The Rickroll: Inside the most popular meme on the internet
From a friendly internet prank on 4chan to one of the longest-running and most relevant memes on the internet, with over a billion youtube views, the rickroll has solidified itself as the greatest meme the internet has ever made.
“Never Gonna give you up” was released over 30 years ago and instantly became a hit, topping every chart and becoming a household name. His fantastic dance moves, unique voice and persona made him stand out early on. His legacy was far from done despite his fallout with the music industry.
The meme initially started as the duck roll on 4chan and drew infancy in 2008 because of the release of the GTA IV trailer, which drew a lot of traffic on their website which caused it too crash. This caused people to be desperate, and some random internet user created an embedded link to a site claiming to have the video, but it redirected to Rick Astley's ‘Never gonna give you up, and as millions clicked, the rickroll was born. Unless you've been living under a rock, you have probably been rickrolled from shady giveaways to “horny women around your area” links. The rickroll has been the blueprint meme for its comical surprise or, most times, disappointment, and even youtube got onboard the prank in 2008 on April fools where it rickrolled all of their users.
As with most memes, the rickroll is not majorly about him or the song. It could have easily been the Michael Jackson roll. And as adversaries to the rickroll who say it is dumb and pointless, fail to realise is that we live in a world where nothing makes sense. We get into pointless wars. We hate each other for things we can not control. And as we are now more interconnected than ever before, it becomes increasingly hard to live in a bubble anymore. Recent events have forced us to live in the reality of how terrible the world is, which is hard. Most people want to escape that, and I find it hard to see why they would not, with all the bad the internet has caused. It has become a space where irrespective of where you are from and what you look like, you can turn something as seemingly stupid as a rickroll into a cultural phenomenon everyone can enjoy, and I find that very wholesome.
And as the world gets more gloomy, let's be kind to one another and maybe try rickrolling someone today :) https://youtu.be/dQw4w9WgXcQ.
