There are very few memes as timeless as the "Rickroll." The meme, which involves Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up," is a classic prank. And today, the internet became shocked after seeing their beloved 1987 music video remastered in crisp and clean 4k. The remaster comes courtesy of Revideo, a YouTube account that remasters videos with AI for kicks. This is without a doubt their most viral effort. On Twitter, user @Ray_sho shared a clip of the spiffed up video, deeming it cursed. Though some viewers were appreciative of the makeover, many responses echoed their revulsion. We'll admit that there's a certain charm that's lost with all the fuzziness eliminated, but anything involving Mr. Astley is a joy in our books. Check out the difference between the videos (and enjoy some of the peanut gallery's responses) below.
rick astley
It's time to take a little trip down memory lane, courtesy of our new favorite Twitter account, @OldMemeArchive. Thought the account has only been around since January 14th, it already boasts an incredible wealth of vintage (and mostly cringey) memes that Zoomers might not really understand. The memes and rage comics are a serious blast from the past, and a great reminder of why Impact font has reached peak irony. We've put a bunch of our favorite (and cringiest) macros in this list, but give the account a follow if you find yourself craving more. They post constantly and their prolificity is much appreciated.
We have to give a hand to whoever took the time to cut out each movie clip for this incredible video. Cheers to you.
One of the year's biggest video memes was "Shooting Stars," which became completely unavoidable in February. The 2008 hit single form Australian electronic group Bag Raiders came back with a vengeance, featured in remixes from classic (Rick Astley) to political (Donald Trump.) Here are our absolute favorite mashups - sorry in advance for the inevitable ear worm.
Always looking for something to protest, members of the simply awful Westboro Baptist Church lined up outside of a Foo Fighters concerts in Kansas City, MO Aug. 22.
They didn't exactly say what their specific problem was, but they generally hate just about everything, so the Foo Fighters worked for an opportunity to test out their hateful signage.
Dave Grohl and company decided not to take it sitting down.
Well, they stayed seated, but the band members brought out a rather loud sound system and drowned out the jeers of the protesters with the sweet sounds of Rick Astley.
And all praise be to this guy:
And after that, we're sure Dave Grohl retreated to the comfort of his incredible rock star tour throne.
Cleveland-based web developer Will Smidlein thought he would poke around with Vine's code seeing as it was just released on the Android platform.
To test his meddling, Smidlein posted the full-length version of "Never Gonna Give You Up" to Vine, which technically only allows user video posts to be 6 seconds or shorter. It wasn't long before Twitter, creators of Vine, had one of their engineers contact Smidlein directly and asked him to please remove his video, as it was causing some "technical difficulties." Smidlein promptly deleted the video and was rather apologetic about the whole situation:
Don't feel too bad, Will. The engineers probably shouldn't have pushed such easily breakable code in the first place.
