It is 80 degrees here in Los Angeles, yet I
still wear a turtleneck because it makes me look sophisticated. For as long as the internet has
existed, there have been people pulling all kinds of practical jokes on it. But as this information
superhighway grew in its capability and complexity, people were able to get more creative,
more original with it. And with YouTube dominating the entire space in 2007, this had never been
easier, and it’s started to take on new forms. For example, here is just ONE example of these online
jokes that you probably haven’t seen in a while. [RICKROLL] Ha! Ha! I got you! You clicked on this
video, knowing what it was going to be about, but I still got you! Yes, one of the most famous
and classic examples of this would of course be the Rick Roll. As we all know its premise is
very simple. You create a hyperlink and give it a disguise, some kind of interesting call
to action or title that it’ll incentivize the target to want to click on it, and before they
know it, boom, Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” appears and they have been bamboozled. It
is a tradition as old as YouTube itself, in fact, it may be even older. But regardless, it became
one of the biggest memes on the internet in 2008, and eventually branched its way beyond the screen
out into the real world, becoming featured in movies, protests, infiltrating the MTV awards,
even getting Rick Astley himself involved. It was really was, in many respects, a defining
moment for YouTube as a community. But unlike other practical jokes from the internet at the
time, Rick Rolling has a special charm to it that really makes it standout. And it all has to do
with the complete randomness of its nature as well as the effect it has—I don’t know what that was—as
well as the effect it has on its target. Because why? Pranks are meant to be at the expense of the
person whose victim to it. Why some random music video to a song that was popular in 1987? Keep
watching to find out! The answer may surprise you! [RICKROLL] Okay, I’ll stop. [CHIME SOUND] You look a little bored. Am I boring you?
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you to Manta Sleep for sponsoring this video. Now the story of the famous Rick Roll starts with
the man, the myth, the legend, Rick Astley of course. Never Gonna Give You Up was actually his
debut hit! Now I won’t get into the entire history behind the song itself and how it was created,
but I will provide some historical context for why it was so popular, and how that pertains to
its reemergence online. When you watch this music video, what are some of the first things that come
to your mind? Flashy, very flamboyant, vibrant, almost gaudy in its appearance, accompanied by
a very deep, masculine voice that’s completely contrasting in this visual tone. A “voice doesn’t
match the body” situation. It’s very unexpected and off-putting but in a charming way. And if you
look at many aspects of 80s pop culture as, you will see this style was everywhere. The 80s, as a
whole, were very camp. Now, this could very well apply to other decades too, but the 80s were
in a special spot. It had been 20 years since the Counterculture and Sexual Revolution of the
1960s, and so the rules on conformity had really loosened since then, but still had a ways to go
until it met the rules and expectations that the world had when Rick Rolling showed up. And this
consequently created a very unique culture in the 80s that also carried a bit of ambivalence. It was
liberal in its attitudes, yet also conservative. [LOW VOICE SINGING]
Now, this video won’t be a whole decadeology deep-dive into 1980s culture, (though if you
guys want that, please, do leave a comment), so I’ll just give you the jist of it. This artform
was especially visible in a new genre of music derived from late 70s English punk rock, known as
New Wave. New Wave quickly became very popular, sparking what is known by historians as the
“second British invasion” and just like that, this style was now very common in music videos.
And Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” although not nearly as showy as other songs
and music videos, did exhibit many of these qualities. The song was a national hit.
But of course, as time goes on, the world changes and so does the culture
and the people in it. And by the mid-2000s, obviously things were very different. The 80s
were recent enough for young adults to kind of remember it from their childhoods, but long ago
for them to look back on it and think “Oh wow, we dressed like that?” “We sang those songs?”
And many of these young adults are now using sites like YouTube. And YouTube, just like every
website, takes on internet humor, just in its own way. Just like how you may get duped into clicking
on a gross image, now you end up clicking on a prank video. But what is the basic setup of a
prank? You find your target, you lure them into doing something that advances the prank by giving
them false information, and during the big reveal, you subvert their expectations but you also sort
of punish and humiliate them for falling for it in the first place. “It is just a prank, brother.”
And before Rick Roll, you had something called the “screamer.” Can you pass
ALL the levels to this IMPOSSIBLE maze game? Ahh! Scary ghost face! An ad for a brand new car?
