You DON'T know what it means to be Rickrolled? Are young people now old?

So, I was talking with a group of 20+ year-old college students at Campus by the Sea.

And I casually mentioned 'Rickrolling" someone on a blog post.

My comment was met with complete blank stares.

Blank.

Nada.

I stopped in my tracks.

"You don't know what it means to be "Rickrolled"?

Not a soul knew what I was talking about.

(Two college students later joined the group and did know.)

So, here we go from Wikipedia:

History

Main article: Never Gonna Give You Up

Rick Astley recorded "Never Gonna Give You Up" on his 1987 album Whenever You Need Somebody.^[4] The song, his solo debut single, was a number one hit on several international charts, including the Billboard Hot 100, Hot Adult Contemporary Tracks and UK Singles Chart. As a means of promoting the song, it was also made into Astley's first music video, which features him performing the song while dancing.^[5]

Rickrolling is said to have begun as a variant of an earlier prank from the imageboard 4chan known as duckrolling,^[6] in which a link to somewhere (such as a specific picture or news item) would instead lead to a thread or site containing an edited picture of a duck with wheels. The user at that point is said to have been "duckrolled".

	Rick Astley – Never Gonna Give You Up
Problems listening to this file? See media help.

The first known instance of a rickroll occurred in May 2007 on /v/, 4chan's video game board, where a link to the Rick Astley video was claimed to be a mirror of the first trailer for Grand Theft Auto IV (which was unavailable due to heavy traffic). The joke was confined to 4chan for a very brief period.^[6]

By May 2008,^[7] the practice had spread beyond 4chan and became an Internet phenomenon, eventually attracting coverage in the mainstream media.^[2][8][9] An April 2008 poll by SurveyUSA estimated that at least 18 million American adults had been rickrolled.^[10] In September 2009, Wired magazine published a guide to modern hoaxes which listed rickrolling as one of the better known beginner-level hoaxes, alongside the fake e-mail chain letter.^[11]

The original video on YouTube used for rickrolling was removed for terms of use violations in February 2010^[12] but was reposted within a day.^[13]

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The thing that hit me was this:

it started in 2007 and college students of 2012 did not even know what it was.

I started thinking about how quickly even the amazing things (ok, and the "not-so-amazing" things like Rickrolling) on the internet have shelf lives that are so short.

Rickrolling.

What?

Amazing.

Den

PS: If you want to see something completely different click on this one.

 

Comments

[Deb C]

Tyler must not have been in that group! He and Matt, as well as their friends, LOVE trying to get on another. Think it's a regional thing (knowing/not knowing)??