When good memes go bad

Should you be delighted or horrified at the mainstream media's attempt to 'get hep' and climb onto the Rick Rolling bandwagon during the Thanksgiving Day Macy's Parade? For those decidedly unhep readers, RickRolling is a gag where a website will unwittingly lead one to this 1987 Rick Astley video of the song "Never Gonna Give You Up", or one like it.

Yeah, I know. It's almost as funny as the "all your base are belong to us" slogan showing up everywhere in 2001. But it's not supposed to be funny; it's supposed to be ironic, for one, and also a status marker. If you don't know what Rickrolling is, square, beat it.

That is what disturbs me so much about the Macy's day stunt. That the parade was Rickroll'd says a couple of things. One, that even dorks at NBC know about the phenomenon, possibly from their much hipper children. Two, they interrupted A PARADE and had Rick Astley lip-sync right there on the spot. Won't someone please think of the children!?!! And three, they treated Astley like he earned his newfound celebrity status the old fangled way, through people liking his music and buying it, instead of being an object of mockery online, the punchline of a joke.

Yeah, I know. Bow down to the power of transformative irony. Meaning = dead. Whassssuppp?!