As a reporter, myself, most of these people are looking for two to three sentences from you, max. Some might print more, but basically, they're looking for sound bites.
The shorter and sweeter you can condense your message, the more you can control it when you recite it.
Also: make sure you get to meet Rick Astley and go to the MTV awards, yourself! It won't last, so get something out of it now!
Meh, ignore these guys saying yer taking credit. The free culture fosters this hatred for people who actually do the grunt work in making memes live.
We're all supposed to remain anonymous, so anyone who takes credit for something automatically seems like the villain.
That'll pass, hopefully.
However, I do agree with the "$5k" is a lot of development. Very true. But if MTV is willing to pay for your trip. Or if Rick Astley is... Call his agent! Who knows!
"... I'm still thinking about going to the awards, but it could be pricey for a 1 night thing (going to cost me in the vicinity of $5k AUD) ..."
5K would support a lot of development. Don't go, save the money and write a paper on "how" social systems can be hacked. As for appearing on tv, MTV who cares? Rick who?
It wouldn't be an "I once did..." story since you didn't create the meme. The history of it is covered in detail here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rickroll
The story is more like how I helped co-ordinate a large group of people (it will be several hundred thousand people by the time this is done given we're now at 150k) getting an 80's pop star the best act ever award (an award I might add that they probably weren't going to nominate him for given they announced it days before without his name), completely frustrating a major media organisation by getting Astley the vast majority of the votes in the process.... in my spare time.
yes, I know... and on reddit (which is where I picked up on it) and it originated on the UG forums, this wasn't a question on the origins of the nomination idea, it was on how to deal with the media attention as a result of spearheading the voting effort.
I'm not saying, nor have I ever said it was my idea, I've just helped focus the chaos.
By the way, I actually know the vote totals so far (from someone at MTV who reached out to me) and can quite comfortably say that the tool on our site has contributed to a significant amount to that number (which I can't disclose), given I know how many we've also done.
The shorter and sweeter you can condense your message, the more you can control it when you recite it.
Also: make sure you get to meet Rick Astley and go to the MTV awards, yourself! It won't last, so get something out of it now!