NICKELBACK
The “bandwagon effect” is a term used to describe the way in which people take the ideas of others as their own. Eventually, this creates a group of people who all agree, even though each individual might not have actually given a substantial amount of thought to the idea at hand. That is, he or she simply goes along with what everyone else is doing.
On the Internet, it’s relatively easy to be swept up in the bandwagon effect. In fact, a perfect example of this influence is the small army of Nickelback-hating memes that dominates parts of the Web. For a very long time now, any joke about horrible music online has somehow correlated to a Nickelback song.
With the release of Nickelback’s newest album No Fixed Address last month, it’s interesting to speculate just how Nickelback manages to remain fairly popular and successful with the album- and ticket-buying public, despite being the butt of every joke having to do with bad music taste.
It wasn’t always this way. Back in 2005 when hits such as “Photograph” and “Rockstar” were released, Nickelback experienced a lot of success and much less flak from digital haters.
“Sometimes I feel bad that people always make fun of Nickelback, but for the most part I think it’s kind of funny.” said Natasha Paulmeno, a junior communication and Spanish major who is a fan of Nickelback and particularly enjoyed their music during her days in middle school.
If there’s one person who isn’t letting the Nickelback animosity influence him, it’s Chad Kroeger, the band’s lead singer (he’s the one who seems to always be sporting a patchy brown goatee, if that helps narrow it down).
“All these critics, they’re just tireless. They keep ragging on the band. If they had stopped writing all this stuff about us, there would be no controversy left in the band and we probably would have died out years ago,” Kroeger said in an interview with Pulse of Radio back in October.
Julia Bryant, a freshman journalism major, believes the sentiments Kroeger expressed in the interview to be true.
“I think memes and such make them much more popular,” Bryant said. “Because then people are like, ‘Who is this Nickelback you speak of so poorly; let me go give them a listen’ and boom — one more view.”
Although No Fixed Address hasn’t necessarily gotten stellar reviews, it sits in fourth place in this week’s Billboard 200 top-selling albums, right behind One Direction and Taylor Swift. So maybe Kroeger is right. Maybe what hasn’t killed Nickelback has made them, at least in some way, stronger.
It seems that, for now at least, Nickelback is stuck as one of those things some people just love to hate. However, this hatred could be the reason Nickelback is still around, because although sticks and stones may break Nickelback’s bones, poorly photoshopped memes will never hurt them.
