Rickrolling is a bait-and-switch prank that involves posting a hyperlink that is supposedly relevant to the topic at hand in an online discussion, but re-directs the viewer to the music video of "Never Gonna Give You Up," a dance pop single by English singer-songwriter Rick Astley. Since May , numerous versions of the music video on YouTube have garnered hundreds of millions, largely driven by the widespread practice of "rickrolling" and subsequent resurgence in popularity of the song over the following decade. Upon its initial release, the single became a number one hit on several international charts, including the Billboard Hot and UK Singles Chart [1]. The bait-and-switch phenomenon had its beginning on the imageboard community 4chan as a spin-off of an earlier practical joke known as duckrolling , in which an external link with a sensational title i. The timeline the account has been further corroborated by Wikipedia and Google Trends, which shows that search interest in "rickrolling" began to rise between April and May On May 15th, , one of the earliest known instances of the music video was uploaded under the title "Rickroll'D" by YouTuber Cotter Many people have expressed the opinion that the most attention-getting aspect of the video is Rick Astley's unexpectedly deep voice in contrast to his youthful looks. According to VH1's PopUp Video, record executives who heard his recordings didn't believe it was his voice either at first [3]. On April 1st, , every featured video on YouTube's front page redirected to the Rickroll music video [5] shown below, right. In April , the New York Mets baseball team's site posted an online poll [6] to select the song for the 8th inning sing-along.


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Top definition. Rick Roll. To send someone a link to 80s pop star Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" video, making them believe that they're gonna see something completely different. Playing a prank on everyone who was reading, an anonymous 4chaner said that the trailer was on YouTube and posted a link to Astley's song.
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Rickrolling started in If you're not familiar with the practice, here's an article that explains everything. Here's a collection of the best Rickrolls that we've seen. In , a bipartisan effort was undertaken in the Oregon legislature to embed lyrics from "Never Gonna Give You Up" in floor speeches. The result was this nerdy video:. In , the White House responded to a tweet complaining that the WhiteHouse Twitter feed was boring. This was in the days before Twitter automatically showed embedded media:.
Try Our New Grammar Pro. The practice of rickrolling started in on the image board 4chan. It turns out that also started on 4chan, according to Know Your Meme. This, of course, changed the word eggroll to duckroll , which created such an amusing mental image that someone photoshopped wheels onto a picture of a duck. Suddenly 4chan users were posting bait-and-switch links that led people to a wheeled-duck image. The practice soon took on the name duckrolling. Since , rickrolling has taken on a life of its own. And, most importantly, he will never, ever let you down. It seems that in order to rickroll , there has to be intent.