Oh Its This Thread Again Meme

MEMES, Function iii: Gotta brand you sympathize 42:06

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(Rory Panagatopolis for WBUR)

Who gets credit for starting a meme? Usually... nobody — they're fabricated too quickly and organically. In the instance of one of the most famous bait-and-switch memes of all fourth dimension, the "Rick Roll," we may exist looking at something experts call convergent development. Did the Rick Roll originate with a piece of code on the message lath 4Chan, or with a prank telephone call to a local sports testify in Michigan? And why does the Rick Curlicue have such staying power? Is it codification in the Dna of the song itself?

We explore the meme's origin, the history of the song, "Never Gonna Give You Up," and its impact on both internet users during COVID-19 and on the performer himself.

Testify notes:

• The definitive, must-read, consummate, comprehensive history of the Rick Coil
• Erik Helwig's music
• Harrison Renshaw's video, "The Story of the Best Meme EVER"

Full Transcript:

This content was originally created for audio. The transcript has been edited from our original script for clarity. Heads upwardly that some elements (i.e. music, audio effects, tone) are harder to translate to text.

Ben Brock Johnson: Erik should exist famous. Merely he'due south not. Really.

Erik Helwig: I'one thousand Erik Helwig. My internet persona is Hot Dad, and I make what I describe as emotional comedy music.

Amory Sivertson: Not famous. Should be famous? Maybe. His creative output on youtube is impressive in its own special way. And Erik is kind of a special guy.

[(sings) "CHILDREN Dear THE MEAT TANK. CHILDREN Dear THE MEAT TANK. OOOO"]

Erik: I have these songs that are, y'all know, I feel like pretty heartfelt nearly similar really stupid topics. And, you know, similar like I only like extremes ultimately.

Ben: Merely none of this–which is great!–is why Erik should possibly be famous. He should peradventure be famous because he may have had a function in creating something that is one of the primordial parts of the viral internet as we know it. And when nosotros say primordial, we mean similar, without this thing… the idea of things going viral online would be fundamentally dissimilar. And Erik was there at the get-go.

Amory: We call back. Look. It's difficult to tell. There are other theories of how this slice of the internet came well-nigh and who invented it. But Erik has a story, and he has a record of what happened, and the timing is intriguing. That's all he's saying.

Erik: I didn't claim to create information technology. I simply claim that I have documented bear witness of me doing it as a prank, you know, months before it became a thing, which which to me felt similar a obviously a bizarre coincidence.

Ben: A baroque coincidence. Or the offset of something. 15 years ago. When Erik was a bored college kid in Michigan.

Erik: I'm living at home with my parents and I all my friends were similar grades below me by that indicate. I don't know, nosotros were just similar a bunch of patently kids in late teens and stuff merely hanging out and coming upwards with funny things to say and practise and stuff like that.

Amory: Ane of those funny things to say or do, for Erik and his friends at least, was to brand prank calls.

Erik: I hateful, it was kind of the classic, you know, I detest the jocks matter. And then we all just kind of grew upwardly in that mindset. And in that location was this call-in show chosen the postgame show.

Erik: Every Friday night, after all the games,  people would just call in and just be like, "my son Trevor did great tonight, you know, thank you, Trevor." And and then and then they'd say, "cheers for your call." Like, just nobody said anything. They'd telephone call in and, y'all know, like a bunch of girls would cheer together, you know, they'd say, become, you know, get USA.

Erik: In that location's this school, this consolidated school district called the Unionville Sebring expanse, and it was called the U.s.. And so that was like our original prank call was to call in and say, y'all know, "become Soviet Wedlock." Uh, my brother did a telephone call where he was lament about a pair of khakis that he bought at Kohl'south. Information technology was stuff like that.

Ben: Erik wasn't commonly the prank call antagonist though.

Erik: I estimate I'm as well timid to do those kinds of things and that kind of stuff.

Amory: But ane nighttime, Erik and his buddies are at his house, and he'south up.

Ben: And he has this idea. He's been listening to a song on echo recently. Every bit a musician himself, he's been kinda obsessed with it.

Erik: I was just super fixated on that song at the time. It'south similar maximum '80s in a way that, similar a lot of things are, you know, '80s. But that is just like turgid '80s. Like it couldn't be more '80s than that. But I just remember I had Winamp open up up and immediately, y'all know, hoisting the phone up to the speaker.

