davin Perry, rickrolled a number of games by the collegiate basketball team. Fisher filmed and edited these into a YouTube video that made it appear as a single rickroll interrupting a game. After the video received millions of views, it was covered by local television station KHQ-TV as well as The New York Times. Fisher pranked New York Times reporter Evelyn Nussenbaum by claiming the video was a single, unedited rickroll; the newspaper published a retraction after KHQ reported that this was false. Popular blogs such as Gizmodo, Slashdot, and Boing Boing introduced the meme to larger audiences. Astley first publicly spoke about rickrolling in a March 2008 interview with the Los Angeles Times, titled "Never Gonna Give You Up, Rick Astley", in which he said: Astley also said in the interview that he was not troubled by the phenomenon, stating that he found it "bizarre" and told him that the joke was not about him. The coordinators of the prank had contacted Astley's record label, Sony BMG, which had made its music available on the website two years earlier; according to label executive Sam Gomez, Astley had liked the idea. The team considered the online vote hijacked The video was acknowledged by The Ellen DeGeneres Show and by Astley, "BarackRoll" followed a format of "Never Gonna Give You Up" mashup videos that used the word "roll" in the title to transparently indicate the connection to rickrolling. Despite not being on the original shortlist of nominees, Astley won with one hundred million votes—more than all other votes combined—effectively rickrolling the awards. Astley chose not to attend the ceremony, an MTV executive also said, "We've been well and truly Rickrolled". Astley made a surprise appearance on a float of the Cartoon Network show ''Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends''. After the puppets singing on the float were cut off by a record scratch, It went viral on social media within minutes. viewers responded with both praise and harassment. When the United States Congress launched its YouTube account in January 2009, it posted a video of cats in the office of Representative Nancy Pelosi, which turned into a rickroll. and was part of Pelosi's targeting of Internet users. Also in 2009, students at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology conducted a rickroll by painting sheet music on a university building. After the cultural saturation of rickrolling, it continued to be recognised positively. On 27 July 2011, the Twitter account of the White House, during a chat session run by staffer Brian Deese, posted a rickroll link in response to a user who had criticised the dull tone of the session's posts. Reporter James Geddes wrote, "Until now, Rickrolling has generally been used as a harmless internet prank, but now it's being used in a war that has much bigger stakes," while reporter Corey Charlton wrote that the prank was "giving ISIS a taste of its own medicine", as the group used social media tactics to unexpectedly spread its propaganda. Rickrolls continued to occur years after the meme's popularity had declined. Apple rickrolled consumers in 2015 by showing them the song's lyrics when they viewed the Apple Watch help page. The Foo Fighters brought Astley to rickroll a concert in London the same year. While responses from Reddit users were mostly positive, the website Polygon wrote, "Westworld has finally killed the Rickroll". In the post-credits scene of Walt Disney Animation Studios' 2018 film Ralph Breaks the Internet, a fake sneak peek of Frozen II suddenly switches to Ralph singing "Never Gonna Give You Up" and replicating Astley's music video. Rickrolls also became popular at sports games. On 13 October 2019, during a Sunday Night NFL game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Los Angeles Chargers at the Chargers' stadium, the announcers played the beginning of the Styx song "Renegade", a standard at the Steelers' stadium, then switched to "Never Gonna Give You Up". 2020s resurgence Rickrolling saw a significant resurgence online in the 2020s, during the COVID-19 pandemic. In July 2021, the YouTube video for "Never Gonna Give You Up" reached 1 billion views, becoming the fourth 1980s song to do so; Astley responded in a Twitter video, "That is mind-blowing. The world is a wonderful and beautiful place, and I am very lucky." He also celebrated the event by selling signed copies of the song on vinyl, which quickly sold out. Activist Greta Thunberg performed a rickroll during an October 2021 climate-action speech at the Climate Live concert in Stockholm, in which she said, "We're no strangers to love", before being joined by another activist in singing and dancing to the song; Astley tweeted that the video was "fantastic". Astley recreated the original video clip in a 2022 advertisement for the California State Automobile Association. Physical advertisments for the agency included QR codes to this video to rickroll the viewers. In February 2025, in response to demands for the release of files related to the criminal investigation of Jeffrey Epstein, the Twitter account of Republicans on the House Judiciary Committee posted "#BREAKING: EPSTEIN FILES RELEASED" with a rickroll link. This post received a negative response from users, many of whom considered it inappropriate to joke about the subject, including Republican politician Anna Paulina Luna and right-wing activist Laura Loomer. In the final Class 12 mathematics exam of India's Central Board of Secondary Education held in March 2026, the QR code on the front of the some students' question papers linked to a rickroll, while others simply got the letter A, leading to claims that the paper was tampered or leaked. The examination board clarified that the papers were not compromised and that it would ensure that this would not happen again. ==Mechanism==

