Written by Chris Albrecht
Posted Tuesday, April 1, 2008 at 7:27 AM PT

YouTube Rickrolls the World

Ahhh, April Fools’ Day on the Internet. YouTube celebrated, capitalized and killed the meme of the moment by Rickrolling the planet. Click on any of the featured videos on the homepage and get swept up and away by Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up.”

Too bad Rick probably isn’t seeing a dime from all these views. But there is some good news for the Richie Cunningham of rock and roll: His “Never Gonna Give You Up” is currently ~~number 241~~ on Amazon’s MP3 best-seller list (Update: Rick’s jumped to number 153!) ~~(right above Steve Miller Band’s “The Joker”)~~.

Update: In other online video prankster news:

Blip.tv hops on the Astley bandwagon by offering the “rick-roll” ad format.
Moblogic has a fake 404 message on its homepage saying “In compliance with FCC guidelines, this site has been removed.”
Vimeo says its hosting a treasure hunt on its site.
Break a Leg said it was ending the series (maybe it was all the comments left on our story?)
The BBC makes fun of nature documentarians’ obsession with a certain bird (and plugs its iPlayer).

And it looks like Google and Virgin are teaming up to launch Virgle, the first human settlement on Mars. What’s funnier than the April Fool’s joke though, is watching Brin and Page try to get through their cue cards.

We’ll add to this list throughout the day. If you see a video April Fool’s joke, shoot us an email.

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Topic: Online Video

Comments (8)

The biggest joke is on the featured video’s authors. I would be PISSED if my video finally got featured and then to get my video covered by Rick Astley.

SlickDealer — 8:27 AM on April 1, 2008 Reply
Embeds disabled? What the!?!?

Frank Sinton — 9:08 AM on April 1, 2008 Reply
this is NOT A PRANK! I SWEARS!

http://www.anchorcove.net

only applicable to wacko lonelygirl15 fans.

milowent — 10:01 AM on April 1, 2008 Reply
Don’t forget http://urlrurl.com !

Nate Westheimer — 11:36 AM on April 1, 2008 Reply
Lets just say I was first.

http://www.ianschafer.com/2008/04/01/breaking-news-deep-focus-to-be-acquired/

Ian Schafer — 2:23 PM on April 1, 2008 Reply
That is the BEST PRANK EVAR.

oakling — 4:44 PM on April 1, 2008 Reply
I guess I’m just old and cranky, because I do not get it.

Dave Zatz — 10:05 PM on April 1, 2008 Reply
CONGRATULATIONS from
blogrank.info for the hot post

frmad — 6:28 PM on April 2, 2008 Reply

Linkbacks (6)

[...] YouTube Rickrolls the World – I generally hate April Fool’s Day because it makes it impossible to read tech news for 12 – 24 hours. However, this is the best prank I’ve ever seen… [...]

at Mr Chuckles dot net — 1:13 PM on April 1, 2008
[...] the hoaxes range from the desperately unfunny to the merely goofy to the silly-but-funny to the triumphantly hysterical, who can keep anything straight? Google’s various flavors alone account for more than a dozen fake [...]

Best of April Fool’s Day online | PC… — 1:19 PM on April 1, 2008
[...] the hoaxes range from the desperately unfunny to the merely goofy to the silly-but-funny to the triumphantly hysterical, who can keep anything straight? Google’s various flavors alone account for more than a dozen fake [...]

Best of April Fool’s Day online — 1:33 PM on April 1, 2008
[...] YouTube Rickrolls the World « NewTeeVee Nicely done! (tags: youtube rickroll funny video) [...]

links for 2008-04-01 « andrew golis — 4:28 AM on April 2, 2008
[...] “Never Gonna Give You Up” music video actually increased on YouTube following the site pranking its visitors on April Fools Day this year by giving the video every slot on its [...]

YouTube: We Didn’t Kill Rickrolling… — 10:43 PM on July 10, 2008
[...] So I was hooked when I stumbled across a post in a german forum which was a request to help creating one of the biggest RickRolls in the world. Actually, this could be ever bigger than the RickRoll Youtube did. [...]

How to RickRoll the MTV Europe Music Awards… — 12:56 PM on September 16, 2008