It's actually a variant of the duckroll, which consisted of links to a picture of a duck on wheels ◊. Like a lot of memes, it started on 4chan. It also means that Rick Astley himself was very much aware of the meme (he was quite baffled by it and starting to get really annoyed that it's all anyone ever wants to ask him about, but he eventually grew to accept and embrace it). Newspaper articles were even written about the phenomenon, to the point where discussions of the song on its own merits as a song were very rare. People were trying this in Real Life, trying to foist the video (or even a live performance of the song) on large public gatherings. It grew to be more than just an Internet meme, though it was one of the few memes to break out of the Internet and into general popular culture. That said, several have found ways to avoiding it - they either simply checked the copyright info on the YouTube link to see if it featured the song (or "content from Rick Astley Official Channel"), or memorized the YouTube link for it. How did it become so popular? It's simple, it's mostly harmless, and the song itself is pretty catchy. It's a classic Bait-and-Switch, where you're linked to a web page that purports to be something relevant to whatever you're reading, only to click on it and find yourself watching the music video of British singer Rick Astley's 1987 pop hit "Never Gonna Give You Up". The Rickroll is one of the most famous yet polarizing memes on the Internet.
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