The precursor to rickrolling was an earlier meme known as “duck rolling”. Sometime in 2006, a 4chan image board site moderator, Christopher “m00t” Poole, implemented a word filter replacing the word “egg” with “duck” as a gag. On one thread, where “eggroll” had become “duckroll”, an anonymous user posted an edited image of a duck with wheels, calling it a “duckroll”. The image caught on across 4chan, becoming the target of a hyperlink with an otherwise interesting title, with a user clicking through having been stated to be “duck rolled”.

Then, in March 2007, the first trailer for the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto IV was released onto the Rockstar Games website. Viewership was so high that it crashed Rockstar's site. Several users helped to post mirrors of the video on different sites, but one user on 4chan, Shawn Cotter, had linked to the "Never Gonna Give You Up" video claiming to be the trailer, tricking numerous readers into the bait-and-switch.

This practice quickly replaced duck rolling, and so was born the practice of “rickrolling”.

Rickrolling started to appear in more mainstream sources during 2008.YouTube's April Fools joke from that year made featured video hyperlinks on the site's home page end up on the music video.

Then, during the 2008 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, a float featuring characters from the children's show Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends was performing a routine. Suddenly, the music cut, and Rick Astley himself appeared on the float, lip-syncing to "Never Gonna Give You Up”. It was one of the most public, real-life examples of rickrolling for which Astley was paid a rather large performance fee.

In September 2009, Wired magazine published a guide to modern hoaxes that listed rickrolling as one of the better known beginner-level hoaxes, and the term has been extended to simple hidden use of the song's lyrics. In 2011, members of the Oregon legislature slipped snippets of the song's lyrics into speeches they gave on the floor of the legislature. Aides later stitched together a video compilation of these snippets into a full song. Watch it HERE.

Rickrolling saw a massive resurgence online in the early 2020s. In online classes on Zoom during the worldwide COVID-19 lockdown, students often rickrolled their classmates and teachers.

Greta Thunberg rickrolled her followers on April Fools' Day 2021 by posting a link to “a climate-related video” that linked to Astley's music video. She followed this on 16 October 2021 with a climate-action speech at the Climate Live concert in Stockholm in which she said, “We're no strangers to love ... You know the rules and so do I”, followed by singing the song and dancing to it, to great applause. It’s cute. Astley tweeted his thanks.

Even the TV series Ted Lasso got in on the act by rickrolling all of us during the funeral service for Rebecca’s father. The scene was notionally about the song and not the meme, the song being a family favourite. But the writers’ choice was just too conveniently memey to be unrelated.

Astley was initially hesitant about using his newfound celebrity from the meme to further his career … but he soon got over his hesitance ;) … and he continues to embrace the success. To coincide with the 35th birthday of the song in 2022 he recreated the iconic video for a 2022 California State Automobile Association Insurance Group advertisement. In the video, one polo-clad dancer checks off a list on a white board that notably both mimics the song lyrics and tells viewers all the things that the insurance company will never do to them.

You know the rules, and so do I … Click HERE
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References

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickrolling
https://people.com/music/rick-astley-recreates-iconic-never-gonna-give-you-up-video-35-years-after-release/

Images

1. Video. Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up (Official Music Video)
2. Duckroll via 4chan
3. Video: Macy's Thanksgiving Parade Rickroll 2008
4. Video: A bipartisan group of legislators won't give up on Oregon, 2011
5. Video: Greta Thunberg Rickrolls Climate Concert, 2021
6. Video: Ted Lasso Rick Roll us on a Funeral, 2021
7. Rick Astley tweet from 2022
8. California State Automobile Association Insurance Group video, 2022
9. There's a rickroll extension available for Chrome browser
10. Along with another one that will guard you against being rickrolled :)
11. Book: Never: The Autobiography, Rick Astley, October 2024