Memes, Rolls and Other Oddities Involving Rick Astley

Remember Rick Astley, the one-hit wonder of “Never Gonna Give You Up?” from the ’80s? He’s now the inspiration of a series of bizarre happenings around the world, both online and in the street.

According to this article from the LA Times, there has been some serious “RickRolling” going on. Huh? Do what?

Say you’re on your favorite gossip site. You see an ad for the latest on Britney Spears, and you click on it. But instead of shaved heads and child custody, you see a video of this vintage hit. You’ve been RickRolled.

And then to add to that, at recent Anti Scientology protests, kids too young to even know who Rick Astley is played his song in the streets. Bizarre.

So is Rick behind all this? Is he trying to bring his song back from oblivion? Not at all. It’s sort of a practical joke that’s spreading faster than a virus on computers everywhere.

This RickRoll situation is an example of the growing-in-popularity meme. According to Wikipedia, a meme is a unit of cultural information, such as a practice or idea, that gets transmitted verbally or by repeated action from one mind to another. Memes have actually been around for a while. Here are some examples:

* Those annoying commercial jingles you can’t get out of your head and pass on to anyone just to rid yourself of them
* Epic poems passed on verbally
* Nursery rhymes

Now memes are online. Remember my post about Chocolate Rain? That’s a meme. Essentially it’s anything that spreads like wildfire online.

So is it marketing? Interestingly enough, most of these aren’t promoting a brand or company (deliberately). In the example of Taye Zonday, singer extraordinaire, he became a celebrity as a result of his viral campaign. So if anything, memes give the average Joe the opportunity to have a second of fame.

-Susan

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