Have you been RickRolled?

I think my sister was a big Rick Astley fan, but I don’t think even she would take it this far. To give you a bit of background, a trend has emerged known as “RickRolling”, where blogs and forums trick innocent readers into clicking on a link. This link then takes them to videos of Rick Astley’s song, Never Gonna Give you up (and sometimes their own lip-synced versions of the dubious 80s hit) before finally putting them out of their misery by informing them, "You've been RickRolled".

The trend recently hit a crazy high when a group of 500 people turned up at London’s Liverpool Street Station for a one of “RickRolling” type flash mob (see movie below) after the event was publicised on Facebook. As you can imagine, the regular commuters at the station were a bit baffled by the whole thing, but still entertained – after all, it is a Rick Astley number.

The most interesting part of the story is Rick’s response to the whole thing: "If this had happened around some kind of rock song, with a lyric that really meant something ... I could kind of understand that, but it's a pop song; do you know what I mean? It doesn't have any weight behind it….. But maybe that's the irony behind it." – You reckon Rick?




MyTake – Things like this pop up all the time on the web, but this is so bizarre that it’s funny. What it does demonstrate is the power of a really good web-based idea, it can go on and off the web and become ownable by so many different people and communities. In this case, it started on the web, went around the blogs and forums, then went offline with the Liverpool Street stunt, and is now back online being talked about by a bunch more bloggers – including me!