One of TikTok’s most popular slang terms is ‘rickrolled’, and it actually dates back to a 2007 meme. But what does it mean?.
Rickey Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up came out in 1987 and quickly became one of the most iconic tracks of all time. In fact, it’s so iconic that a new 4k version of the music video was released this year.
The British singer-songwriter is an internet legend, and he’s even the basis for one of the greatest social media pranks of all time. Here’s what ‘rickrolled’ really means…
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What does ‘Rickrolled’ mean on TikTok?
“Rickrolling” is the process of trolling someone on the internet by sending them the link to the music video to Rick Astley’s 1987 song Never Gonna Give You Up.
So, the person on the receiving end of the prank clicks on a link thinking they are watching a completely different video, but it actually turns out to be the Never Gonna Give you Up music video.
The trick is pretty pointless, but it provides internet users with a lot of entertainment nonetheless.
Origins of the prank explored
The trick originated in 2007 on the site 4chan when someone posted a link that contained the trailer for the game Grand Theft Auto IV, which was new at the time.
However, it wasn’t a link to the trailer at all, it was actually a link to Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up music video.
Since then, it’s become one of the most popular pranks to play on people on social media.
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Why is it called ‘Rickrolling’?
The first part of the term comes from Rick Astley’s first name, but the ‘rolling’ part is far stranger.
According to Know Your Meme, the director of the 4chan site trolled everyone by replacing the word ‘egg’ with ‘duck’, which subsequently changed the word ‘eggroll’ to ‘duckroll’.
This caused loads of people to create edits of ducks rolling with wheels. Then, people started trolling others with links to photos of ducks, a process that became known as ‘duckrolling’.
Internet users then started doing the same thing with the Rick Astley video, which became known as ‘rickrolling’. Yeah, I told you it was bizarre!