Rickroll
verb
to trick someone into hearing “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley
What does Rickroll mean?
To Rickroll (or rickroll) someone is to trick them into hearing the song (nay, earworm) “Never Gonna Give You Up” by Rick Astley, first released in 1987. Often this involves a sort of bait and switch whereby one disguises a hyperlink to the song’s video as one directed toward some other website, but whatever gets the job done. Rickroll is also sometimes used as a noun referring to the prank.
Examples of Rickroll
In 2009, some M.I.T. students plastered the first seven notes of the chorus on the dome of the engineering library, thus rickrolling anyone in Cambridge who could read music.
—Michael Schulman, The New Yorker, 26 Sept. 2016
The White House Rickrolled a man via Twitter.
—In 2017, Astley appeared on stage with Foo Fighters (he’s covered their song Everlong) as they Rickrolled their own audience.
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Where does Rickroll come from?
The word Rickroll and the phenomenon of rickrolling both followed “duckrolling,” a similar Internet bait-and-switch involving showing people the image of a mallard with photoshopped wheels (this is all true—we are never gonna tell a lie and hurt you).
How is Rickroll used?
Just click on this link embedded in this sentence for a helpful explainer on how Rickroll is used.
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