A surprising thing happened today: the Global and Mail ran a story by Ivor Tossell about… wait for it… rickrollling! (thanks Luke for the link, I’m glad someone still reads the paper;) )

I’ve been lamenting the sad state of journalistic reporting on internet culture for a while (in fact, it was part of the focus of the talk Leigh and I did at Notacon a few weeks back… where we also rickrolled the audience. heh!), so it was really nice to see an article that mostly gets it (4chan is mentioned!!), save for the slightly curmudgeonly “What is all this haberdashery!!!1 You kids get off my lawn!!!!!!1111” kinda tone. And to be picky, LOLcats don’t speak like hacker kids, they speak kitteh! It’s totally different (GNARR). But how can you not love Tossells description of rickrolling as “a dead end made flesh and given a bouffant hairdo”?

So, I want to know who this Ivor Tossell guy is and how he convinced his editors to let him do that story. I suspect it has something to do with Facebook and LOLcats softening everyone up to the idea that hey, this internet thing may be more than just gadgets and nerds.

PS Fono says he’s a sad boy because there are no more good internet cartoons, like Magical Trevor and those fucked up GI Joe PSAs.