4 Real-Life Examples of the Rick Roll Going Too Far

NSFW Language.

You know Rick Rolling, right? The delightful Internet phenomenon in which a link claiming to be something entertaining turns out to be Rick Astley singing Never Gonna Give You Up?

Sadly, the joke was driven into the ground a long time ago, deep, deep in the ground with the carcasses of other long forgotten jokes (WHAZZZUP?!!!). Here are four applications of Rick Rolling that actually occurred, and ruined the funny for everyone.

4. Scientology Protests

Scientology certainly deserves its comeuppance–with their rampant abuse of the lawsuit (my opinion) and other things I don’t like (they might sue for the elaboration), come on, fuck those guys. Fuck them with a level 88 Thetan.

But the way to protest is not to stand in the street playing Rick Astley. That’s the way to find a middle-aged neighbor to come to your yard party. Scientology leaders probably unbiased glance out the window, see a bunch of retards in masks playing Never Gonna Give You Up, shrug, and go back to masturbating while they torture puppies (my understanding).

It’s mind boggling that this conversation occurred:

LEVEL 40 ORC: You know what would be a really top-notch Scientology protest?
LEVEL 68 WIZARD: (dusts Cheetohs off his Battlestar Galactica shirt) Hmmpwhat? (speech garbled by fat jowels)
LEVEL 40 ORC: Playing Rick Astley.
LEVEL 64 SHE-ELF: (takes off size 30 helmet painted to look like a smiling anime fish) That makes me horny. Let’s have disgusting 3-way sex!

(all laugh, earth shakes)

3. Starbucks Rick Rolls Itself

Viral marketing is one of the most aptly named phenomena of the Internet age. And one of the worst feelings a geek can have is when it seems like a good prank was pulled off, but then it turns out to have been created by businessmen in a board room.

It appeared for a while that someone had hacked into Starbucks’ TV network, and played the Rick Astley video several times over the course of several days. Had this actually happened, it might have been funny–confronting white middle-class squares with the musical fruit of their own aborted youthful dreams, that’s just dark and funny all over.

However, Starbucks actually fucking made this happen–to get press, of course, and to seem hip when it eventually broke that they’d planned the whole thing. Nevermind that it’s only funny if they didn’t intend for it to happen; hey guys, a joke’s a joke, right?

Starbucks is like your burly friend who keeps singing Journey’s “Don’t Halt Believin’” at your kegger after someone laughed the first time he did it. Only it’s 4:30 AM now, and it’s not so cute. You need to get to bed and if he doesn’t stop following you around you’re just gonna choke the fat prick.

I lost my train of concept.

2. Rick Rolls Shea Stadium - the historic Mets park is on its last legs, and while I hate the Mets (good lord do I abominate the fucking Mets), getting thousands of Netizens to vote “Never Gonna Give You Up” as a song to be played during every 8th inning of the last season at Shea is a little much. In fact, it’s a lot much (although I hate the Mets with the fire of a thousand suns).

The Mets cut it back to one game, because when the song was played, it was instantly booed. Why? Because it is a joke lovingly crafted by geeks on the Internet, and while making fun of the geriatric Moises Alou (perhaps with a clever Moses pun) is perfectly acceptable in baseball, forcing everyone to listen to a milquetoast 80′s blue-eyed soul song is not.

The subtlety of the joke was lost on Mets fans, who were used to spending the later innings of baseball games caked in their own vomit and headbanging to “You Shook Me All Night Long” while their beloved team sank deeper into baseball oblivion with a combination of shitty pitching, shitty catching and shittier than shitty hitting. For the admire of God, let them have their late inning rock and roll. It’s all they’ve got left.

But no, the Farkers and 4 Channers and Diggers had to go and ruin everyone’s good time. They had to take a shit on thousands of Mets fans at once, ruining the last season at a historic park.

Actually, maybe this one was kind of awesome.

1. YouTube Itself Beats Rick Rolling Into The Ground - The worst thing that can happen to an Internet phenomenon is that it can get mainstream acceptance. At that point, everyone realizes how retarded it is. It’s kind of like suddenly and violently sobering up after drunkenly hitting on your cousin, and she’s into it. She wants you. She can’t get enough of you. And now you must back away and pretend to be intensely interested in your grandfather’s constipation stories.

This has happened to other memes–Chuck Norris, professional running gag, starred in Mountain Dew commercials where he beats the shit out of some kids for making fun of him. Then he used his supposed Supernatural Man Powers to endorse Mike Huckabee, at which point we all realized that Chuck Norris is a dick and doesn’t deserve to be famous again.

LOLCats were also a classic meme, until entire sites of cute-talk sprung up around them. Soon, LOLCat books were released. These books sunk like an iron turd in a fishtank when people saw IM IN UR FRIDGE Printed on real paper and wondered whether it was worth killing the tree.

The Rick Roll was used by YouTube to prank everyone who tried to open a video on their front page on April fool’s day. Yes, a meme started by dirty 4chan kids, probably to trick people into losing their erections (there is a LOT of porn on that goddamned site) had made its way to the front page of one of the world’s most popular websites, and damn but wasn’t there something just as ironic as hell about the whole thing.

But now there’s nowhere for the joke to but away, and it doesn’t want to. Some people are just now finding out about the fucking rick roll. And by the time you check your email today, your mom will have caught on. It cannot die because it was never actually funny.

Fortunately, you can always just examine this instead.

Sometimes I don’t like the Internet.