Ben: If you don't know Winamp, recollect of it every bit Spotify in 2006 or something: playing music from your computer. And Erik had this i song that had been on repeat, cued up to what he thought was the primal moment.

Erik: So, I mean it's "gonna make yous sympathize!" And so that's when information technology kicks in.

Amory: I'yard Amory Sivertson.

Ben: I'm Ben Brock Johnson. And y'all're listening to Endless Thread.

Amory: Coming to you from WBUR. Boston'south NPR Station.

Ben: Erik's story is either the evidence of a balmy-mannered Hot Dad unsung hero chip-tuning away in relative YouTube emotional comedy music obscurity or the trickery of a pretender to the throne.

Amory: I mean Erik is a prank caller turned emotional musical comedian. He might not be above claiming falsely to exist the inventor of one of the internet's most famous moves. And there are other origin stories.

Ben: Only this allurement and switch move, where you expect something else and y'all get the booming vox of Rick Astley, became more than a local Michigan sports radio call in show prank. Information technology became the Rick Roll. Ubiquitous, hilarious, extremely difficult to avert if you lot are, every bit they say, extremely online. And Erik Helwig may the first Rick Roller of all time.

Amory: Erik'southward version was audio only. But of course, information technology's now much more than than that. It's a full on meme, a classic one, usually video edited together. You retrieve yous're watching something else then… bam: Rick Rolled, with the original music video for Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up." It pops upward in new places and new ways all the time. Imagine for instance, a friend sends yous an email or a text or a chat with a hyperlink to something: an invite to a birthday party, or some other matter yous want to click on. You click on the link expecting info on said birthday party, and instead you see Rick Astley jogging his arms and singing almost how he's not going to desert you.

Ben: It feels almost dumb to fifty-fifty take to define this. The Rick Scroll crosses continents. Cultures. Generations. Just at that place are people maybe somewhere in the universe who have non been Rick Rolled? Full dorks patently.

Amory: Y'all don't know if I've been Rick Rolled.

Ben: Depends a lot on the pollster besides. You lot've definitely been Rick Rolled.

Amory: No, I haven't.

Ben: I'm pretty sure you've been Rick Rolled.

Amory: No, I've never been Rick Rolled. No, I confessed to Frank, one of our producers on this prove terminal calendar week that I discovered what the Rick Curlicue was similar last week.

Ben: Well, I guess you're about to go, I judge you're about to be Rick Rolled then. Requite me I guess y'all're about to be recalled that at that place'south only two types of people in this earth, people who accept been Rick Rolled and people who don't know they're about to exist Rick Rolled.

Ben: 23-year-old Newport Rhode Island resident Harrison Renshaw, who we're now talking to, has definitely been Rick Rolled. Fifty-fifty though the math suggests he was about 8 years quondam when the Rick Roll started trending.

Ben: Did y'all get Rick Rolled? Is that how you lot learned.

Harrison Renshaw: I'g sure I got Rick Rolled and didn't understand what it was at the time. That's definitely your beginning Rick Roll. You don't know that you've been Rick Rolled. Correct. It's confusing, who is this? Why is this man in this abandoned house singing this strange song? It was disruptive more than anything, I imagine.

Amory: Harrison is also a bit of a YouTuber, albeit much younger than our supposed Rick Roll inventor Erik.

Harrison: Pfff. I am a child of the Internet, growing up with YouTube basically.

Ben: Harrison is great at going down the rabbit pigsty on specific topics. Like, how the chorus bookends of Old Town Road by Lil Nas X are PERFECTLY designed to convince you to play the song again.

Amory: Merely one of Harrison's BIGGEST obsessions, and one of his biggest videos e'er traces the history and origins of the Rick Roll. It's called "The Story of the Best Meme Always," and information technology includes what he calls the iv key events that made the Rick Roll blow upwards.

Harrison: Number one. In 2005, there was an episode of It'due south Always Sunny called "Charlie Has Cancer," and in that, "Never Gonna Requite Y'all Up" plays ... and the song grew online because of it. Number 2, in 2006, a Michigan man named Erik Helwig called on to his local radio station and it was similar a sports talk show.

Ben: That ane we know already.

Harrison: So number three, in 2006, six, the creator of the Internet forum 4chan, Christopher Poole, who is as well known as MOOT, created a give-and-take filter that replaced the word egg with the discussion duck.

