Nickelback bassist Mike Kroeger has said the hate his band received in their early days was a “training ground for cyber bullying”.
The early ‘00s rockers often found themselves being used as an easy target, with many music fans in that era choosing to vocally express their distaste for the band.
Kroeger – the brother of the band’s frontman Chad – even spoke to NME earlier this year about the phenomenon. Reflecting on how they have been treated over the years, he said: “The thing we came to realise through all of this is as much as the word ‘hate’ is used, it’s pretty overstated because people don’t really care that much.”
“If Nickelback is the thing you get most upset about, you’re living a charmed life. Nobody’s trying to kill you, and you’re not starving to death. If our band is the level in which your hate exists, boy, you’re living in a fairy tale!”
Now, the bassist has expanded on the topic, saying that the vitriol has was a precursor to what we now recognise in everyday life.
Speaking to the Downbeat podcast, he said: “It was the training ground for cyber bullying. Everybody was learning how to pick on people online, and we got to be patient zero of cyber bullying on social media. It sucked. But it turns out it was the trial run of what would become sort of how things work.”
“I know music is a very emotional thing for people — I get that — but it also exposes a real weakness in the human condition that we’d much rather talk about the things we don’t like than the things that we do like, the fact that humanity really has a real addiction to negativity,” he added.
“We really like negativity, really like to see people get hurt. Especially people that are successful and doing well, we wanna see them go down the hardest. Look at the royal family. These people catch cancer, and it’s, like, that’s all anybody wants to talk about. Somebody gets killed, and it’s, like, ‘This is great news.’ Like, what the fuck is wrong with you?
Last year, Chad Kroeger also said that he thinks the band are not as hated nowadays as they used to be, describing it as a “softening”.
“I’m not sure if it’s because we receive a ton of love on TikTok or whatever the hell it is, but for whatever reason the teeth have kind of been removed,” he said. “It’s really nice to not be Public Enemy Number One.”
SZA also recently weighed in on the discussion, defending Nickelback as well as Creed. “Wait, you know what’s crazy?” she asked. “Do white people hate Creed and Nickelback? Why? Black people love them! They rock! That shit is bomb!”
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