What is a Rickroll?

A Rickroll is a hotlink which allegedly leads to something absorbing and accordant to the chat at hand, but in fact acreage the brash user on a video of Rick Astley singing his 1980s hit “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Someone who clicks on such a hotlink is said to accept been “Rickrolled,” and there are abundant derivatives of the Rickroll, all of which affection antic songs. This Internet meme exploded in 2007, and became ample abundant to be featured in the boilerplate media on several occasions.

There is some agitation as to the origins of the Rickroll. Obviously, Internet users accept been pranking anniversary added with artificial links back continued afore the Rickroll came into prominence, and several Internet communities affirmation to accept aesthetic the Rickroll. The a lot of acceptable culprit abaft the boilerplate Rickroll is 4chan, an angel administration association which originally created the duckroll, a hotlink which beatific users to an activated angel of a rolling board duck, or a photoshopped account of a avoid with wheels.

In a able-bodied accomplished Rickroll, a user will affirmation to accept begin an alarming site, image, or video, like a leaked bivouac for an accessible affection film, and he or she will accommodate the link. If users bang on the link, instead of seeing the above alarming site, they appointment Rick Astley's acclaimed video; if they acknowledgment to complain, the antic will aggravate them for accepting been Rickrolled.

In a added insidious adaptation of the Rickroll, the hotlink leads to a website with anchored scripts which wreak calamity on the user's computer. For example, the browser may resize and alpha bent about the awning to the beat, or a alternation of absurdity letters with the lyrics of the songs will pop up. Usually this is added acid than harmful, although users are about affected to abdicate their browsers to accord with the problem.

Rick Astley himself has said that he finds the Rickroll amusing, and he is conceivably aswell admiring to see that his song still gets airtime, address of the Rickroll. The ambit of a Rickroll knows no bounds; in accession to getting acclimated on account boards all over the Internet and in burning messaging, the Rickroll was aswell acclimated in an April Fools' Day antic by the accepted video-sharing account YouTube, which angry all of its hyperlinks into links to a video of “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

Although a Rickroll is about meant in controllable acceptable fun, Internet users should watch out for artificial links. Creative hackers accept been accepted to annex sites with awful cipher which could accident a computer. If a hotlink looks alien to you, you may wish to run it through a seek engine like Google, which will generally be able to acquaint you if it is safe to bang or not.