Amory: This 4chan word filter thing was a dizzy joke with what in retrospect has been a HUGE impact. Basically, people were talking about egg rolls. And somebody modified the way language appeared on the site to replace the word EGG, with the word DUCK. But a curious little silly piece of software. After the WORD filter was made, someone fabricated an image of a duck on wheels.

Harrison: And and then that image became like a popular gag on the site. People would exercise the whole hyperlink bait and switch where, oh, you think you're going to click something super interesting, but and so you lot only get the motion picture of the duck roll.

Ben: Ah Ha. Then there was a roll before the Rick Coil and that was the duck ringlet.

Harrison: That was the duck roll, the ofttimes duplicated, somewhat imitated duck on wheels.

Ben: Correct.

Harrison: And so the final sort of piecing together, the perfect tempest: In March of 2007 with the showtime trailer for Chiliad Theft Car 4 being released, at that place was and so much traffic on the site that information technology crashed. Someone on 4chan used that same method of the duck roll by proverb, "oh, here'south the link to the trailer." But it was Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You lot Upwardly."

Amory: At present, we grant you that at the get-go, this is just weird niche internet joke stuff. But these things tend to bubble upward. G Theft Auto Four is ane of the best selling games of all fourth dimension — 23 million copies.

Ben: And if that game's popularity gets turned into a allurement and switch joke online past a bunch of people searching for the game trailer, and Rick Astley is where they country, Rick Astley himself is going to have a fiddling fasten in popularity, likewise.

Harrison: 2008, that is like the year of the Rick Roll. That's when information technology was...well it's always been a thing since its inception, whether it's had ups and downs and whatnot. Just 2008 was prime Rick Rolling.

Ben: And when Harrison says "prime Rick Rolling." He ways like, the Rick Roll was basically nowadays in every single big event of the yr.

Harrison: At that place was some sort of survey that was conducted that said that xviii million Americans had been Rick Rolled.

Ben: And when y'all wait back at 2008, this is not surprising. Hacktivist grouping Bearding was diggings the song out of loudspeakers in front of the Church of Scientology. People at basketball games during March Madness were dressing up as Astley and singing in the audience. Someone made a false video of then-presidential candidate Senator John McCain getting Rick Rolled at a 2008 presidential campaign result.

Amory: And Rick himself popped up in the Macy's Thanksgiving Parade. Companies got in on it too. YouTube the company had the unabridged homepage exercise a bait and switch with every video linking back to the video.

Amory: And then, perchance the ultimate troll of 2008. The MTV European Music Awards had a ridiculous award that year for Best Deed Ever. U2, Green Day, Britney Spears were nominees, but yous could also write in a candidate. And of course, the internet delivered.

Ben: So it's easy to get a sense from Harrison most how it happened 13 years ago. But why is it still happening? The video just passed a billion views on YouTube and is inside the top several hundred videos of all time. For just a simple music video that was fabricated over thirty years ago. Kids who are just kids are Rickrolling each other all the time. Still! Similar, in middle school google docs, and university links to online coursework. A Rick Roll was ane of the pinnacle posts  on Reddit practically final week. In fact, there's a new version among the superlative posts about every week.

Amory: In meme years this should basically be an antiquity. Just it'south still very much around. How did this grandaddy of net memes go such staying power?

Ben:  It can't just be Internet chaos theory, correct? At that place has to be more at that place. In that location's something irresistible about the song.

Amory: The video too, with it's happy dude dancing his barrel off in what appears to be an abandoned warehouse...church...bar...affair? Staring securely into your eyes. Tin you really deny him?

Ben: And in this regard, Harrison is kind of like Erik.

Ben: Are you a fan?

Harrison: Of Rick Astley?

Ben: Yes, have y'all become a fan?

Harrison: That's an incredible song. That song is wonderful. I'm a huge fan of the vocal.

Ben: Why?

Harrison: I hateful, I'chiliad a big 80s pop music guy anyhow. I think the drama and theatrics of it. It's infectious. You want to sing along to it. Information technology makes you experience kind of light-headed. Simply that'southward the amuse of it at the same fourth dimension.

Ben: And so where did that amuse come from? We'll tell you in a minute.

[BREAK]

Amory: In our journey to understand not only how the Rick Roll came to be, just also why it came to exist, Ben and I are now talking to someone who was there when information technology came to be. Songwriter Mike Stock is telling us about merely how adept he was in the beginning. As a xx-something working musician in the 1970s.

