New Internet Legend Manages to Rick Roll Rick Astley
The internet got a new folk hero yesterday when a Reddit user managed to Rick Roll Rick Astley himself.
The fun began when the internet’s favorite ’80s pop star stopped by Reddit, where he posts under the name u/ReallyRickAstley, to share an old photo he dug up while spending time at home during coronavirus-related lockdowns. The image was a photo of the young pop star riding around on a bicycle backstage in Las Vegas on his very first tour.
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After posting the flashback picture, Astley, who is a bit of a Reddit regular and legend thanks to a few famous interactions with fans on the site, stuck around to chat with fans and answer questions. While most fans were thrilled to see the singer engaging on the site, and plenty of fans were posting his famous lyrics, it was one user, known as u/theMalleableDuck, who won the day. The user claimed they had met Astley backstage when they were 12 and posted a link presumably to a photo of the two of them kicking it at a concert. That was not it at all though. When Astley clicked on the link, what he got was Rick rolled.
As most people who have spent time on the internet know, Rick rolling is when a link to some relevant site or information is swapped with a link to Astley’s 1987 single, “Never Gonna Give You Up”. So when he clicked on the Reddit link, he immediately heard his own dulcet tones singing, “You’re no stranger to love”, the opening line of the song. The trick was so seamlessly perfect that Astley had no choice but to applaud it by posting a clap emoji, and then called out the clever user in his sign off post, saying, “u/theMalleableDuck I salute you!” It was the least he could do for a newly-minted internet legend.
