Most of you are probably aware that I am something of a Google fangirl. I have a Google homepage with links to everything, use gmail for my email (and have all my email sent to one central address, and it's a beautiful thing), I read RSS feeds on Google Reader (and you can see my shared feed right in the sidebar of this blog!), organize my life with Google Calendar (which is a pretty, shiny thing), I have a website created with Google page creator, and right now I'm writing this entry in Google Docs which will then post to Blogger, which is owned by Google. I also love Google's various search features, particularly the Book Search (which you can get to by clicking the "more" option at the top of the page)- it lets you search books, and depending on the publication details, you can even see the book online (this has come in handy when I needed to refind a quote from a book I already returned to the library).
And so, while I'm not normally a fan of pranks- at least not mean-spirited ones- I giggled with girlish glee when I saw the many little April Fools jokes Google rolled out yesterday. The one that particularly amused me was the fact that YouTube (owned by Google) was rickrolling people. And I think partly the reason this entertained me so much was that it was such a nod to Internet culture. But it's also the hardest to explain, I think. Even if you don't know how to turn on a computer, the "custom time" feature announced yesterday on Gmail (which allowed you to send emails back in time) was obviously a joke, and it does seem unlikely that the "Google Wake Up Kit" would work, because it involved making your bed shake. I was quite pleased with the "I'm Feeling Lucky" addition to Calendar, where you would end up with random events- my first was a date with George W. Bush, which was distressing (unless we're meeting for a party at the White House to which all July 6 birthdays are invited, because that would include the Dali Lama and be awesome); but then I got two dates with Johnny Depp in a row, and who wouldn't be stoked about that? But the YouTube rickrolling was the one I loved the most and I didn't even see it first hand. I rarely use YouTube, because- well, I just don't. Sometimes people send me videos and sometimes I watch them but sometimes I don't feel like muting the TV or hitting pause or whatever (generally, it depends on who sent me the video and how much faith I have in their taste). And even if it weren't blocked at work, I wouldn't use it there because our connection is slow (not to imply that I sit around at work all day surfing the Internet, but sometimes we have downtime, esp. in the Visitor Center).
Anyway, I'm pretty sure that the primary audience for my blog is my mother, and I'm pretty sure she has no clue what rickrolling is, because while my mother is relatively tech-savvy compared to other women her age and even compared to some of my coworkers, she is not as fully immersed in the insanity of Internet culture as I am. So, rickrolling. Basically, during the course of a conversation/argument one party posts a link that on the surface appears to be to a study that proves their argument or a helpful wikipedia article or whatever, but is actually a link to the video for Rick Astley's hit "Never Gonna Give You Up" (which Mom, you'll probably recognize if you hear it). How and why it came to be this particular video I have no idea, aside from it probably happened once, people thought it was hilarious, and so it spread. I think it probably relates to how silly and cheesy the video is, how Rick Astley looks nothing like you expect based on his voice, and the fact that there is nothing offensive in the song/video, but it's not what you expected. It's a silly "haha, fooled you" and often used when the argument has degenerated to ad hominem attacks from one side or when the person being rickrolled seems incredibly gullible or willfully ignorant. And the fact that Google did it yesterday proves that they're all just a big bunch of geeks and makes me adore them.