Mike Stock: I was awful. I mean people would ask me to play songs which I should have known. I remember making a very bad attempt at something. And feeling highly embarrassed.

Amory: So Mike Stock realized relatively apace that he might not make it as a performing musician. But he was really a adept songwriter. Then he started a business with a few of his favorite collaborators: Matt Aitken and Pete Waterman. They became known as Stock Aitken Waterman. And since it was the '70s, they dabbled in dance music.

Mike: The genre was Boys Boondocks.

Ben: How would you lot define Boys Town?

Mike: Well, essentially, gay orientated gay clubs were using the they were normally using inexpensive, cheaply made records equally long as they were set at effectually 130 beats per minute, got the handclaps and the cowbells on them, which used to ready off the sound to lights in all the clubs. And so that made it more heady. And in that location was a affair chosen Northern Soul, which came from North of England, which the same thing... people were starting to trip the light fantastic toe. I mean, 1 of the songs, the opening lines of one of our number ane songs in the U.Yard. past Mel and Kim is, "It'due south our occupation. We're a dancing nation."

Ben: Stock Aitken Waterman were getting work in the Boys Boondocks genre. But they weren't getting it on the radio still, really. The way to popularity, and more work with more artists was to have one of your records get large in the trip the light fantastic clubs.

Amory: Which started happening with Stock and his partners in the early 1980s. Starting with a ring chosen Dead or Alive.

Ben: And and so they were off to the races, right? Straight to the top from at that place on out?

Mike: Well, evidently, having your showtime number 1 was a great – yeah, that was a big thrill. But the main matter that happened, was that the phone stopped ringing.

Amory: There are a lot of ways to explain this, but Mike kind of boils information technology downwards to i theory. More hole-and-corner artists they'd been working with thought they'd gone fully mainstream. And the mainstream thought...

Mike: All they can do is that dastardly loftier energy gay music. You know, that'south that's the manner information technology is.

Amory: So the recently-supposedly-wildly-successful songwriting trio Stock Aitken Waterman got a piddling concerned.

Mike: At that place's me, Matt and Pete sitting in our studio saying, well, what we're going to do next, nosotros're No. One. Well, let's invent something. Allow'south practise something at present.

Ben: What they did is start to piece of work with unknowns. Backup singers. And a kid who had started... interning at their working studio? Apprenticing? Was it a fellowship? Mike had a specific phrase…

Mike: Tea male child. He got the sandwiches, yous know, I know he doesn't like that, but we were waiting. Yes, we were waiting for the opportunity to work with him. And so – Oh, practice you not know what that is? Sorry. 2 nations separated by a common tongue. That's us, isn't it?

Amory: The child was from northern England. He was a kid still only a teenager. And he looked style younger than he fifty-fifty was. Like, a minimum of v years younger.

Ben: Mike's songwriting partner Pete had seen the kid perform in a band. Didn't like the ring, liked the child, invited him downwardly to be a studio assistant. And one solar day they said, "Hey, permit's requite the Tea Boy a gamble at doing a song." They were planning on having him just exercise a cover of "Ain't Besides Proud to Beg." Only and so the tea boy, whose name was Rick, stepped up to the musical plate.

Mike: I got him on the mic and started to heed to what he was and who he was. I idea, "This guy's besides adept for this." I was I was admittedly amazed. I mean, the voice that came out of him didn't sort of lucifer his look. And and information technology is a strong, powerful voice he's got.

Ben: It is a little hard to enlarge this incongruence. If you accept been Rick Rolled, y'all know what we're talking about. Whatsoever you think the owner of this voice looks similar?

Amory: He doesn't. He looks like a svelte 14-year quondam still moisture backside the ears. So the voice, which is already kinda magic, is extra magic.

Mike: At that signal I say to Matt and Pete, look, "we should write him a song."

Amory: So they did. Mike Stock wrote the music, Waterman suggested the title, and all iii of them built the lyrics around the music. They recorded it.

