Rickrolling is an Internet meme that involves the music video for
the 1987 Rick Astley song "Never Gonna Give You Up". The meme is a
bait and switch: a person provides a hyperlink that they claim is
relevant to the topic at hand, but the link actually takes the user
to the Astley video.
The link can be masked or obfuscated in some manner so that the
user cannot determine the true destination of the link without
clicking. When a person clicks on the link and is led to the web
page, he or she is said to have been "rickrolled".
Rickrolling has extended beyond web links to playing the video
or song disruptively in other situations, including public places;
this culminated when Astley and the song made a surprise appearance
in the 2008 Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, a televised event with
tens of millions of viewers.
