Jennifer Dikes

When I hear about an internet meme, it usually means that it is beyond over. So when I hear about Rickrolling, it was long finished as a phenomenon.

(In case you’re more behind the times than me, according to MentalFloss:’ “to Rickroll” someone is to sucker them into clicking on a particularly tempting link, which then turns out to be the music video for Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”. Hit counts for the Astley video online indicate that between 13 and 18 million people have been Rickrolled thus far — and in an amazing twist, the phenomenon has begun to spread (virally?) to the real world. Public events like basketball games, local newscasts, even Scientologists have been Rickrolled. On April Fool’s Day 2008, YouTube Rickrolled the world by making every one of their front page videos a link to “Never Gonna Give You Up”.)

So, this old meme has been updated and gone political. Barack Obama…like you’ve never heard him before! Welcome to the BarackRoll. And watch John McCain get BarackRoll’d!!. I assume that this is totally done since I know about it.