MIKE KROEGER On Early Hate For NICKELBACK: 'It Was The Training Ground For Cyber Bullying'

During an appearance on "The Downbeat Podcast", the podcast hosted by STRAY FROM THE PATH drummer Craig Reynolds, NICKELBACK bassist Mike Kroeger spoke about why his band faced a huge backlash in the 2000s despite becoming a quintessential part of the music industry. Kroeger said (as transcribed by BLABBERMOUTH.NET): "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."

Referencing the fact that people are finally starting to move away from performative "worst band ever" admonishments when there are far easier targets out there," Mike continued: "If I look at the trajectory of our career versus the hatersphere, I don't want the hatersphere to stop. Because we have never done as well as we did when everybody hated us. So, now that people are starting to try to like us, I don't care one way or the other. But now that people are starting to like us, I'm worried our career might be over. I hope not."

Addressing the fact that hate and negativity unfortunately go hand in hand with many social media platforms, Mike said: "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. 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?

"Troll culture is very profitable," he added. "I mean, people have gotten into elected office with it. It works. If you wanna generate interest, it doesn't have to be positive and the negative interest actually sells better."

Kroeger also touched upon the fact that humans have what social psychologists call a "negativity bias": we tend to pay more attention to bad-seeming information than good-seeming information.

"It's humanity," Mike said. "I say it's Roman [in nature], because it is. When you look back at the activities in the Coliseum in Rome, they weren't going there to see somebody win; they wanted blood. They wanted to see people die. And we're no different now. We love to watch people die. It's just in a more cowardly way. We don't wanna actually see it happen."

NICKELBACK recently released "Hate To Love: Nickelback", a feature-length documentary film which explores why "the most hated band in the world" has been the subject of so much vitriol.

Premiering last September at the Toronto International Film Festival (TIFF),the film tells the authentic story of the band from their humble beginnings in Hanna, Alberta to their explosive global success in 2001 and the highs and lows that followed. Directed by Leigh Brooks and produced by Ben Jones, the film celebrates the loyalty of NICKELBACK fans and delves into the years of online vitriol while exposing the personal impact it had on each of the band members. The film also unveils the rock group's decision to return after a five-year break with a new record and a hugely successful sold-out tour, finding themselves riding a sudden wave of online love that has introduced their music to an army of new fans and audiences worldwide.

"Hate To Love: Nickelback" offers fans and audiences 90 minutes of translucence — an unvarnished and emotionally revealing look into the career of one of the world's biggest rock bands. Combining never-before-seen archival footage, concert footage, interviews and enthusiastic celebrity advocates like actor Ryan Reynolds and SMASHING PUMPKINS' Billy Corgan, NICKELBACK's Chad Kroeger, Ryan Peake, Mike Kroeger and Daniel Adair don't shy away from the band's topsy-turvy legacy as they share compelling and real-life stories alongside life-changing moments that have never before been divulged publicly.

"Hate To Love: Nickelback" is produced by Ben Jones for Gimme Sugar Productions and directed by British filmmaker Leigh Brooks, who has previously worked on films about LIFE OF AGONY and TERRORVISION.

In an interview with Robin Nash of Tucson, Arizona's KFMA-FM radio station, Chad Kroeger was asked why he thinks so many people love to hate his band. He responded: "That kind of used to be a thing. I shouldn't say 'that kind of used to be' — that was definitely a thing for a long time. And I think there's been a softening — there really has, thankfully. 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. It's really nice, it's really nice to not be Public Enemy Number One.

"I think that with the range of songs that we write — from rock to all the softer, melodic stuff, all the way down to… Well, I know that 'Far Away' got played on country stations even and I know that 'Rockstar' — the heavily redacted version — got played on CMT," he continued. "So when you're going that far and the scope is that wide, it makes it tough to get away from the band if you're not into the band. And if you're trying to switch the radio station three times, and it's just, like, 'Ah, there they are. There's their rock song on the rock station. There's their pop song on the pop station. And oh my God, I can't even go to the country station and get away from these guys.' That type of oversaturation could piss people off. But at the end of the day, we're just a band that makes music.

"I can't stand a couple of bands, but I don't go online and turn into a keyboard warrior and just start hating on them," Chad reasoned. "I just change the channel or I put on something that I wanna listen to."

In February 2023, Chad told "Whiplash", the KLOS radio show hosted by Full Metal Jackie, that all the negative attention surrounding NICKELBACK has actually contributed to the band's longevity. "Well, I've been saying that for years," he said. "All the detractors, all the haters, all the keyboard heroes, they have no idea how much they keep us in the press loop. It's hilarious. Those people that would love to see us go away, if they really wanted to see us go away, they would just shut up. Because all those bands that came out with us at the same time are all gone, because nobody said anything about them. They all just sort of disappeared. But we've really kind of spun this whole negative thing into a positive thing. And here we are. [Laughs]"

Kroeger also talked about all the memes poking fun at NICKELBACK that regularly pop up on the Internet, explaining that "if it's music oriented and we think it's funny, we just leave it there, 'cause the band, collectively, has a great sense of humor. I mean, funny's funny. Just rude and ignorant, that's different. And yeah, obviously, there's tons of that too. But funny is funny. And as the Brits would say, we have no problem taking the piss out of ourselves."

