i like how the prank of rickrolling was just making somebody listen to a popular and generally well liked song. like, haha, made you listen to one of the 80’s best pop hits, you loser
Comments
Log in with your Bluesky account to leave a comment
it's funny that it's from a time where that exact type of joke would probably lead you to some shock images of porn or gore or whatever. but no, it's the same trick, the same joke is being played on you, got you to click this thing ha ha, but it's chill
It was actually that videos took forever to load, because of dialup. So you would get sent a video, wait 5 minutes, and then it was just that song again.
and when it *was* transferred to youtube, people wrote bots that would sit in IRC where when they saw youtube links being posted the bot would visit the page, get the video title, and post it in the chat so people could know what was being linked before choosing to go there
Bands are different with different lead singers, even doing the same songs. I love watching a good band play behind a different front person. It brings out different shades.
Stock, Aitken and Waterman, the production team behind Rick Astley, had a studio in the mid 80s that was almost literally an assembly line. They would have the same gear set up and use the same techniques, rotating out the artists as needed. Every one of their songs sounds EXACTLY like NGGYU lol
With the advent of MIDI sequencers, samplers and drum machines, this method became dominant in pop music. Other producer teams like Jimmy Jam and Terry Lewis worked this way too. I think people got sick of pop music sounding like that after a while and by the early 90s, there was big backlash
It's more fun than that even because it begins as the duckroll (deceptive link redirects to wholesome image of duck with wheels) that mutates into the rickroll when internet video becomes a thing. It's the second generation wholesome redirect prank
Few years back, my kids hiked in woods behind our house and came home with some treasures which included a very old, very dirty cassette tape of “Never Gonna Give You Up.” I of course yelled, ”You’ve been rickrolled!” And cracked up. Much explaining had to follow. Not sure they ever got it.
Never gonna give this up!!! It’ll never let me down!!!
You can find a # to call related to this in my posts. Something about if you need to call a number that won’t give you the runaround.
i really really really hated Rick Astley. Not personally, of course. But i believed in rock'n'roll, and i still do, as adolescent as that sounds. As a way of living, of seeing the world. Rick Astley was music for super straight people (not sexually but socially)... people that had no rock'n'roll.
I took it more the way people seem to mean Whamaggedon -- the point isn't that you don't like the song, only that you were trying to avoid hearing it as part of a game/bit/schtick
I interviewed Rick Astley once for an entertainment mag, and he was incredibly down-to-earth, personable, and funny. One of my all-time favorites. I already liked him, but now getting Rickrolled is a compliment, like, "Hell fuckin yeah my day just improved!"
I think it was because it was at a point where the song and (especially) the video were total cheese more than anything, like semi-cringey than a “ha ha I got you to listen to a catchy song!! 😜😜😝😝”.
Someone who worked in the lab manual part of a drug development company made the QR code for all the manuals globally a Rick roll instead of a link to the help desk after he was fired. It was beautiful.
it was just the randomness that was funny, could have been anything, tho i think it took off because scrawny guy with soulful voice was the zeitgeist (chocolate rain went viral at the same time)
No. Everybody agreed or was a really dumb song. That's what's funny about it.
It wasn't ever a popular well liked song. It's corny as hell.
It was before the 80s revival thing started.
I like Rick Astley and I genuinely wish him the best. But I remember the late 80s, and this was the kind of insipid music that we got so sick of that we had to invent grunge.
Even funnier actually, the original joke was sending just a jpg of a duck toy, but one guy just REALLY loved Rick Astley So much he would make it photos of Rick Astley as the toy, and then later the song.
I got rickrolled twice, in real time. I was in England fall of '87 only to return back to the US to have the same song climb the charts here. True story.
Back in the MySpace days, my PC got an "Ooompa Loompa" virus. The song started to play as a little window popped up, saying, "The Ooompa Loompas own you.", and you couldn't do anything. I laughed so hard. 😄
this is a great story about how the song came about with Rick himself talking about it and the producer, it’s very entertaining, Rick was the tea boy at the studio before he got his break https://songexploder.net/rick-astley
It was pretty much universally reviled in the 1990's. It had been overplayed and was regarded as talentless formulaic garbage that radios forced on people who would rather have been listening to something with more bite.
It's the goofy dancing and looks into the camera and the fact that when rickrolling was introduced, we millennials were kinda laughing at the 80s. Sorry to be the bearer. We feel differently now though. Same team, same team! 😅
At the time, the cool kids hated Astley, and eventually when the norms caught up they hated him too. Hating Rick Astley was of major cultural important for a while.
Nick Lowe wrote
Do you remember rick astley?
He had a big fat hit that was ghastly
Those are my favorite pranks! The one’s where everyone wins, but one person is surprised by it!
One time my friends and i kept dropping honey onto our buddy’s lips while he was asleep. He kept licking his lips and smiling while he occasionally grunted
Those of us watching enjoyed and he clearly did
I Rick-Rolled my 4th grade students during an eLearning day. THEY LOVED IT! One of them hand wrote out the entire song and put it in a valentine to give our school library assistant and our V.P. played it at the Valentines Dance.
I've always been grateful this prank involves a song I don't mind hearing over and over. I think it would be bad luck to name songs that would have been much worse.
Nah. Don't be cowed. Rick's enduring contempt for Tory grifter David Morris (who once accompanied him on bass as a session musician) makes him an OK guy in my books.
Comments
In both cases, the song was openly hated
when RR first started in late 90s 00s
You were gen X or old millennial and that song is pop torture that we only heard in dentist offices etc
It's "you're lame" shade
site demographics overwhelmingly had cable modems or college dorm internet. almost nobody was on phone modems
also rickrolling predates youtube! people used to send links to WMV/ASF files!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nsCIeklgp1M
https://youtu.be/FLqn4_ZF5KI?si=3SrrNLdxFGj--p5q
You can find a # to call related to this in my posts. Something about if you need to call a number that won’t give you the runaround.
I think it was because it was at a point where the song and (especially) the video were total cheese more than anything, like semi-cringey than a “ha ha I got you to listen to a catchy song!! 😜😜😝😝”.
At least, that’s how I saw it.
Pretty innocuous now, of course!
It wasn't ever a popular well liked song. It's corny as hell.
It was before the 80s revival thing started.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mW61VTLhNjQ
@peoplepowerunited.bsky.social
@tompaine1.bsky.social
#boycott
Nick Lowe wrote
Do you remember rick astley?
He had a big fat hit that was ghastly
One time my friends and i kept dropping honey onto our buddy’s lips while he was asleep. He kept licking his lips and smiling while he occasionally grunted
Those of us watching enjoyed and he clearly did
Look at my profile pic 😂
https://youtu.be/JctNtRfHRLU?si=HWarKB9J0IQGPc8-
https://youtu.be/4B0HktX4xqQ?si=xac3OwBzKRNbCyre
https://youtu.be/oADU2PIzhD0?si=6GvyMySLUQ7DyY9O
https://youtu.be/_DEOmS8Mgjs?feature=shared