Ben: Only Rick didn't take a characterization to put it out. And in the interim, it got briefly sidelined by other projects. Including at least one more song you have definitely heard before…

Amory: Things got busy for the songwriting trio. Months went by, then one mean solar day…

Mike: I tell you lot how it worked, we nosotros I came into the studio equally was my sort of routine, 11 o'clock one morning, and one of the guys in the office and our promotions office was playing the song because it been given to the officer on a cassette or something. And I came upstairs and I thought, "Bloody hell, that sounds good. Crikey!" I think I listened to information technology for two months. I thought, gee, I sound great as an he's playing information technology loud, this guy in the office. And equally I'1000 coming out upward the stairs, Pete Waterman is coming down the stairs and we both stop and look at each other. We both go, "Blimey, what are we doing with this record? Why haven't we got this thing out?" Then that was the kicker for us. We of a sudden heard it, as it were, out of the blue without existence deeply involved with information technology.

Ben: If you were to identify the key distinctive genetic code of the song, like the matter that makes the song. What is the thing?

Mike: Well, I mean, in a simple sense, the sentiment is understandable. Nosotros always made the vocals proud, proud of the track, you know, loud plenty to hear every single word. Only on a musical level because the chorus were indeed. But the chorus goes into Grand. And if you were to play this goes downwardly the pianoforte, yous'll get the gist of it. You agree the chord G and so you hold the base of M, simply you move the try it up a tone to A. So you lot get that tension and that creates a existent musical tension that you have to resolve somehow, in our case by going to the F sharp minor and and so to the B small-scale and then we will resolve a 2d time round, not to the B minor, but to the D major. So it's a it's a structure of chords which incidentally, subsequent to us writing it, I've heard on one-half a dozen hitting songs.

Ben: It may be true that "Never Gonna Requite You Up" does take a item formula that makes it work musically. Or that the surprising nature of Astley's voice, coupled with his infant face in the mid-1980s, has given the song mysterious properties that take kept it in the ether this long. Loved by people like Erik and Harrison, who were built-in full decades after the song was a hit.

Amory: The music video definitely has something to exercise with it. Rick'southward coincidental shimmy-ing seemingly made up on the spot, the weird empty warehouse he's in, the outfits – double breasted jacket over a pocket-size collared sweater, trench coat, black jeans, black turtleneck, a full on Canadian tuxedo.

Ben: Only the singer himself even with a number 1 hitting in the Usa of A did not stick around at the summit. Here'south Rick Roll YouTube historian Harrison once more.

Harrison: Then this is where it gets a piffling strange. Rick would make or he would sell millions of records, he had a Grammy nomination, he collaborated with Elton John and he was like rich and famous past xx four. But and so effectually that fourth dimension, or a little bit after, he got actually sick of the manufacture and didn't want all the fame, everything was sort of too much for him. He was having this existential crisis. He wanted to raise his family and and so he called information technology quits.

Ben: The "Never Gonna Requite You lot Up" guy...gave it up. He seems to have been the rarest of rarities: a purposeful one-striking-wonder.

Amory: Lies! He had more one hit.

Ben: OK, two-hit wonder? Still, he made his marker, and and then he kind of tapped out.

Ben: And the rest is internet history. Or rather, music history. Which eventually became internet history. Considering of a kid doing prank calls in Michigan.

Amory: Or a agglomeration of s***-posters on 4chan.

Ben: Or an episode of It'southward Ever Sunny in Philadelphia.

Amory: Or all of these things?

Don Caldwell: It reminds me of this thing in development called convergent evolution.

Amory: This guy gets it. He's part of our meme chorus. Remember our meme chorus?

Don: My name is Don Caldwell, I'm the editor in primary of Know Your Meme , which is the world's largest Net culture encyclopedia and database.

Ben: Don has looked actually closely at the origin of the Rick Curl meme since its inception. Which is how he got the convergent development thing in his head.

Don: They're like these like greenish tree snakes, for example, around the world. They aren't related to each other at all, but they await like the exact same animal. They got the same characteristics, the aforementioned coloration, aforementioned morphology. And it's but really interesting to me that that that might take happened here with with the Rick Roll: It might have evolved independently twice. It might have been born two carve up times without being connected to each other, which is but wild.

Amory: The song is just that practiced. It's just that special.

Don: It really is.

Amory: Don says at that place's something extra special about this grandaddy meme. It connects back to Erik Helwig's prank call in Michigan.

Ben: He says the Rick Roll is actually the starting time truly mainstream version of this specific genre of meme.

Don: A bait and switch, you know, tricking someone into clicking a link or viewing something that they didn't intend to, is a feature that is simply a winner when it comes to memes, and we've seen it fourth dimension and time over again. It's probably one of the most tried and true types of memes that continue to appear every year.

