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White House's Twitter followers get Rickrolled

  • By FCW Staff
  • Jul 29, 2011
The Obama administration talks a lot about "winning the future," but one member of its economic team recently tweeted a No. 1 pop hit from the past, NextGov reports.

While taking questions from White House Twitter followers during online "office hours" July 27, National Economic Council Deputy Director Brian Deese sent out a link to a YouTube video of British singer Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up,” a No. 1 song from 1988.

Whether inadvertent or deliberate, what Deese did is known as Rickrolling, a type of bait-and-switch meme used on the Internet to direct people to a hyperlink of the Astley video. People sending out the link in online discussion forums claim it is relevant to the topic being discussed.

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Reader comments

Wed, Aug 3, 2011

I'm sorry....this was newsworthy why?

Mon, Aug 1, 2011 Jesse

Dear Ray, You can keep up-to-date on the latest internet memes here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dQw4w9WgXcQ&ob=av2e

Mon, Aug 1, 2011 SN

Rickrolling is an internet meme that has been around since about 2007. It is a variation of duckrolling, where someone was tricked into clicking a link that led them to a picture of a duck with wheels. In this variant, the user is led to believe they are clicking a link that will lead them to a page that is relevant to the discussion. Instead they are directed to a page that plays the song. It is not a scam or even spam. It is just a simple prank that people have been playing on each other for a few years now. It originated on 4chan, an internet forum, not twitter. A lot has happened on the internet since ARPANET. Here's a site that might help you catch up: http://knowyourmeme.com/

Mon, Aug 1, 2011 EricE

Ray - you might want to follow the rick rolling link provided in the article - it will help explain while this was a highly unusual thing for an official government communication channel and thus newsworthy. Frankly, the fact that you had never heard of it before has little bearing on it's newsworthiness. Heck, I've never heard of you before either!

Mon, Aug 1, 2011

You've never heard of Rickrolled? You've probably never heard of "All YOur Base Are Belong To Us" or "The Cake is a Lie" either then.

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