What is a rick roll?
In case you didn't know, a rick roll is a prank where you send someone a link to the music video of Rick Astley's "Never Gonna Give You Up" instead of what they are actually expecting. It's a classic internet meme that has been around for a while now.
The problem
The problem is that people are aware of that and don't click on YouTube links anymore if they don't know what they are. So I had to come up with a new way to rick roll people.
My solution
Nginx. Yes, as simple as that. I set up a reverse proxy on my server that forwards all requests to the Rick Astley video. Then, I made it listen to a wildcard subdomain of my domain, as well as all paths. That way, I can send people a link to https://anything.mbits.dev/anything and they will be rick rolled.
The fun part is that you can do so too, just send your friend who is waiting for a tutorial on how to set up a mail client this link: https://help.mbits.dev/how-to-configure-imap
Technical details
Just add the following to your Nginx configuration (I'm using nginx-proxy-manager for this):
return 301 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uHgt8giw1LY;
Conclusion
Have fun rick rolling people!