Pelosi Rickroll? What the?

This morning I noticed that the term "pelosi rickroll" was suddenly one of the most searched terms on Google. Why? What does it mean? Let's take a look.

The first article was on Time.com and describes how Speaker of the House of Representatives, Nancy Pelosi, staff put together a simple prank video (also shown below) with the express intent of creating a viral video that will introduce the Speaker Pelosi to the world. Time wrote about it. I'm writing about it. Thousands of others will write about it and tens or hundreds of thousands ... or perhaps even millions of people will watch it.

This is viral video nearly at its best.

As explained on Time.com:

The Rickroll, an internet meme that started a few years ago, is basically a prank in which unsuspecting viewers are tricked into listening to Rick Astley's 1987 hit "Never Gonna Give You Up". The classic Rickroll is when someone is tricked into clicking on link that takes them to a video of the song.

What a great idea! Kudo's to Pelosi's staff for (a) using the new media at their fingertips, and (b) having a sense of humour!

Maybe this also will become part of Pelosi's (and indeed Obama's) branding: Take the job seriously, but not yourself.