Rickrolling
The video bait-and-switch trick grew popular on 4chan by 2007 during April Fools' Day and spread to other Internet sites later that year.
Since then, Astley has seen his performance career revitalized by the meme's popularity, and Rickrolling saw a massive resurgence online in the early 2020s.
[6] On video streaming website YouTube, Astley's performance appears since October 25, 2009 at a URL ending with the character string "dQw4w9WgXcQ".
The image caught on across 4chan, becoming the target of a hyperlink with an otherwise interesting title, with a user clicking through having been stated to be "duck rolled".
[9] In March 2007, the first trailer for the highly anticipated Grand Theft Auto IV was released onto the Rockstar Games website.
While this occurred before 4chan's use of the song, Know Your Meme editor-in-chief Don Caldwell said there was no direct confirmation of whether it had inspired the 4chan use of the video.
The Internet group Anonymous, as part of their Project Chanology to challenge this censoring, protested at the Church's various headquarters across the globe by chanting the song, among other activities.
[20] When Astley was asked about the trend of rickrolling during an interview in March 2008, he stated, "it's weird", since he had not performed much lately, but he found the interest funny.
[21] However, at the 2008 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, Astley made a surprise appearance on a float of the animated TV show Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends for Cartoon Network to lip-sync the song to the crowd and television audiences, making that performance the largest rickroll to date.
[25] Cover versions of "Never Gonna Give You Up" have also been used as part of rickrolling; in April 2018, the creators of TV's Westworld released a video that purported to be a spoiler guide for the entire second season in advance, but instead featured lead actress Evan Rachel Wood singing the song while accompanied by another main actress, Angela Sarafyan, playing the piano.
[29] The official Rick Astley channel uploaded another version on 24 October 2009, that surpassed one-billion views in July 2021.
[35] In the post-credits scene of Walt Disney Animation Studios' 2018 sequel film Ralph Breaks the Internet, a "sneak peek" of Frozen II suddenly switches to Ralph singing "Never Gonna Give You Up" and replicating Astley's dance from the original music video.
[36] On 5 January 2018, Paul Fenwick announced that he had started several Rick Astley hotlines that when called, would play "Never Gonna Give You Up" along with several other artists' adaptations of it.
During a mid-inning break, the Padres' scoreboard began to play "Sweet Caroline"—a tradition at Red Sox home games in Fenway Park—but as the Neil Diamond song approached the chorus, the videoboard suddenly switched to "Never Gonna Give You Up", much to the amusement of the crowd.
[38] On 13 October 2019, during the Sunday night NFL game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and Los Angeles Chargers at Dignity Health Sports Park, the PA announcers played the beginning of the Styx song "Renegade", a standard at the Steelers home of Heinz Field, then switched to "Never Gonna Give You Up".
[44] Later that month, the music video for "Never Gonna Give You Up" reached 1 billion views, becoming the fourth 1980s song to do so.
[8]: 189–190 They documented 23 instances in which an author appeared to have intentionally attempted to Rickroll readers of the academic work using the "dQw4w9WgXcQ" URL, such as by placing it in footnotes.
[8]: 189–195 In 2024, researchers with Old Dominion University did an analysis of millions of random web link "sinks" and found a high correlation with Rickrolling.
Overall, Astley is not troubled by the phenomenon, stating that he finds it "bizarre and funny" and that his only concern is that his "daughter doesn't get embarrassed about it.
Astley stated in an interview that he felt the award was "daft", but noted that he thought that "MTV were thoroughly rickrolled", and went on to thank everyone who voted for him.
