Rickrolling MTV: the Good News, the Bad News, and Then Some More Potentially Good News

MTV got rickrolled: Rick Astley was nominated for Best Act Ever. It was indeed the greatest rickroll of all time; I participated, millions participated, and with these millions working together, the world was shown the power of the masses. The internet phenomenon of rickrolling has spread to affect the real world in a significant way, and it happened to MTV, who were only a bit unprepared. A poll was set up on their website:

And it was absolutely demolished:

MTV quickly realized. Things had changed: the public wanted Rick to win, and if they didn’t get it, the company’s popularity would suffer – it is, after all, a business, that needs to generate money and keep popularity up. They adapted quickly, and boom, Rick is number one on the charts; the news in England are echoing with shock about the sudden surge in popularity for an artist whose biggest hit was more than twenty years ago. Rickrolling has become the greatest meme of all times, and Rick hasn’t even won yet.

Which leads me to what I’m really getting at. Rick won’t win the awards. The awards are rigged. Whoever’s sponsor pays the most gets the award. The music industry is a scandal and a tragedy: everything is manipulated to suit the consumer so that he spends more and the top dogs have more money to stuff in their already spherical wallets. However this tragedy is lessened by the underlying reality of this incident: the world has been rocked, as far as music awards go, by the masses. The people want to rickroll the awards, as is quite clear after the poll, and while MTV have been smart enough to take it onboard, if they don’t follow through and choose Tokio Hotel or Britney Spears instead, it’ll be blatantly obvious for everyone that we are all victims of corporate bullshit.

I am not a prophet. I do not claim to know that MTV will ignore Rick, and I won’t make remarks about how right I was all along if indeed it does turn out like this… and I sure do hope it will. I know that I am caught up in the moment: there are 33 days left until the awards, and enough time for the matter to cool down and people to accustom themselves to the surprise will definitely be there. The bottom line is that this is a sacrifice of the pleasure of seeing the greatest rick roll of all time fulfilling its destiny for something even greater – seeing the corporate lie fall, if just a little bit – and isn’t that, after all, the true Best Act Ever?

Advertisement