Last night I became statistic. I became one of the 18 million Americans who have been “Rickrolled.” I’m still recovering from the traumatic experience.

So, what is Rick Rolling, you wonder? According Wikipedia:

 Rickrolling is a prank and Internet meme involving the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song “Never Gonna Give You Up“. The meme is a classic bait and switch: a person provides a Web link they claim is relevant to the topic at hand, but the link actually takes the user to the Astley video. The URL can be masked or obfuscated in some manner so that the user cannot determine the true source of the link without clicking (and thus satisfying their curiosity). By extension, it can also mean playing the song loudly in public in order to be disruptive.^[1] A person who falls for the prank is said to have been “Rickrolled”. 

Here’s how it happened to me. I was chilling out last night, perusing jokes on Comic Wonder, when I clicked on one of StabbytheClown’s jokes. Half way through the joke, out of nowhere, BAM!—I got Rickrolled.

Here’s a link to the offending joke: http://www.comicwonder.com/joke/8a46a9b4a. If anything, it’s a great way to learn how to set up a Rickroll. Also, here’s another link to Rickrolling: http://www.yougotrickrolled.com/

Me, I’ve learned two things from this episode: One is never trust a clown. The other thing I’ve learned is that …

 Time and time again it’s true
Girl I want to be with you
Every night and every day, yeah

And girl, therefore:

Never gonna give up on love
(I’ll never)
Never gonna give up on you
Never gonna give up on us
(I’ll never)
After all we’ve been through
Never gonna give up my heart
(I’ll never)
To no one but you
Never gonna give up on love
Never gonna give up on you, yeah 

Oh the humanity! Will somebody please get this song out of my head! Curse you, StabbytheClown, whoever you are!