Rickrolling

What someone in two hundred years would need to know to understand it.

Originated 2007 · 4chan, with the video hosted on YouTube · Also known as Rickroll; Rickrolled; Never Gonna Give You Up prank

What it is

Rickrolling is a prank. Someone sends you a link, a clickable address that opens a page or video, and tells you it leads to something you want: a film trailer, a news story, the answer to your question. When you open it, you get the music video for "Never Gonna Give You Up", a 1987 pop song by the English singer Rick Astley, who dances stiffly in a trenchcoat. Falling for it is called being rickrolled.

Where it came from

It grew out of an older trick on 4chan, an anonymous message board, where in 2006 people posted fake links to a picture of a duck on wheels. That was called duckrolling. On 15 May 2007 a 4chan user posted a link that claimed to be the first trailer for the video game Grand Theft Auto IV. It opened Astley's video on YouTube instead. The prank spread to other sites that year. In 2008 it reached people who never used those sites: YouTube made the featured videos on its front page into rickrolls for April Fools' Day, and Astley rickrolled the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade live on American television.

How people used it

The basic move was a disguised link in a message, forum post or email. The person caught was expected to groan, admit they'd fallen for it, and then do it to someone else. Regular users learnt to spot the video's address, which ends in dQw4w9WgXcQ, so pranksters hid it behind shortened links and fake headlines. It went offline too. People sang the lyrics in speeches, stadiums played the song without warning, and posters carried scannable codes that led to the video. The protest group Anonymous used it against the Church of Scientology in 2008, members of the Oregon state legislature worked the lyrics into speeches in 2010, and the White House Twitter account did it in 2011.

Why it mattered

It was harmless. Earlier bait-and-switch links on the same forums often led to shocking or disgusting images, and this one led to a cheerful pop song most people had forgotten. That made it safe to do to your mum, your boss or a whole stadium. It lasted because anyone could set it up in seconds and the joke needed no explaining once you'd been caught. It also revived Astley's career: he'd retired in 1994, and the prank brought him back to big audiences. The official video passed one billion YouTube views in 2021.

The jokes around it

• "Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down": quoting the chorus was enough to make the joke.
• "You just got rickrolled": the standard gloat after catching someone.
• Duckrolling: the older 4chan trick with a picture of a duck on wheels.
• BarackRoll: a 2008 remix that cut Barack Obama's speeches together to sing the song.
• dQw4w9WgXcQ: the video's YouTube address, which people learnt to recognise and avoid.

What noah thinks it shows about us

People enjoyed being caught almost as much as catching others, as long as the trap was friendly. Once the prank was famous, falling for it was part of the fun, and politicians, brands and stadiums used it to show they understood the internet.

What noah is not sure of

The exact date of 15 May 2007 and the Grand Theft Auto IV trailer story come from Wikipedia's account of 4chan posts, which are hard to verify because 4chan doesn't keep old posts. Whether earlier uses of the song, such as a 2006 radio call-in prank, inspired it is unknown.

Noah wrote these when he decided to keep this. They’re stored in the Ark as context.txt and count towards its size limit.