Ah, the classic Rickroll, one of the internet’s earliest, and best-known memes. It’s been with us for over a decade now, amusing, confusing, and pissing people off. In fact, Rick Astley’s 1987 song, “Never Gonna Give You Up,” which was a number-one hit all over the world, is probably better known as a joke than as a power ballad.
What better way to commemorate the song than combining it with farting, nature’s first joke? Add in some crude animation and you’ve got peak early 2000’s internet humor.
A man named Kyle Theobald created the animation “for a good friend for his birthday.” Rick Astley was born on Feb. 6, so could this be an early present for the man himself? Perhaps.
Theobald does make sure to give credit for the fart sounds. Those come from manualist Gerry Phillips. For those of you who aren’t music aficionados, a manualist is someone who’s really really good at making fart noises with their hands.
The video contains everything a 12-year-old boy from 2008 could hope for:
Farting on a microphone.
Farting on a cake (bonus points for making the candle look like a penis).
Farting on a dog.
And even farting into a trombone. The Inception of farting.
The only thing the video lacks is any form of genitalia—if you don’t count the penis candle.
Whether you find this all amusing or highly annoying depends on a number of factors: your sense of humor, your mood when you first saw it, who showed it to you, and if you’re Rick Astley. We don’t know how the singer feels about this particular video, but back in 2008, he showed his appreciation for Rickrolling when he interrupted the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day Parade to lip sync his signature song.
By the way, if you’re hoping for more work from this particular cartoonist, you’re out of luck. “I present my magnum opus,” he wrote when posting the video to Reddit, “I now retire from both art and animation. Thank you.”
