Everyone's been having a good laugh over CNN UK's hard-hitting report a few days ago on the ubiquitous, indefatigable Rick Roll. The segment hits all of the classic mainstream-news-discovering-tired-meme points, from mistakenly attributing the Astley renaissance to 'Family Guy' to trotting out an old media executive for some daft analysis (Astley's producer Peter Waterman in this case, who can't wait to hit up MySpace and YouTube for royalties). As much as we'd like to move right along in the meme cycle (next up, 60 Minutes!), we can't give CNN a pass on the prominent rickrolling.com plugs throughout their piece. Be cautious, clicker (you may need Ctrl+Alt+Delete on your PC or Apple+W on your Mac), and prepare to know thine enemy.


One can only despair over how many lovely, curious Brits were spammed and tortured by CNN's need to link to an aesthetically pleasing URL instead of something actually useful (like the Wikipedia page, which puts their reporting to shame).

The whole thing may also be a ploy to destroy all hope for the Internet. If that's the case, well played, CNN - diabolically well played.