Ben: Information technology's not just the bait and switch though. It's what you lot're getting when the switch happens, which Harrison talked a flake about too.

Harrison: I think the thing that makes information technology so universal and beloved is that information technology'southward very, very harmless. Information technology's something that is purely fun. Nobody always gets hurt. It's –

Ben: It's a prank, simply information technology's not a hateful prank, actually.

Harrison: I completely agree, that's what I'yard getting at, is that, nobody, I don't think, has ever had extreme amounts of malice Rick Rolling, somebody. it'due south always from love.

Ben: Right, or felt information technology getting Rick rolled right? Considering information technology's similar, "oh, I'm going to pull a prank on you and make y'all kind of want to dance a little scrap and be happy."

Harrison: Exactly. What a overnice, cute matter that nosotros can do to one another.

Amory: Really the question is, how does Rick feel near information technology? What does it experience similar to be maybe non the butt of the joke. But the punchline?

Rick Astley: I mean, I'll be honest, I detect it difficult sometimes because I am the Rick in Rick Rolling, then that is a bit weird if I'm honest when I encounter it in print or run across information technology, whatsoever you think. Yeah.

Ben: Yes we did. You know we had to. We had to get Rick. He still looks youthful. A picayune more than craggy hither and there, sure. You might say he's grown into that vocalism. But he'due south a true precious stone of a guy.

Amory: Even if he does have some mixed feelings about his resurgence.

Rick: Yeah. It's weird that I listen. I'm not making it into a bigger thing than it is. I'chiliad just maxim it comes up in conversation a lot in my life, obviously, and therefore it's only a fleck weird.

Ben: What motivated you lot to get into music?

Rick: I'thou not peculiarly, well, I am sort of from a musical family in a way. My mom e'er played the piano. I didn't really live with my mom. My mum and dad divorced. I'one thousand the youngest of – they had five kids, but one passed away before I was born. And my dad had a great voice, just he never did annihilation with it. He used to sing effectually the house and the streets of the little boondocks I'1000 from. But I don't recollect that was my introduction to music at all. My introduction to music, to exist honest, if I'1000 going to be really honest about it. I was getting out of the home that I lived in. I was brought up by my dad and I don't retrieve my dad was a very happy camper, to be honest. And they'd been through a lot. Obviously, losing a child is the almost devastating thing. I retrieve anybody tin go through his parents. And I recollect, yous know, I just I simply don't think there was a lot of sunshine, really. And I think music defenseless me really early where I just idea this is a joyful place to be. And I call up from that moment that was information technology, really. I merely wanted to I kind of wanted to get out of the small town that I was from, merely information technology wasn't the town. I think information technology was my dwelling upbringing. If I'm really honest, I just wanted to detect some light somewhere else.

Amory: One skilful thing well-nigh Rick's hometown, though, is that – according to Rick – Pete Waterman was dating a woman in that location. And on one of his visits to see her, he concluded up in a club where Rick Astley's band was playing. And as we said before, he liked what he heard. Not the band, just Rick.

Ben: No, we heard it. We did hear a rumor. Maybe it's not a rumor, just we did talk to Mike and he –

Rick: Oh, to Mike Stock, you lot mean.

Ben: Yes, sir.

Rick: Oh, wow. Fantastic.

Ben: And he actually described you and he his words, non ours. He described you every bit being a tea boy in the in the studio. Is that is that authentic?

Rick: Information technology is authentic and there's truth to that. And I ended upwards living in his flat, which is pretty, pretty bizarre considering I'm kind of living in the boss's apartment. But I'm also making tea for Dead or Live while I'one thousand making the album that's got spinning around on.

Amory: Rick of class would soon get his own hit.

Ben: Did you like the song immediately?

Rick: Yep, yeah, yeah, because I tin can say that with with all modesty, because I didn't write it. So I'1000 non saying, "Hey, it's a bang-up song." I think sort of slips people by sometimes considering of the whole cyberspace side of what's happening with that song. I don't retrieve sometimes people realize how not bad it really is as a crafted pop vocal. I mean, it'southward and I can say that, like I said, because I didn't write, I didn't produce it. I only sang the God damn thing.

Ben: Well, we have some good news for you, I remember, which is that like a lot of the people that nosotros have talked and we have talked to a lot of people virtually the song. Aye. And some of them are people who are very much of the Cyberspace generation, they're digital natives. There are people who never would have discovered it, probably except for the Internet. I think they agree with you. They think that this song is special beyond the sort of virality that it'south establish online, at least in their eyes, in the fashion that they're imagining it.

