Saturday - November 29, 2008

Rickrolling Trifecta

No one wants to be Rickrolled.  I suppose it could have been funny, once, for about 15 minutes.  I didn't think it was all that funny to begin with, but there it is -- a part of the lexicon.  However, it remains obscure, and sometimes hard to explain to non-technical folks.  Why should rickrolling be hard to explain?  Here's my tale.

My wife says to me "here's a video our son was in," and I laughed her off.  Yes, our son is a musician in LA, but -- come on -- "here's a video" is just an invitation to a rickrolling.  

But -- it turns out -- he's in the backing band for the video promoting Barry Manilow's Dance Hits of the 80's. 

"Really?" I said.  "Send me the link."  

So she sends me Never Gonna Give You Up - Barry Manilow.

I about fell out of my chair.  My son is in a video of the Barry Manilow cover of the canonical rickrolling tune.

I wasn't -- technically -- rickrolled.  But since it's the same tune, I think I was meta-rickrolled.  Now that's kind of funny.

Explain That

So we forward the link throughout the family.  Including the oh-so-nerdy footnote that this is the rickrolling tune.  But since it isn't Rick Astley, it isn't a proper rickrolling.

A totally non-technical friend asks for an example of rickrolling.   So I have to reply to everyone with the standard The Grand Theft Auto IV trailer.  

Which -- apparently -- finally clicked with my father what it meant to be Rickrolled, and why his grandson being in a video version of that tune was -- in a household of high-tech nerds -- rather funny.

Too Much Thinking

There was some residual email traffic trying to figure out what -- exactly -- the prank was.   There was speculation that perhaps my son had doctored some Barry Manilow video to punch in his face over some other musician.

"No," I had to explain.  "It's not that sophisticated.  It's simply a link which says one thing, but actually links to Rick Astley."  Don't think deeply about it; it's a simple prank.  It wasn't really that complex, or funny.

No sooner do I get it sorted out, than the Macy's Thanksgiving Day parade has actual Rick Astley actually doing Never Gonna Give You Up, Rickrolling the world.  That lead to a flurry of text and email among the family members.

Now, it's starting to get funny.  I'm tangentially related to the rickrolling trifecta: Rick Astley, Barry Manilow covering it innocently, and Rick Astley covering it ironically.

Author: Steven Lott
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