Ah! Ghost face! It is the perfect bait and switch that not only makes the victim feel stupid,
but also punishes them for their own gullibility. [SCREAMS] And YouTube, the video-sharing site, made these
very popular! And the site’s design at the time allowed for screamers to blend right in with
normal videos. Unless they were part of the YouTube Partner program, an uploader could not
choose the thumbnail of their video. Instead, the thumbnail would just be the frame of the exact
middle of the video. They also had the option to choose a frame from the first half or the third
half. But that was it. Luckily there was an easy workaround to this though. Go into your video
editor, and replace that one frame with whatever image you want. It shows up SO briefly it doesn’t
even interrupt the flow of the video. So now, on YouTube you have videos with some really crazy,
but interesting thumbnails, just taken from that one frame, even if the rest of the video was
complete nonsense. And YouTube’s algorithm at the time measured views based on how many clicks a
video got. So even if someone clicked on a video, saw that it was fake, and immediately clicked off,
they would still count as a view. You now have something called “clickbait.” And screamers are
a sort of sister category to clickbait. And keep in mind this is also before likes and dislikes
were a thing. Instead, you had star ratings, which is a bit more difficult to read if you’re
not super familiar with the film industry. I mean, who the hell am I, Siskel and Ebert? I sure look
like it. The point is, you now have videos like “Austin Powers 4 Teaser Trailer” and it’s
a picture of Mike Myers’s face, and it has a bunch of views, so it has to be legit! And as
you’re watching it, and you’re thinking “wait, isn’t this from the second movie, haven’t I
seen this before—Ahh! Ghost face! Now you can’t even tell the difference between a real and fake
video, and everything is just a roll of the dice. But why does it have to be a jumpscare? Isn’t
that kind of mean? Why does the victim of the prank need to be humiliated? Can’t a prank just
be innocent, like “Ah! You got me” and end there? Well on April Fools’ Day of 2007, the founder of
4chan created a basic macro on the site where it replaced the word “egg” with “duck.” And so
“eggroll” quickly became “duckroll.” The site thought it was so funny they even created an image
to accompany it. And shortly after, there were hyperlinks everywhere with very interesting titles
that would just lead to the duckroll picture. And then the trailer for Grant Theft Auto 4 comes
out on Rockstar’s website, which ends up crashing because of all the traffic (refer to the “Michael
Jackson effect” for an explanation on that), but anyway, people naturally start uploading mirrors
of it to YouTube. And one kid named Shawn Cotter decides to put a little spin on it. The duckroll
picture just isn’t enough. This is YouTube. It’s gotta be a video. And so Shawn googles the top
songs from the year he was born, which was 1987, and sure enough, Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna
Give You Up” appears. And it’s not a jumpscare, it’s not crude. It’s just a music video, that’s
silly and dated enough to tell the viewer that they just got pranked. Instead of duckroll, he
calls it “RickRoll” and so Shawn starts sharing links to the GTA 4 trailer that direct them
to his upload of the song, and just like that, RickRolling was born. The original upload still
even exists today, at over 95 million views! Many of whom undeniably came against their will. But
as unique of a scenario this is, there are still earlier examples of RickRolling, An episode of
It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia back in 2005 used the song as comic relief. A caller into a
radio station in 2006 played the song on air as a joke instead of talking. Family Guy parodied
the song just 5 days after the original RickRoll video was uploaded. There was just a lot of people
who understood the novelty this song had as being the quintessential work of all 80s tropes, and
great minds think alike I suppose. Either way, Rick Rolling was now a YouTube sensation,
coexisting with all those screamer videos, further adding to that unpredictability of which
videos were legit and which ones were, well, not so much. It really helped in giving YouTube
that No Man’s Land, Wild West feel that the site had at the time. They even put it all over the
homepage in April Fools of 2008. But now it was starting to rub off on the real world too! The San
Diego Padres started playing Neil Diamond’s Sweet Caroline during a game and replaced the chorus
with a RickRoll. The song was even played at a protest for the Church of Scientology.
During the 2008 MTV Europe Music Awards, SO many people, millions of them, voted for
Rick Astley, who was a write-in candidate, that he ended up being the winner!
Rick Astley himself even got RickRolled, and that was actually how he discovered the
phenomenon. He clicked on a link thinking it was something else, but it was just him. Initially, he
was just confused and pretty quiet about the whole thing. He felt that capitalizing would just
be kinda weird and maybe even inappropriate, so for a good moment he just didn’t really do
anything. Until everyone started asking him to. During the 2008 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade,
he showed up, singing the song! Which made the entire situation even more wholesome than it
already was. The guy who was the butt of the joke was now there having fun with it.
And here were are now. The generation that started the Rick Roll is now much older,
and a new generation has taken over YouTube, the generation once removed. The upload of the
very first Rick Roll is as old to us now as the release of Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up”
was to the first Rick Roll. Just like how it was with the 80s, a lot has changed since the 2000s.
And some people today who aren’t exactly familiar with the Rick Roll are just gonna look at it and
go “What is this? I don’t get.” And that’s exactly why it exists. It not only serves as a reminder
that not all jokes have to be at the expense of someone’s integrity, but that we, as people, do
change and will always change, and that we still, even through that, will find ways to relate
with each other. Rick Astley himself even talked about this in an interview, and he bring up a
very interesting point that I will show here. [RICKROLL]
Ha! Ha! Ha! Ha-ha-have-to-change-that-oil-ha-ha. It never gets old. At least not for me. But
if you’re sick of it, there IS a way you can prevent yourself from ever getting Rick
Rolled again, and that’s through supporting me on Patreon. Patreon.com/NationSquid.
You can also buy me a coffee. That’s not a Rick Roll link because, uh, money.
Hey, just trying to help you out. A special thanks to my patrons
and channel members for making this video possible. Thank you so much
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