Why Rickrolling Never Dies: The Internet's Ultimate Inside Joke

okay here's a question for you what's the one joke that's been running for almost twenty years and somehow just does not get old oh that's a dangerous question i feel like i'm about to get tricked just by answering it exactly that's the whole point last week we talked about leave britney alone and how it captured this really specific raw moment of celebrity culture breaking down but this is different this isn't a moment it's a machine a perfect self replicating joke machine you're talking about rick rolling i am talking about the single most durable prank in the history of the internet and the part that's so wild is that it started like so many things on

4chan in 2007 but it wasn't even the original idea wait it wasn't i thought it just appeared no first there was something called duck rolling where people would get linked to a picture of a duck on wheels it was just you know absurdist and pointless but then in may 2007 someone swapped the duck for rick astley's music video for never gonna give you up okay but why that song it was already twenty years old at that point that's the genius of it the song came out in 1987 it's this super earnest high production shoulder padded piece of pop perfection and the prank is this low stakes bait and switch bit of digital mischief the first big one was a link promising a trailer for grand theft auto four imagine expecting this gritty violent

game and instead you get never gonna give you up the whiplash must have been incredible so it's the contrast that makes it work it's all about the contrast it's not mean it's not political the only price you pay is three seconds of your time and having a certified banger stuck in your head it's the friendliest prank possible so how did a 4chan inside joke get so big that my grandma knows what it is oh april fool's day 2008 that was the day the meme escaped the lab youtube got in on it and made every single video on their featured page redirect to rick astley woah really the whole platform the whole front page millions of people got rickrolled simultaneously it was a global initiation ceremony after that it was everywhere rick astley himself popped out of a float at the macy's thanksgiving day parade that year to do it live the meme had officially breached containment that's amazing so it's sort of like the digital version of a knock knock joke it's not about the

punchline being a surprise anymore it's about the ritual of telling it that is a perfect way to put it it pioneered this specific kind of participatory prank it's not a static image you just look at it's an action you have to click the link you have to fall for it it requires your participation and because it's so harmless it just keeps going and it's had a total resurgence right i saw the video hit a billion views on youtube a few years ago a billion in july 2021 and it's because of tiktok and zoom where a whole new generation discovered it during the pandemic it's a cross generational cultural symbol now so it's gone from a

prank to a cultural institution it's gone from a prank to a blue chip marketing strategy get this in 2021 an insurance company worked with deloitte digital to create a new rickroll they put qr codes in public places people scanned them and it exploded oh no oh yes they spent $540,000 on it within a week they had generated $36,000,000 in what they call earned media that is a 65 times return on investment you're kidding for a rick roll for a rick roll it proves the meme isn't just funny it has massive quantifiable cultural power it's this shared language we all speak and the best part is that rick astley himself is so cool about it he

seems to genuinely love it he's got the absolute perfect attitude he once said it has a life of its own at this point and that he just appreciates the love fun and laughter that surrounds it he gets it the song doesn't belong to him anymore it belongs to the internet it belongs to all of us it's this weirdly wholesome perpetually regenerating piece of digital folklore and honestly in a world of online toxicity maybe a harmless prank that ends with a great pop song is something we should hang on to