Just What Is A Duckroll?

You've probably heard of rick rolling - if not, you aren't missing much. In fact, it's probably better that you don't know first hand - it's meant to be an unpleasant experience. Basically it's a bait-and-switch; you are lured into clicking a link to a gameplay video (that really couldn't exist yet anyway) or something that many people would quite obviously be searching for, given the season or particular circumstances.

Instead, you're greeted (after the fact) with a video of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video. Why was this particular video chosen? you might wonder. That is, if you weren't fuming with frustration or deluged in disappointment over the deception.

However, far fewer people have heard of the elusive "duckroll" and still fewer know of its relation to rick rolling. I find the story to be a fascinating and amusing one, and thus, felt obliged to share it.

It started with a rogue forum parser bot. I won't even mention the forum name as it's one of those that is better left unmentioned. This bot apparently took a liking to the word "duck" and an intense dislike to the word "egg" and decided, of course, to replace all instances of the latter with the former.

Somewhere on this forum that day, there must have been some instances of the word "eggroll" which were then changed to "duckroll" purely by mistake. Or as much as you can attribute something as inane as changing "duck" to "egg" as a mistake in the first place. Regardless, it did happen, and some people found this funny.

Not only did they find this funny, they felt compelled to spread the glee, but not in the way that it would occur to most of us. No, whoever began this strange meme (admittedly, the phrase "strange meme" is actually quite redundant; forgive me an unrestrained chuckle) decided that they should load up MS Paint and hack together a picture of a duck on wheels.

The craziest part is that it didn't end there - far from it. That picture was only the beginning. For most of us simpletons, the mere image of a duck on wheels would be enough to warrant placing it as our desktop background and laughing about it for several months, if not more. However, rather than be content with its value purely as humor, the image's creator imagined for it an even greater purpose - irony. Just as discretion is the better part of valor, irony is the better part of humor.

But I digress. This potentially-amusing image was then used for something very un-amusing; displaying it whenever someone clicked a link to a hot topic or something nearly everyone would be quite interested in. Some time later, the idea was changed to use Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" music video instead of an image of a duck on wheels, and of course, the name changed along with it.

Whether you like egg rolls, hate rick rolls, or both, I hope I've helped enlighten you somewhat to the nature of this odd meme, and perhaps made you more wary of it. My goal was to brighten as well; I try to present things in as interesting or funny a manner as possible, particularly on this blog. If I accomplished that with this post, even better. If not? Then move along. These clearly aren't the droids you're looking for.