Thursday, January 15, 2009

"Rickrolled?"

I, The Hawg, am often behind the times a bit.

I suppose that happens to those of us about to hit 40-years-old. Yes, pop culture changes on us and we just don't care anymore.

Regardless, there are some things I still find wildly amusing. For some reason, it's become common to get "Rickrolled" on the Internet. Perhaps you get e-mailed a link from a friend that cleverly steers you to a video of rick Rick Astley singing his classic Never Gonna Give You Up. Maybe you find a video you want to watch on the Internet and ole Rick pops up about halfway through it.

The whole "Rickrolling" thing has, evidently, taken a turn for the worse in at least one American city. Take a look at this article a friend of mine at work sent me:


Truth be told, I couldn't find a town on the map called "Shalton" or a newspaper called The Daily that might report news in such a city. Still, it's a fascinating story in that I could very well see this kind of thing happening somewhere.

And what the hell is it about Rick Astley these days, anyway? I thought his 15 minutes of fame was up in the 1980s. I don't understand why he's popping up now and I wish someone would explain it to me.

Furthermore, if people really are going around listening to Astley and beating up people, what the hell are they thinking? Astley banged out a rather sissy form of pop that would likely inspire all the violence of an Elton John concert. I mean, just take a look at this video:


Maybe when I blare Rick's big hit through the office tomorrow for the sheer hell of it all will be revealed to me. Will my fellow employees react with horror, get furious or dance around with gleeful abandon?

7 comments:

Paul Eilers said...

They'll probably be whistling that tune all day long, because it's Friday!

"Never gonna give you up, never gonna let you down..."

Anonymous said...

my mets got rick rolled last season...in an effort to allow us to choose the sound track to our hopes and dreams being crushed they had an online poll for fans to choose the new 8th inning song (they had ripped off the redsox by playing sweet caroline the prior 2 seasons). silly folks they are, they left a write in vote.

after realizing the prank they decided they would take the top 5 songs and play em at games...the one with the biggest crowd reaction won. in essence they did exactly what they were going to do in the first place...play whatever they wanted.

in the long run the joke was on the fans. they rick rolled us right back, getting us to file into shea stadium on the last day of the season for the second straight year knowing a win would send us to the playoffs and promptly lost.

then they threw a party. ya can't make that stuff up and no i'm not at all bitter.

Da Old Man said...

For some reason, he is having a revival. The 80's are back, and the worst parts are what is leading the charge.
Go figure.

Matt said...

That video is a graphic reminder of everything I hated about the eighties (although, I guess I didn't hate it that much when I was wearing some of those famous eighties clothing styles).

Gee, thanks for the reminder, Hawg! By the way, I think you've been duped with the "newspaper" article. Check out this link...

http://www.fodey.com/generators/newspaper/snippet.asp

Ms. O. D. said...

i'm still scratching my head over this whole Rickroll thingy I just don't understand it!

Anonymous said...

The original:

http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=duckroll

However, given people's propensity for linking to videos on youtube, the bait-and-switch of the duckroll was found to have more effect if the video you were expecting was replaced with quite possibly the worst music video ever created... hence, the "rickroll".

One of the big problems with websites like "4chan" is that because of how amazingly funny some people find it, they will find any excuse to show others that they're a part of it like it's some giant in-joke, and that's why you get crap like this.

If you can wade through the sheer amounts of bullshit on it, encyclopediadramatica has slivers of truth about each of the imageboard/forum memes and how they started, but the site tends to use a language all it's own so at times it's a little hard to decipher.

Hope I shed some light on the subject. :D

HawgWyld said...

Paul -- Sadly, I never got around to playing it on Friday. I'll get there eventually, however.

Chris -- Funny stuff. It could be worse -- you could root for Pittsburgh like me.

Oh, the misery!

Da Old Man -- That's too bad. There were some great things about the 1980s thanks to bands like the Replacements, Cars, Police et al.

Matt -- Thanks for the tip! I'll have to play with that a bit...

Ms. O.D. -- Neither do I...

Fwaggle -- Heh. That sounds like a lot of, you know, work to research all that! I may give it a look, however. Thanks for the info.