Arguably the most disliked band in America, NICKELBACK has earned a type of hatred so potent it's hard to fathom what they did that was so terrible to the public consciousness. It's gotten to the point that people who enjoy NICKELBACK are denying their fandom and hiding their CDs like criminal contraband.

Asked by Jorge Botas of Portugal's "Metal Global" if he understands how NICKELBACK came to be so disliked by so many people, Chad said: "I think I've got a pretty good grasp of where things kind of went off the rails for us. I think that because we write so many different kinds of music, I think that if you were listening to a radio station any time between 2000 and 2010, '11, '12 even, we were kind of tough to get away from," he explained. "'Cause if you didn't wanna hear it and you changed to a different radio station, you'd probably hear it on there, and then changed to a different radio station, you probably were gonna hear it in so many different places. And we were really tough to get away from. And that's not my fault. [Laughs] We just write the songs. And so with that comes backlash. And then what happens is then comedians start making jokes, and then it starts making it on to TV, and then it makes it into movies and stuff like that. And then it just turns into this wave of, it's fun to pick on and it's an easy joke. And I get it. I understand. There are bands that when I hear them on the radio, I… And they're very popular bands… I mean, we all have those. No one is exempt from that. There are certain bands where you just hear them and you just don't like 'em. And other people may — half the world may love them, and I'll just be, like, 'No. I just cannot hear this band one more [time].' And just like everyone else does, I just change the channel. But we became the whipping boy of the music industry for a while there. But whatever. It's just part of the history of the band."

According to Chad, NICKELBACK is not the first group to experience the kind of severe backlash that has earned him and his bandmates the title of "the most hated act in the world."

"It's funny because we were at the American Music Awards, and we were presenting, and we presented to DEF LEPPARD," Chad recalled to "Metal Global". "And when we walked backstage afterwards, Joe Elliott and Phil Collen turned to me, and they were just, like, 'Dude, thank you so much.' I'm, like, 'For what?' They were, like, 'For taking the trophy. We get to pass the baton to you for being the most hated band in the world now.' And I was just, like, 'Oh, yeah. 'Cause I want that.'

"And it's funny — we went for dinner with AC/DC in Chicago years and years and years ago," Chad added. "And this whole thing came up. And Brian Johnson said when they released 'Back In Black', they were the most hated band on the planet. So I feel like we're in good company. [Laughs]"

In December 2022, Mike Kroeger was asked by Germany's Rock Antenne if he pays attention to all the online comments about his band. He responded: "I don't really do social media anymore. I have my own Instagram, but I got off Twitter. I never did Facebook, thank God, but I got off Twitter a couple of years ago — three years ago, I guess, now. I'm thinking about getting back on, just because since Elon Musk bought it, it looks like a hilarious, fun time. All these people are so scared, I love it. I might even rejoin, just to see what happens with that guy at the helm, so to speak.

"I'm not scared of comments 'cause I think sometimes even the ones that are assholes can be really funny," he continued. "To me, if something is truly funny, it's funny. Obviously, just to throw hate at something, like us, that's not kind of funny; that's just negative. But sometimes the haters can say some pretty funny things.

"There's a lot of times when you see people… And that's one thing that the Internet kind of has fostered with sites like Reddit, et cetera, is giving people a platform to try to be funny," Mike added. "And a lot of people try to be funny, and that's kind of the problem, because a lot of people aren't funny. So I have to kind of weed through the amateurs to get to the good ones, 'cause there are some good ones in there. There are people who make fun of our band and are funny about it — I'll have a great laugh when I see that — but there is also a contingent of people online who, they want to be funny, but they're just not. And that's just very sad to me."

Back in 2016, a student named Salli Anttonen at the University of Eastern Finland conducted a study to find out why there is so much hate directed towards NICKELBACK. Anttonen analyzed Finnish reviews of the band from 2000 through 2014 for her paper, which was titled "Hypocritical Bullshit Performed Through Gritted Teeth: Authenticity Discourses In Nickelback's Album Reviews In Finnish Media".

Anttonen found that critiques of the band became harsher as they became more popular, noting: "It became a phenomenon where the journalists were using the same (reasons) to bash them, and almost making an art out of ridiculing them."

Even though the study was based solely upon Finnish reviews of the band, the critics' animosity toward the group has been a global phenomenon.

Anttonen concluded: "NICKELBACK is too much of everything to be enough of something. They follow genre expectations too well, which is seen as empty imitation, but also not well enough, which is read as commercial tactics and as a lack of a stable and sincere identity."

NICKELBACK's latest album, "Get Rollin'", was released in November 2022 via BMG.