Rick Roll - History

History

Astley recorded "Never Gonna Give You Up" on his 1987 album Whenever You Need Somebody. 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.

Rickrolling is said to have begun as a variant of an earlier prank from the imageboard 4chan known as duckrolling, 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".

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.

By May 2008, the practice had spread beyond 4chan and became an Internet phenomenon, eventually attracting coverage in the mainstream media. An April 2008 poll by SurveyUSA estimated that at least 18 million American adults had been rickrolled. 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.

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