Mike McCready

There’s a video that’s been making the rounds that millions of people have seen and that is generating a LOT of buzz. It’s gotten mainstream media coverage and the video is only about 3 minutes long and it has to do with three simple things you can do to become wealthy in about 30 days. No kidding. Here it is:

OK. Just kidding. That’s a music video from the 80’s of a song called “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley. More than 18 million Americans have seen this video (see below).

That’s A LOT OF VIEWS!!!

It’s not that people are so into this video. It’s the result of an Internet phenomenon called rickrolling, and if you viewed the above video you too were rickrolled. This video is doing for Rick Astley’s career what 6 Degrees did for Kevin Bacon’s!

According to Wikipedia: Rickrolling is a prank and Internet meme involving the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song “Never Gonna Give You Up”. In a Rick Roll, a person provides a link they claim is relevant to the topic at hand which actually takes the user to the Astley video. The URL can be masked or obfuscated in some manner so that the user cannot determine the true source of the link without clicking (and thus satisfying their curiosity). It can also mean playing the song loudly in public in order to be disruptive. A person who falls for the prank is said to be “rickrolled”.

The practice began as a variant of an earlier prank originating from the imageboard 4chan called duckrolling, in which a link to a popular celebrity or news item would instead lead to a photoshopped picture of a duck with wheels.

By May 2007, the practice had become widespread, and it eventually began to garner some coverage in the mainstream media. An April 2008 poll by SurveyUSA estimated that 18 million Americans have been rickrolled.

There’s nothing topical or leading edge about this post. Obviously, millions and millions of people know about this but I find many many people who have never heard of it so i thought I’d just help spread the word a little further and in the process rickroll you too.

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