MIT students have pulled some creative pranks on their campus. Some of the more ambitious “hacks” involved assembling large objects—think firetrucks and lunar modules—on top of the school’s Great Dome. For their latest hack, students decided to RickRoll the Dome in the nerdiest way possible—by wrapping the first eight notes of the now infamous pop song around it’s exterior.
For the unfamiliar, RickRolling began as an Internet phenomenon that involves tricking people into watching Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” music video on YouTube. Apparently, the students got the idea for the latest prank after noticing that outside of the Dome looks sheet music minus the notes.
The MIT student newspaper, The Tech, has a photo here.
And now, for those who wish to experience the joy, here’s a video of the 2008 Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade getting Rickrolled by Astley himself:
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Image:flickr/Matthais_Rosenkranz
September 14th, 2009 at 6:06 pm
Note: They didn’t actually wrap the dome. It is currently under renovations and is surrounded by a large, white covering with horizontal bars. The hackers placed the notes over this covering.
September 15th, 2009 at 6:41 am
that was insightful and encouraging of artistic pursuits and ventures in regards to pranks at university campuses. good work.
September 15th, 2009 at 9:12 am
Hi, just a quick note that it’s actually the first seven notes, not the first eight notes, of the song.
I think the error comes from the UK newspaper’s blog that also wrote “eight”:(http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6188174/Massachusetts-Institute-of-Technology-rickrolled.html).
I have the “seven” on good authority from someone who counted, and you can check the photograph
September 15th, 2009 at 3:29 pm
[...] Dome Rickrolled Apparently it happened last week, but few people noticed it till just recently.Could be because not many people knew that those seven notes affixed to the construction [...]