At the end of last week, Radiohead ended the countdown on a new website, www.radioheadlp7.com, in an effort to fool us all into thinking that some news would be announced on it. Turns out, they did announce some pretty big f'ing news, but another big piece of news slipped through the cracks. Radiohead Rick Rolled everybody on lp7.com before they announced their new album (now, the site actually links to official info). What is a Rick Roll, do you ask?
First of all, let us consult the Urban Dictionary (which these days carries more weight than the Oxford English Dictionary and that is badical, if you ask me) for their definition of "Rick Roll":
1. Rick Roll
When what you think is a link to something you want to see actually directs you to a video of Rick Astley singing "Never Gonna Give You Up." This is common in the WoW community.
Awww! Rick rolled again, thought this was the new movie trailer.
There seem to be at least three extremely popular destinations for the Rick Roll. They all, of course, are videos of Rick Astley's 1987 hit "Never Gonna Give You Up" and all three exist on YouTube. The oldest one was established by YouTube user Darksaberx on May 5th, 2007 and seems to be a Rick Roll about "Halo 3" gameplay. It's hard to tell whether or not this guy invented Rick Rolling, but others have followed in his footsteps. One video (uploaded on May 15th) currently has been viewed 2,380,818 and another (uploaded on May 28th) has been viewed 2,378,439 times.
That third Rick Roll is the product of an entire website, www.YouGotRickRolled.com. That site, it seems, may be the ultimate place to Rick Roll some fool. (That group, by the way, also seems to have a soft spot for the "Don't Tase Me, Bro" video.)
Since May, the phenomenon has blown up and the Rick Roll has found its way into popular culture. The song found its way onto last season's finale of "Family Guy" (on May 20th):
Wikipedia has addressed the Roll in its article on "Never Gonna Give You Up." AOL has acknowledged it. And, now I am writing about it and, in case you didn't know, I'm a pretty big deal.
The one question that must be asked after all of this is: Why Rick Astley? Why did he get so lucky? Does he have a new record coming out or something? Is this a publicity stunt?
Even the conspiracy theorist in me thinks that's doubtful -- Astley just got lucky. I, of course, am defining "lucky" as being the butt of 5 millions jokes. But, hey, without this, Rick Astley would've never showed up on the 2007 pop culture radar screen.
Because this trend is sure to die down soon, I wanted to offer a new one. Let me be the first to introduce the Ocean Wave. You can thank me later.
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