I keep hearing about Rickrolling. What does that mean?
I might be a little late on this one, but… rickrolling is a practical joke that emerged on the Internet and gained widespread popularity during the Spring of ’08. In order to “rickroll” someone, you send them a link to a web page which you claim is relevant to whatever topic you are discussing. The link however is not relevant at all — instead of leading to a legitimate resource on the topic in question, the link leads to the music video of Rick Astley’s 1987 hit “Never Gonna Give You Up”.
At the height of its popularity, rickrolling frequently made it onto television, and into sports and the mainstream media. There are numerous instances of journalists, television show hosts, and even entire crowds at sporting events being “live” rickrolled. The Wikipedia page on rickrolling contains numerous accounts of these live rickrollings.
The term “rickroll” is also sometimes used as a generic term to describe the practice of tricking someone into loading a web page that they did not intend to visit. Rickrolling originally evolved from the 4chan message board, where users would trick others into going to a web page that featured a picture of a duck.
