I'm probably the last one to read about Rickrolling? Or are we talking about an internet meme that can only be appreciated by those who actually are old enough to actually have listened to the actual Rick Astley crooning his stuff in the eighties? Apparantly, rickrolling is (and now I quote from Wikipedia)a bait and switch: a person provides a web link that they claim is relevant to the topic at hand, but the link actually takes the user to the Astley video of the 'Never gonna give you up' hitsong. The URL can be masked or obfuscated in some manner so that the user cannot determine the true destination of the link without clicking. When a person clicks on the link and is led to the web page, he or she is said to have been "Rickrolled".
Interesting though: as the practice has spread, two of the various Rickrolling videos available online have been viewed more than 39 million times combined. Rickrolling has extended beyond Web links to playing the video or song disruptively in other situations, including public places; this culminated when Astley and the song made a surprise appearance in the 2008 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, a televised event with tens of millions of viewers.
Now then: is this an internet meme or a cool marketing trick?
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