"Rickrolling" is a relatively harmless internet prank where users are tricked into watching the video for Rick Astley's 1987 hit song "Never Gonna Give You Up." In sort of a "bait and switch" fashion, the person clicks on a link that they believe will take them to a certain destination, but instead they are greeted with Astley's soulful pop classic. Once this happens, you have been "Rickrolled."

Do you really want to know how this started? Well it involves an egg, a duck and a video game. According to an article by Fox New.com, in keeping with silly Internet humor, the director of the image-sharing Web site 4chan decided he'd play a joke and change the word ‘egg' to ‘duck' every time a user posted a message. In time the phenomenon spread, and the word ‘eggroll' was replaced by ‘duckroll.' When someone came up with the idea to redirect Internet links to an image of a duck on wheels ‘duckrolling' was born.  Then in March 2007 came the release of the eagerly awaited first trailer for the still-upcoming video game Grand Theft Auto IV. So popular was the response that it immediately crashed the game publisher's web site. In what was to become a pivotal moment in Internet hoax history, someone at 4chan took the now-useless Web link for the Grand Theft Auto IV trailer and ‘duckrolled' it. But instead of linking to the image of a duck on wheels, he or she linked to the Rick Astley video on YouTube. Rickrolling was born. (Now you know!)

It started as a silly joke back in 2007, but has surprisingly become more mainstream with over 30 million internet users estimated to have already been "Rickrolled" at one point or another.

Back on April 1st (April Fool's Day 2008), YouTube even pranked its users by making every single featured video on the front page a "Rickroll." One week later, the New York Mets announced that "Never Gonna Give You Up" had received 5 million online votes to become the team's new 8th inning sing-along song thanks to several websites which set up "Rickrolls" to vote.

It culminated back on November 6th (2008) when Rick Astley was named the Best Act Ever at the MTV Europe Music awards - and all due to "Rickrolling." Yes, you read that correctly, Rick Astley was named the Best Act EVER.  "We've been well and truly Rickrolled," Richard Godfrey, a senior vice president at MTV and executive producer of the awards, told the Telegraph newspaper in the UK. "We wanted to see who our audience would nominate and, given that we're in Liverpool, we thought it would be someone like the Beatles."

The Beatles were not even nominated (which was also done by voting) and Astley ended up beating out Green Day, Britney Spears, Christina Aguilera, Tokio Hotel and U2 to take home the "honor." Astley has sold more than 40 million albums worldwide, but has not even had a Top 40 hit in the UK since 1993. "Rickrolling" made a mockery out of this award show (or at least this particular award). This had to take a little bit of the luster away from the Ultimate Legend Award which was presented to Paul McCartney that same evening for his lifetime achievements and contributions to music. Astley simply takes this all in good humor and simply released a statement, "I am honoured that my fans worked so hard to help me win Best Act Ever at the 2008 MTV Europe Music Awards."

That's probably more than you ever wanted to know about "Rickrolling" but I was reminded of this after my last issue where I posted the video of Barry Manilow's version of "Never Gonna Give You Up" from his newly released album The Greatest Songs of the Eighties. As I reminded you in the Manilow issue, the Astley song ranked on my Worst #1 Songs of the 80s list. But the internet prank is quite hilarious to me.

And because you know you really want to... CLICK HERE to experience it yourself (Pop Up Video Style)!

That will do it for another issue of Kickin' it Old School. Thanks so much for reading. If you are interested in reading more of my 80's related issues, please click there for a summary. You can always click on the Archives in the upper left hand column or use the Google Search Box at the top of the right hand column to find any other issues you may have missed. If you are a fan of Kickin' it, please pass the word and let others know to give it a try (and of course come back often!). Peace and much love.

Check this out: Since Thanksgiving is coming soon, this week I thought I would share a few cartoons related to this holiday...

Quote of the day: "The past is always judged by the present." -Neith Boyce

Download this: I just can't recommend "Never Gonna Give You Up" but I thought I would go with another song that was on the charts in 1987. Bruce Hornsby just turned 54 years old yesterday (November 23rd, 2008), so I am going to go with "The Way It Is" by Bruce Hornsby & The Range.