The user who posted it has been identified as Shawn Cotter, a nineteen-year-old US Air Force airman, who uploaded the video to YouTube under the title “Rickroll’D.” The deliberateness of the bait-and-switch — the promise of relevant, interesting content replaced by an unexpected diversion — was the joke. The joke landed. It spread.
The mechanics need some unpacking. The video that became the vehicle for rickrolling was not, in May 2007, available as an official upload from Rick Astley, his management, or any rights holder. The official upload of the “Never Gonna Give You Up” video to the official Rick Astley YouTube channel did not happen until October 25, 2009 — more than two years after the meme began. The early rickrolling used unauthorized uploads, uploaded by other users, that circumvented the normal structures of rights and royalties. This is one of the reasons that the early financial returns to the people who had made the song were so minimal.
The antecedent to rickrolling was a 4chan practice called “duckrolling,” which had developed in 2006 after the platform’s administrator modified the site’s word filter so that the word “egg” was replaced with “duck.” This produced a Photoshopped image of a duck on wheels — a “rolling duck” — that 4chan users began linking to as a bait-and-switch prank. Duckrolling was the template. Rickrolling was the version that escaped the specific community where it was born and became a general internet practice.
The transfer from niche to mainstream required the video to spread beyond 4chan into the wider internet. YouTube provided the infrastructure for this spread: a link to a YouTube URL was distributable by anyone, playable by anyone with a broadband connection, and embedable in forums, websites, and email. The video was short, funny without being offensive, and baffling enough to people who didn’t know the source that it produced the specific combination of confusion and amusement that internet pranks depend on. It spread.