In case you haven’t heard, ‘rickrolling’ is everywhere. What’s rickrolling? Well, in a nutshell, it’s when you provide a link that is supposed to be to one thing, and actually links to a video of the 1987 Rick Astley song “Never Gonna Give You Up”. Wikipedia has more on this (yes, it’s really a link to Wikipedia, I won’t rickroll you).

Rickrolling has also been used as a form of protest, with the Church of Scientology being a particular target for anti-Scientologists. I’m a little confused as to what Rick Astley has to do with Scientology, but I digress.

Now different people certainly will have different opinions about rickrolling. Some may think it’s stupid and pointless, others may think it’s funny and entertaining. But guess who’s probably happier than anyone about rickrolling? That’s right, Rick Astley.

I doubt many of the people who have been involved in rickrolling others are big Rick Astley fans — and I would even go as far as to say that they probably think the phenomenon has grown to be as popular as it has due to the inherent ‘lameness’ of the song itself.

Now I’m not suggesting that Rick Astley and Sony Music are behind some Machiavellian scheme to revive “Never Gonna Give You Up”, despite the obvious brilliance of such a scheme if they were behind it. However, Astley is certainly going to benefit from this.

Chances are, something like this will happen: news outlets, friends and co-workers will mention something about rickrolling. The rickroll-uninitiated will say: ‘rickwhat’? They’ll go watch the video. Most people will chuckle, roll their eyes or reach desperately to turn the volume down.

But, scary as it sounds, there are people who like Rick Astley’s music. They’ll read about the upcoming greatest hits album, and want to buy it. And some people may buy it just because they can’t get enough of rickrolling.

It’s not the type of exposure that’s going to make Rick money, but the volume. It’s not that most people have now been convinced that Rick’s a really talented guy who should have remained in the spotlight — in fact, it would seem to be quite the opposite message.

And if you’re one of the special few who love Rick Astley, I apologize. No, really.