Rick Astley - Never Gonna Give You Up

Its April Fools Day and what better to celebrate than with Rick Astley and the greatest internet prank in history...RICK ROLLED!

The Rickroll started on the internet board 4chan in May 2007. A user named moot posted a link to the trailer for GTA4, which at the time was one of the most anticipated games. Interested users who clicked on the link were directed to the YouTube video of Never Gonna Give You Up and the Rick Roll was born.

Since then the prank phenomenon has spread. Everyone, from Scientology to local news to your grandmother has been rickrolled. In May 2008, YouTube linked every video on their homepage to the Rick Astley Video. After that people got wise to the trend and would recognize the link. To counter this, some enterprising young punk decided it would be a good idea to start hiding Rick Roll videos all over youtube. Hence the Covert Rick Roll was born.

The Covert Rick Roll videos take two forms. One version is just the Rick Astely video with a different name like "Anchorman 2 Trailer" or "Secrets from LOST revealed" or "Hot Lesbians Kissing." Anything to get you to click on the link. The other version is a split video. The first part of the video would be anything from kittens playing to the start of a strip tease. After 30 seconds or so, the video would then cut to Rick Astely.

Here is a good example of the Covert Rick Roll video cut-in: Speaker Pelosi Presents Capitol Cat Cam (Yes, this is the actual Speaker of the House Nancy Pelosi and she has a Rick Roll video on her YouTube account)


Covert Rick Roll videos are much harder to find now. They spread because people forwarded the link around, but once the chain broke, the video was lost. Who knows maybe there are people still out there looking for Anchorman 2 (which doesn't exist) and are getting Rick Rolled.