It must have started with one curious student scanning the QR code on the CBSE Class 12 Maths question paper, wondering why it was there. Social media was soon filled with videos of students accessing a YouTube video that had nothing to do with the paper or even mathematics at all — in which someone was dancing and singing, “I’ll Never Give Up on You.”
Meme culture has a name: “Rickroll.” We will come to that.
Firstly, the Central Board of Secondary Education has certainly made it clear that the QR code is intended to be a security feature to “verify the authenticity of the question paper in case a security breach is suspected”; And it wasn’t supposed to lead to the song’s video. The board emphasized that “the question papers are genuine” and that their security “remains undisputed.”
The Class 12 Mathematics exam was held on March 9 from 10:30 a.m. to 1:30 p.m.
“The matter has been taken seriously and necessary steps are being taken by the board to ensure that such issues do not recur in the future,” said Sanyam Bhardwaj, Controller of Examinations, CBSE.
Now for “Rickroll”. It is a common internet prank where someone is tricked into clicking on a link that leads to the music video.
And that video is always that video: Rick Astley’s 1987 hit “Never Gonna Give You Up.” There’s no definitive theory for how these memes came about around 2010, when social media exploded, but they remain a popular online joke, most popular on TikTok.
The song isn’t just any song anyway. It is a chart-topping dance-pop song of its time.
Released in 1987, English singer-songwriter Astley’s single topped the charts in 25 countries and won awards, before becoming immortal with “Rickroll”. It surpassed 1 billion views on YouTube in 2021, and as of March 10, 2026, it has 1.7 billion views.
This was Rick Astley’s debut single, and won the BRIT Award for British Single of the Year. Astley was nominated for a Grammy Award for Best New Artist.
Two decades later, Rickrolling was born. The song was written and produced by the Stock-Aitken-Waterman team, who have gone on to become hitmakers for artists such as Kylie Minogue, Dead or Alive and others.
It has found renewed interest in India after the CBSE question paper fiasco, quite late as TikTok remains banned in the country for about six years.
Rick Astley, now 60, was asked about the “Rickrolling” phenomenon, which he described as “really weird” but he embraced. “It was hard for me at first,” he told Fox News in 2020. “Let’s face it, this video is from a long time ago. I look like I’m 11 years old wearing my dad’s coat.”
“I’m not saying I was accidentally Rickrolled, but I was definitely Rickrolled,” he told Newsweek. “Most of my friends and colleagues and people I know say have you seen this, have you seen that, I’ve seen them all, I’ve seen them all.”