Rick: Well, that'southward very nice to hear. Very nice to hear. I mean, we're lucky enough now that I've sort of moved into this area, I guess, where I'thou immune to play festivals. I don't ordinarily shut one, but I get to play in the afternoon, you know, and that'south that'due south I only retrieve I got lucky, actually. And I think it's a lucky turn of events. And my married woman and I have saturday on balconies, in hotel rooms and saturday on beaches. With a drinking glass of rosé and looked at a dusk and said, "how did nosotros go here?" And nosotros never stopped doing that.

Amory: What exercise you remember about the making of the music video, because the music video is a large part of the ongoing Net admiration?

Rick: To be honest, without the video, it wouldn't have become what it's become, if you like, in that little small pocket it's got on the Internet, because plainly that'southward the world that we live in and take lived in for twenty odd years. Everything is every sort of music that you lot can think of is kind of visual as well. So the shooting of the video was like I mean, is the beginning video I ever did. I had no idea what was going on. And then when we come to exercise the video, I turned up with a bag of apparel. Yep, a raincoat that was mine, you know, similar a striped shirt, chinos and a blazer. Infant, that's me. The double denim, it's all me, baby. No stylist was involved.

Amory: The trip the light fantastic moves as well?

Rick: Yeah, the dance moves that I've said this before. Many times it's actually fear if you lot look at me most of nearly of my picayune sort of moments through that iv or 5 years, if you actually look at me carefully, I'yard simply terrified.

Rick: And ironically, all these years afterwards, that sort of notwithstanding kind of sits right with people. Information technology's just in that context, y'all know, the whole thing. It's like if I was super sort of suave and this, that and the other unlooked, y'all know, I don't know, like a sex symbol style thing in that video, information technology only wouldn't piece of work. I just yous know, it's like I'm simply like this twenty-year-quondam, whatever, I was 21-year-old dude who looks 12 years one-time, who came to a video shoot with his own apparel in a purse.

Ben: Can yous tell us a little bit more? How you really experience about the function.

Rick: I'grand sort of detached from it, and I remember it'south the only manner to be about it. Our daughter, when it start started to kick off and things were happening and in that location was a matter near MTV wanted me to accept an award for some whatsoever it was –

Amory: All-time human action always.

Rick: Which is ludicrous. And I recollect what they idea I idea they I remember they thought they were existence ironic and funny, putting me in that category with U2 and Christina Aguilera and whoever else was in that category. So yous tin imagine I said, "no thanks, I'm not coming. You lot can continue your award. It's OK." Just the point beingness our girl, who, every bit I say, was a teenager, said, look, yous exercise realize it hasn't actually got anything to practise with you. And the mode she said it just hit me like a ton of bricks, but in a really slap-up fashion. And that was like it was like just going only just seeing it in a different way and saying she's absolutely correct. Information technology could have been Dave curlicue, Brian roll, yous know, Mary scroll, any curlicue you lot like. Somebody just chose my video and that song, it could accept been anybody's. So I recall from that moment, I've always just viewed it and said, you lot know what? Annihilation positive towards, you know, my niggling world coming out of it, I'll have.

Ben: And that makes sense. And I also want to say over again, similar, I think that one of the things that's interesting to me is you described where you came from and looking for fundamentally a happy place to exist. And I think that what's interesting about the Rick Ringlet to me is that the Cyberspace is a dark and toxic place many days of the week. But the Rick Roll actually similar shines as a calorie-free in a really dark place because it is this matter that has that edge to it that the Net has, of like pulling a prank or hacking somebody or tricking somebody, et cetera. Merely the end of it is, is yous singing this great song that everybody loves, you know.

Amory: Information technology's creating that joy that you talked about.

Ben: Aye.

Rick: Well, well, y'all know what? You lot've kind of you've kind of sort of put a expert spin on on the thought process that I guess in the sense that when I was a kid, similar you say, there was a black deject in our house, there only was. And I've been searching to kind of, y'all know, I'chiliad going down metaphors now, but, you know, just get rid of it and just practice so. And I kind of recollect as cheesy every bit that video is, and it'southward kind of like cheesy and sometimes the 80s can be, and also if you tin but get past that kind of like what's cool, what's not cool, then you simply see it for only being fun. You mean and kind of like and I retrieve that's I remember I've e'er searched for that.

