You're innocently surfing the Web. Clicking on stuff. Sports scores, news stories. You know, normal things. Then it starts. A fusillade of electronic drums. A doinky synthesizer beat. A dude with a pompadour and a lot of sincerity. He's dancing--badly. He is 1980s pop star Rick Astley, and you have been RICKROLLED.
Rickrolling is an increasingly common online practical joke. The object is to trick people into clicking on a benign-looking link that takes them to the video for Astley's hit Never Gonna Give You Up. By now millions of people have inadvertently watched the video, which came out in 1987,...