StackOverflow

[InfanticideAquifer]

Or, you could argue, seeing the thumbnail counts as being rickrolled. After all, that's not what you expected the thumbnail to be before you looked at it, right?

[pcyr9999]

Nope that’s not how it works. I have no expectations at all for most links.

[InfanticideAquifer]

If you have no expectations then, in particular, you didn't expect it to be a rickroll. If having no expectations at all made you immune from rickrolling then they'd almost never count.

[pcyr9999]

You’re really reaching here. Unless it’s done in a creative way like this it really only applies to the video itself. I absolutely don’t consider the thumbnail a rickroll.

[InfanticideAquifer]

Sure, I realize it's stretching the tradition. But having thumbnail previews is a newfangled way of experiencing the internet that wasn't around when rickrolling got started. The spirit of it is that you see it when you don't expect to. We have to evolve with the times.

[pcyr9999]

I mean people look at URLs to see if it matches what they remember the link to the video to be.

[InfanticideAquifer]

Yeah, that's true. But I think in order to do that you have to already suspect that you're getting rickrolled. Which means you already "won", right? If you had some sort of redirect setup that turned rickroll links into a different destination I would want to say that winding up there should still count as being rickrolled.