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Rickroll Video Hits a Billion Views on YouTube as Internet’s Most Popular Prank

posted by martyb on Sunday August 01 2021, @02:21PM   Printer-friendly

upstart writes:

Rickroll video hits a billion views on YouTube as Internet’s most popular prank:

The Internet’s most popular prank, Rickrolling, has driven the official video for Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up to the prestigious 1 billion views milestone. To celebrate the achievement, singer Astley pinned a comment on the video announcing the moment, thanking fans for the “amazing, crazy, wonderful” milestone.

Never Gonna Give You Up was uploaded by Rick Astley on YouTube in late 2009. The song soon became a popular prank that reached meme status, with Internet users alleging they’d linked to one thing when, in reality, the person who clicked the link would be taken to YouTube’s copy of the music video.

This is a notable achievement and milestone. Take a look, though, at Wikipedia's List of Most-Viewed Videos.

Also at The Verge.

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  • (Score: 3, Informative) by amamandaa on Sunday August 01 2021, @02:52PM (3 children)

    by amamandaa (14957) on Sunday August 01 2021, @02:52PM (#1161962)

    As pranks go, this one is quite benign, and safe for work, safe for school, safe for (most) church environments. Relatively normal people might even enjoy this prank - once a year or so.

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  • (Score: 5, Interesting) by Tork on Sunday August 01 2021, @04:25PM (2 children)

    by Tork (3914) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 01 2021, @04:25PM (#1161981)
    And, to the best of my knowledge, Mr. Astley has had a very positive view of the whole thing. Anybody catch when he did a live performance a few Thanksgiving Parades ago? Damn I love a good sport.

    Okay, confession time: A few years ago back when the Nintendo was teasing people with the 'Revolution', someone on a forum I lurked at posted a link to a leaked presentation video about it. Excited I clicked the link and I'm never going to give you up... This was a professional forum for people in an industry where networking plays a huge role. I told the guy off, pretty sure I even called him a jerk, all because that was a PROFESSIONAL place and I used the word professional a lot and ya know what? It's several years later and when I think about that now I was being too f'n up-tight. I don't know who all here will get this reference but I feel like I was a real Frank Burns about it. I don't know when I changed my mind on how bad my behaviour was that day but I'm pretty certain his Turkey Day Prank helped me take a fresh look at it.
    --
    🏳️‍🌈 Proud Ally 🏳️‍🌈

    • (Score: 2, Insightful) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 01 2021, @05:54PM (1 child)

      by Anonymous Coward on Sunday August 01 2021, @05:54PM (#1162004)

      For those who don't get the Frank Burns reference, here's an explanation [youtu.be]