The explosion of ‘Never Gonna Give You Up’ is closely related to the cultural nature of the YouTube platform, and the transformation of Rick Astley’s song from a run-of-the-mill pop song to an online cultural phenomenon (“Rickrolling ‘) can be attributed to several factors.

Firstly, YouTube, as the world’s largest open video sharing platform, has an extremely strong capacity for content proliferation. Any user can upload content and reach global users through algorithmic recommendations.Rickrolling, as a kind of spoof culture (prank), is in line with the young user group’s fondness for humour and contrast. It is light-hearted, harmless, and spreads quickly through YouTube’s linking mechanisms (e.g., nested or disguised links).

meme culture requires a widely participatory medium, and YouTube provides that foundation. It has shaped the global distribution path of meme by increasing the repetitiveness of videos through comment section interactions, reaction videos, and covers & parodies. Repetition as with other media repetitive genres flourish on YouTube from variations on pranks to cute animals to parodies. This  is related both to available technologies, DIY user practices, and  aesthetic tendencies perceived as popular. (Vernallis, 2013)  At the same time, YouTube’s digital preservation of vintage videos opens up the possibility of ‘second lives’ for classic songs, and the preservation of Rick Astley’s music videos on YouTube is the basis for the existence of the modality.

The essence of spoof culture is contrast. When users click on a link because of the title or thumbnail, only to find themselves on the music video page of Never Gonna Give You Up, this dramatic experience reinforces the entertainment of the modal. Coupled with advances in technology, through subtitle translation and linguistic diversity in the comments section, Rickrolling is no longer confined to the English-speaking cultural sphere, but has become a global phenomenon. International users can also understand the fuzz and laugh at it, a cross-cultural adaptability that is highly compatible with YouTube’s nature as a transnational platform.

Bibliography

Carol Vernallis (2013), “YouTube Aesthetics”, in: Unruly Media, New York: Oxford University Press, 127-154.

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