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YouTube RickRolls April Fools In

Submitted by on March 31, 2008 – 7:32 pm251 Comments

In general, I don’t understand why April Fools jokes on the internet have begun on March 31st – but apparently that’s now standard. I also struggle with April Fools internet ‘jokes’ because they are mostly just made up stories (easy to do – though cleverness is clearly difficult) – but that’s what makes YouTubes ‘prank’ so great: they actively made a product change and, in doing so, poked fun at themselves.

YouTube RickRoll’d their users and their videos – linking all their featured videos to that classic 80s music video.

It’s debatable who’s career was resurrected more by web 2.0: Chuck Norris or Rick Astley.

If you don’t know what a RickRoll is, here is a great example. Yesterday’s #1 story on Digg was titled “Lala (Tiki Bar) Showers Video”, raked in nearly 7,000 diggs and linked to this video:

Flick’Rolled:

Some guy RickRolling his class:

Popularity: 6% [?]