Ben: Give thanks you, Rick.

Amory: Thanks and then much.

Ben: Really appreciate your time. It's been information technology's been lovely. Thank you.

Rick: Pleasure. Absolute pleasure.

Ben: It might be that Rick would bristle a bit at the idea that he, like Erik, our prank caller at the get-go, has simply put, created emotional comedy music.

Amory: Simply having his song turned into a meme has brought joy into the world in a way it never would have otherwise right? And virality itself online at least would probably look different if not for the OG bait and switch of the Rick Roll. And every bit Harrison puts it…

Harrison: I mean, I feel like, not to attempt to get overly pretentious about some of the dumbest jokes that you can find online, but memes are the future.

Amory: Harrison ways the future of advice online. And the Rick Gyre is a peachy example. It'southward still morphing. In 2020, while everyone was in lockdown, a whole newgeneration of people started flipping the script on the meme. They started Rick Rolling themselves. For reaction videos. The Rick Coil... rolls on.

Ben: Perhaps y'all were one of these people. Searching in a terrible time for something funny on the internet. Or maybe you, like me, already know the Rick Roll as this part of the internet you tip your hat to when y'all come across it as a sign of respect or something. "Hullo old friend. Glad you're still around to give me a chuckle because... you lot know... everything."

Amory: But any information technology is, it's bang-up. And Rick's great. And someday you lot tin Rick Curl your grandkids. Mayhap. Maybe they'll Rick Scroll you first.

YOUTUBER: You know in this video nosotros gonna be reacting to Rick Astley? Forgive me if I say his proper noun wrong. "Never Gonna Surrender." "Never Gonna Give Y'all Up." That'due south the name of this video. So without further ado, permit'south go into it.

Ben: Next up...more Rick!

Amory: Yes. We have some BONUS content for you lot in the series already, considering nosotros had a lot of extra conversations with meme people while reporting this series, and some of them were too proficient to Not share with yous. Our kickoff bonus episode is popping into your feed in a few days. A longer conversation with the Rick in Rick Roll.

Ben: Subsequently that, we'll hear near a bizzaro meme involving a true cat eating a salad that brought a lot of people mirth online. Only to the human featured in the meme, the moment was much more than serious.

Guest: This could get me killed. This is non merely reality Goggle box drama. This is my existent life.

Ben: We'll tell that story and much more in the coming weeks so stay tuned.

[CREDITS]

Amory: Endless THREAD is a production of WBUR in Boston.

Ben: You should 100 per centum be joining our email listing if yous want early tickets to events, swag, bonus content, pictures of Amory'south keyboard or Ben'due south keyboard cat. Exercise that past going to wbur.org/endlessthread.

Amory: ALSO. We actually really really really want to know your nomination for the all-time, almost real, or most underrated meme. Call us! 857-244-0338. Or meliorate yet, tape a voice memo and email it to endlessthread@wbur.org. We might just dive into the meme yous tell united states virtually, and nosotros might use your voicemail in the bear witness!

Our meme series would be very "hi fellow kids" without the assistance of our meme chorus. Singers in that chorus?

Joan Donovan is Research Managing director at the Harvard Kennedy School's Shorenstein Eye. Sarah Laiola teaches about digital civilisation and design at Coastal Carolina University. Gianluca Stringhini studies online security disinformation and hate speech at Boston University. Amanda Brennan has the extremely cool championship of Internet Librarian. Kenyatta Cheese co-founded the site Know Your Meme, and Don Caldwell is Editor in Chief.

PLEASE become and find their work and benefit from their meme genius.

Our serial and our testify is made by producers Nora Saks and Dean Russell.

We are co-hosted by us: Amory Sivertson and Ben Brock Johnson.

This episode was edited by Maureen McMurray.

Mixing and Sound Design past Matt Reed.

The Music Box cover of "Never Gonna Requite You lot Upwardly" is from the YouTube Channel R3 MusicBox.

Original music for this episode that is Not DENENENENUHNUHNUH was composed by Matt Reed.

Special thanks to, and boosted production work from Josh Crane, Frank Hernandez, Kristin Torres, Sofie Kodner, and Rachel Carlson.

heinsheizips.blogspot.com

Source: https://www.wbur.org/endlessthread/2021/10/08/memes-never-gonna-give-you-up

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