I got the perfect ‘Rickroll’ tattoo — I’m never gonna give it up
This design is never gonna let her down.
A 25-year-old tattoo enthusiast from Las Vegas says she got a QR code tattoo on her right arm that plays Rick Astley’s “Never Gonna Give You Up” on repeat when it’s scanned with a smartphone.
“In my friendship group, we’d Rickroll each other. I wanted to top everyone,” Meiying Rentas told SWNS.
“Rickrolling” is a prank that involves trolling an unsuspecting person with a link to the music video for the 1987 tune.
Rentas said she got her first tattoo when she was 18 and was “instantly hooked” — the molecule for serotonin and E = mc2 are some of her early inkings.
She has 97 drawings on her body, including Freddie Mercury and an olive branch and spider on the left side of her face.
Rentas believes her markings are a “timeline” of her life — a flower tattoo covers a scar on her chest following emergency surgery to remove cysts.
“I got a face tattoo after I met a girl at Starbucks with one and thought, ‘Wow, that is beautiful,'” Rentas recalled. “I thought f–k it, I’m going to do it. I absolutely love it.”
Rentas says she gets called “abnormal” for inking herself so much — but “normal is boring.”
“My QR code is my top favorite,” Rentas shared. “It gets asked about the most.”
Rentas says it’s a hit with DJs and clubgoers.
“Random people ask if they can scan my arm,” she said. “Everybody is obsessed with it.”
She decided to get the QR tattoo in June 2022 to one-up her friends on the Rickroll joke.
The ink had to be precise for it to work when scanned, so it took four hours and cost $250.
“Most of the time somebody walking by goes, ‘Wow, that’s so cool. Can I scan it?'” Rentas said. “Then they burst out laughing when it plays.”
QR codes don’t expire, but the content or link can become inaccessible or broken.
“So far this one still works,” Rentas beamed.
While Rentas says she doesn’t want to live with regrets, a 2021 survey determined that 12% of US adults regret getting at least one of their tattoos.
One woman in her mid-30s said last year she regrets the myriad of tattoos she got in her 20s, especially one on her left thigh, of Lady Death riding a horse.
