I love this story. Some of you may remember the 80s pop star Rick Astley, whose song Never Gonna Give You Up was the biggest hit of 1987. However, and although he had a few hits afterwards, Astley's career as a major recording artist was pretty much over by the early nineties. And it seemed fairly unlikely that he would ever figure in popular culture again. However, that was before the concept of rickrolling was invented...

According to Wikipedia:

Rickrolling is a prank and Internet meme involving the music video for the 1987 Rick Astley song Never Gonna Give You Up. In a rickroll, a person provides a link they claim is relevant to the topic at hand which actually takes the user to the Astley video. It can also mean playing the song loudly in public in order to be disruptive. A person who falls for the prank is said to be rickrolled.

The rickrollers have already persuaded fifteen million people to watch various YouTube videos of Never Gonna Give You Up (six million times for this video and nine million for this one) by placing dummy links all over the web. But they have just pulled off their greatest coup by stitching up the New York Mets.

The Mets were holding a vote to decide on a club song. They were clearly expecting fans to vote for a solid American, Bon Jovi-type classic. However, as soon as the vote appeared on the site, the rickrolling machine swung into action, using social networking and bookmarking sites to mobilise support for Astley. There was no contest - Never Gonna Give You Up ran away with the competition with five million votes.

Displaying a lack of good sportsmanship (and certainly the lack of a good sense of humour) the Mets were actually quite peeved by the whole thing and have vowed to set aside the results of the online vote and replace with a decision made by fans in the Shea Stadium. But still, it was a very good joke.

I'll leave the last word to the man himself.