No one wants to be Rickrolled. I suppose it could have been funny, once, for about 15 minutes. I didn't think it was all that funny to begin with, but there it is -- a part of the lexicon. However, it remains obscure, and sometimes hard to explain to non-technical folks. Why should rickrolling be hard to explain? Here's my tale.
My wife says to me "here's a video our son was in," and I laughed her off. Yes, our son is a musician in LA, but -- come on -- "here's a video" is just an invitation to a rickrolling.
But -- it turns out -- he's in the backing band for the video promoting Barry Manilow's Dance Hits of the 80's.
"Really?" I said. "Send me the link."
So she sends me Never Gonna Give You Up - Barry Manilow .
I about fell out of my chair. My son is in a video of the Barry Manilow cover of the canonical rickrolling tune.
I wasn't -- technically -- rickrolled. But since it's the same tune, I think I was meta-rickrolled. Now that's kind of funny.
Explain That
So we forward the link throughout the family. Including the oh-so-nerdy footnote that this is the rickrolling tune. But since it isn't Rick Astley, it isn't a proper rickrolling.
A totally non-technical friend asks for an example of rickrolling. So I have to reply to everyone with the standard The Grand Theft Auto IV trailer .
Which -- apparently -- finally clicked with my father what it meant to be Rickrolled, and why his grandson being in a video version of that tune was -- in a household of high-tech nerds -- rather funny.
Too Much Thinking
There was some residual email traffic trying to figure out what -- exactly -- the prank was. There was speculation that perhaps my son had doctored some Barry Manilow video to punch in his face over some other musician.
"No," I had to explain. "It's not that sophisticated. It's simply a link which says one thing, but actually links to Rick Astley." Don't think deeply about it; it's a simple prank. It wasn't really that complex, or funny.
No sooner do I get it sorted out, than the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade has actual Rick Astley actually doing Never Gonna Give You Up, Rickrolling the world. That lead to a flurry of text and email among the family members.
Now, it's starting to get funny. I'm tangentially related to the rickrolling trifecta: Rick Astley , Barry Manilow covering it innocently, and Rick Astley, again covering it ironically.