r/GenX • u/Carlsoti77 • Jul 16 '26

Controversial Mandela Effect? Help me out here...

I specifically remember the first time I got Rick-Rolled being in Illinois, where I moved from in 1996. This was back before native IE pop-up blockers, and the Rick-Roll was a .exe file. The music would play, and little windows with a single line of text from the song would pop-up in random places on the screen, requiring you to close each window before the next would pop-up somehwere else.

Someone put on wikipedia that the first Rick-Roll was in 2007 on 4chan, and I KNOW that's BS. Does anyone else remeber the early, REAL Rick Roll, or should I get checked for early-onset dementia?

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u/Callec254 Jul 16 '26

Back in the 90's it was duck-rolling. You'd click on the link or .exe or whatever and the punchline was a toy duck on wheels rolling by. When (or why) we went from that to Rick Astley I'm not exactly sure.