I'd have to think most of you are familiar with the term rickrolled, and hopefully you're also somewhat familiar with the above video. It was two guys who rickrolled a women’s basketball game at Eastern Washington University on March 8. It became such a phenomenon that the New York Times wrote about it on March 24th:
A routine timeout turned into a 1980s flashback, as two men on the sidelines briefly hijacked the proceedings with a popular prank known as rickrolling. They surprised the crowd by blasting the British singer Rick Astley's 1987 hit song "Never Gonna Give You Up" through the gym, while one, dressed as a look-alike in Mr. Astley's signature trench coat, lip-synched and mugged to the music. The stunt provoked a variety of reactions. Many older spectators looked, by turns, puzzled or irritated. But the under-30 fans danced and sang, happy to participate in a rapidly spreading phenomenon with roots in their favorite medium — the Internet."
Only one problem, it never actually happened.
KHQ News in Spokane, Washington found out that the video was in fact edited by an aspiring filmmaker (known as Pawley P) at Eastern Washington University who used clips from a variety of games to produce the video.
It was pretty easy to figure out. The women's basketball coach said Pawley never interrupted a timeout and the EWU Police Department said they are not aware of Pawley ever using the PA system.
When Pawley was asked whether he had pranked the NYT, he told a Spokane reporter: "You could say that, uhhhhhhhh, you could say that."
So it turns out that the "paper of record", which has now added a correction, wound up getting rickrolled by writing about getting rickrolled. We're just lucky the universe didn't collapse in on itself after I wrote that last sentence.
more
