Comic #57 : "Stack Rotating"

I wrote the responses given in this interview as a "poem" that I emailed to several friends to test it out on. Only one saw the rick-roll before reading the instructions, although a couple didn't get back to me so maybe they also got it and now are no longer talking to me...

I deliberately wrote the poem quickly, without revising it, so it was obvious that something was going on. If I had disguised it better, made it like a legitimate poem - ie less random - it would not give the reader a fair chance to realise something is going on.

There are far better examples of hiding rick rolls in written material, most famously the rick-roll essay.

I once wrote an essay with a hidden message in it before. When I was studying for my GCSEs my English teacher always gave my 19/25 for every essay I wrote regardless of how much effort I put in to it. I believed that this was because he felt that was my 'level' - with 19/25 being the highest B grade mark you could receive - so I deliberately wrote an essay constrained by a system with a hidden message in it.

The system was slightly easier than the poem, the first letter in every sentence added to a word, with each new paragraph starting a new work. The whole essay wrote a sentence - which if memory serves was something insulting like "You are a stupid wanker who always gives me the same score for every essay."

The essay got 19/25