Rickrolling Anniversary
Rickrolling Anniversary
[Cueball and Megan are walking.] Cueball: This month marks ten years since the peak of the Rickrolling phenomenon.
[In a frame-less panel they keep walking.] Megan: Seriously? Megan: Wow. Happy anniversary, I guess.
[They keep walking silently, beat panel.]
[And they walk on.] Cueball: We've known each other for so long. Megan: We really have.

Cueball tells Megan that by the release of this comic in April 2018 it is the 10th anniversary of the peak of rickrolling , and she is amazed that this has been so long ago. She then expresses a half-hearted happy anniversary wish, though it's not clear whether the anniversary she is congratulating is the phenomena itself having reached 10 years, or if she and Cueball met 10 years ago, coinciding with the height of the popularity of rickrolling, and this is reminding her to wish him a happy anniversary. After a beat panel Cueball concludes "We've known each other for so long", which is both a poetic affirmation of his friendship with Megan, and a line from the song " Never Gonna Give You Up ," the hit song by Rick Astley on which rickrolling is based.
The first reference to rickrolling in xkcd was in 351: Trolling from 2007, where Astley himself was Rickrolled by Black Hat . Black Hat then later uses Astley to show his girlfriend Danish how Rick rolls in 524: Party , a New Year party from the end of 2008.
Rickrolling had first started in 2007, but reached a peak in about April 2008 when, as an April fool's day prank, Youtube linked all its featured videos to Never Gonna Give You Up , and the New York Mets were Rickrolled by a public vote to choose a song for the 8th innings sing-song. This coincided with a sharp peak in searches for "Rick Astley" and related terms.
The title text refers to another old xkcd meme of giving snippets of information to the reader that make them feel old . Although comics such as 218: Nintendo Surgeon in 2007 refer to facts that could make you feel old, the first comic directly build around factoids to make one feel old in xkcd was 891: Movie Ages in April 2011. This was 7 years before the time of publishing. The Bush Kerry election was in November 2004, 6½ years before that comic, making the title text statement that the beginning of this meme is closer to that election that today. This is the way most of these make you feel old comics are built.
[Cueball and Megan are walking.] Cueball: This month marks ten years since the peak of the Rickrolling phenomenon.
[In a frame-less panel they keep walking.] Megan: Seriously? Megan: Wow. Happy anniversary, I guess.
[They keep walking silently, beat panel.]
[And they walk on.] Cueball: We've known each other for so long. Megan: We really have.
