For April 1st, the company Sky Elements Drone Shows came up with an unusual joke idea. Using 300 drones, they formed a giant QR code in the sky which, once scanned, leads to… Rick Astley’s Never Gonna Give You Up music video. A new way to keep the Rick Roll alive, one of the oldest jokes on the Internet.
Has anyone ever created a better joke than the Rick Roll? The question is of course subject to debate, but it is clear that more than ten years since its appearance on the web, the joke is still as popular as ever. On the other hand, it is in fact more and more difficult to trap one’s victim, at a time when the slightest link now seems suspicious. To succeed, it is better to be inventive.
This is where drones come in. Now back in our daily lives, used both by the army and by delivery services, these little flying machines can also put on a show. Thus, when on April 1, 2022, the inhabitants see several hundred luminous drones flying over their cities, the latter do not ask themselves any more questions. Until these form a QR code.
300 drones for a giant Rick Roll in the sky
You will understand, the QR code was actually a link to the famous clip of Rick Astley . The idea comes from the brain of Jared Guynes, an expert in marketing and stunts like that. “When I realized that drone technology had advanced to the point where I had enough drones to make a scannable QR code in the sky, it kind of suddenly occurred to me that there would be possible to program a QR code to literally Rick Roll someone from the air”.
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To create the QR code, it took no less than 300 dronesequipped with a GPS system of LEDs of 1000 lumens. The final QR code, meanwhile, measures 30 by 76 meters . It stayed in the sky for about 20 minutes, enough to trap about 200 people,according to Sky Elements Drone Shows, the company that set up the prank.
