I was searching the internet for videos of Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade (the one thing I miss most about the holiday since I’ve lived away from the US). They don’t show the parade online – hard to imagine these days, especially as it something from the USA – but you can get clips here and there. I went straight to YouTube and searched and found loads of references to Rick Rolling. I had no clue what it was, but found a clip that had ‘Rick Astley performs at Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade’ so clicked on it, but it was just the video for ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ from the ’80s, so went back and clicked on another link that showed the actual ‘performance’ by Rick Astley lip synching to the original track on the Cartoon Network float. The comments to the video were mentioning ‘Rick Rolling’ again so I did a search.
“The 1987 tune has become the subject of an online phenomenon called “rickrolling,” in which a Web user is tricked into clicking on the link to the song’s music video. Real-life rickrolling–randomly playing the song as a means of surprise or disruption–has turned into a popular offshoot among pranksters.” (thanks to pranks.com for that definition). Click here to read more.
As a young adult of the ’80s I am happy that all the old – and I mean OLD – icons coming out of the woodwork and bring back so many wonderful (and not so wonderful — like my Annie Lennox Eurythmic’s era hair style) memories. I was pretty amused that this phenomenon has come about because of this.
