Vine ‘Rickrolled’ By 16-Year-Old
Vine was “Rickrolled” and possibly broken by a 16-year-old. Will Smidlein, of Cleveland, managed to Rickroll the Twitter application when he bypassed the six-second time limit on videos.
To be “Rickrolled” is to be tricked into watching the video for Rick Astley’s 80s pop hit “Never Gonna Give You Up.” The term has somewhat morphed to include images that feature or allude to the lyrics, leaving people with an ear worm that won’t … give up.
As reported by CNN, Smidlein uploaded the entire video of Astley’s infamous song, a total of 3 minutes 33 seconds. At that point Vine had been Rickrolled and appeared to stop working.
Realizing what happened, Smidlein tweeted “I think I Broke Vine.”
Smidlein reportedly received an e-mail from a Twitter engineer, asking him to remove the video. Smidlein states that he did not intend to cause any serious issues. He posted several apologies for the Vine Rickrolling ruckus:
“Honestly, it was just for my friends and the people who follow me on Twitter and Vine … Sorry, Twitter/Vine engineers … I tried to keep it quiet, but the internet never forgets.”
At some point after the full-length video was posted, Twitter broke down briefly. It has not been confirmed whether the Rick Astley video caused the problem.
Some other famous appearances of people being Rickrolled are outlined by KnowYourMeme.com. In 2008 the song was performed live and played on loud speakers by protesters against the Church of Scientology.
On April 1, 2008, as an April Fool prank, all featured YouTube videos were redirected to Rick Astley’s music video.
The New York Mets surprised an entire stadium of fans with the song during their home opener on April 4, 2008.
On Thanksgiving Day 2008, Astley appeared on a float in Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade, lip-syncing “Never Gonna Give You Up.” Astley effectively Rickrolled everyone along the parade route and everyone watching the parade on TV.
The latest victim, Vine, was Rickrolled by a 16-year-old with just enough technical knowledge to exploit a loophole and a great sense of humor.
[Image via Wikipedia]