Forms of humour Rickrolling is a bait-and-switch joke in which the viewer clicks a link, expecting it to be something interesting—often involving sex, video games, or cats Like many memes, rickrolling is multimodal as it incorporates multiple elements—hypertext and a music video. Unlike forms of humour used in most memes, rickrolling is a prank as it creates a situation that has a victim without serious harm. However, according to cultural scholars Joanna Nowotny and Julian Reidy, a rickroll is unlike a typical prank or hoax as it is not directed toward a specific victim, while also being less physical than most pranks and less serious than most hoaxes. Nowotny and Reid further state that an online prank like rickrolling may occur spontaneously, as a physical prank cannot, and the nature of online spaces allows victims to respond, a typical feature of hoaxes but not pranks. Rickrolling, like the Trollface, is a meme primarily used for trolling; in contrast with other forms of trolling, it is fun rather than offensive. According to information scholars Madelyn Sanfilippo, Pnina Fichman, and Shannon Yang, forms of trolling such as rickrolling can create humour out of a reference recognised by an ingroup, distinguishing it from non-trolling humour. According to design scholar Ursula Murray Husted, members of the ingroup who recognise the meme respond positively to it and introduce it to newcomers by pranking them. As a meme that has had multiple waves of popularity for over a decade, rickrolling has evolved into various forms of humour that incorporate the same song. Other videos inspired by rickrolling include mashups, cover versions, and remixes of "Never Gonna Give You Up". its URL ending with the identifier "dQw4w9WgXcQ". Computer scientists Benoit Baudry and Martin Monperrus called this "the canonical rickroll URL", being the first result for the YouTube search string rick astley never gonna give you up. The oldest version of the video on YouTube was uploaded by Cotter when the meme began. May 2012 (caused by an antivirus software), in each case, it was restored within hours, but its removal received widespread online attention. Another common way to rickroll is to use a QR code, as this hides the target until it is scanned. According to a study by Ada Lerner et al, users of the Scan app scanned codes leading to the "dQw4w9WgXcQ" URL over 1,600 times between May 2013 and March 2014. Authors of academic literature also include rickrolls, such as by placing them in footnotes. Baudry and Monperrus documented such cases by searching Google Scholar for "dQw4w9WgXcQ" in 2022, finding 24 instances in which an author appeared to include the URL with the intent to rickroll. ==Analysis and impact==

The meme had a positive impact on Astley's career, He said it caused him to like "Never Gonna Give You Up" after "15 years of not singing it". Quoted in the Associated Press in 2022, he said, "The video and the song have drifted off into the ether and become something else, and I'm ever so grateful for it." After performing at Glastonbury Festival 2023, Astley said this would not have been possible "without my old songs and without the Rickrolling thing with its own little universe". That year, The Observer writer Barbara Ellen stated that the meme gave Astley an image of being cool, unlike most late-career musicians. Writing for MEL magazine, Brian VanHooker attributed the use of the song to its "randomness" and its status as a decades-old hit. Rickrolling is less negative than other pranks; According to Milner, rickrolling is a meme that appeals to those within Internet culture but also uses elements that resonate with the general public, comparing it to Doge, a meme incorporating a picture of a dog. Writing for Mashable, Chloe Bryan called rickrolling "universal" as it can easily be adapted to different contexts. Communication scholar Eric Harvey interprets rickrolling as making fun of the act of clicking a link for instant gratification. Blogger David Griner of Adfreak.com said in 2008 that rickrolling was the "perfect example of a viral video because the definition of one is something that gets out and is uncontrollable". Caldwell of Know Your Meme said in 2020, "It seems like the volume of memes these days means that none of them have any longevity, but for Rickrolling, it's such an old meme that it's like an 'old-school' Internet reference. It's nostalgic." Cotter expressed this sentiment in the description of his YouTube upload: "as long as trolls are still trolling, the Rick will never stop rolling". ==See also==