Nickelback’s Pickle February 26, 2010 4 comments +	By Aaron

Recently a lot of press has been given to the fact that more people preferred to be an online fan of an inanimate pickle than of the modern rock band Nickelback. This has made newspaper second-pages across the country and even solicited ire from the band themselves. But what did this exercise really prove? Was Nickelback’s reputation sullied at all? If anything, people that had never heard of Nickelback before this instance may actually become fans of the band. All that was proven was this:

The general public tends to polarize into bland, isomeric factions based on personal preferences.

Nickelback is not necessarily a terrible band. By some terms, Nickelback is a great band. They have high production value, they’ve sold an unbelievable amount of records, and their songs have become cultural mainstays. Whether you like it or not, Nickelback has a devoted following, and those people probably think that your love for Animal Collective or the Velvet Underground makes no sense at all. It actually does make sense that Nickelback is so popular, however: their easy-to-remember melodies, straightforward lyrical content, and polished pitch and timbre are all very average and digestible, which makes them a common denominator to anyone that likes to listen to music. Nickelback is designed to be background music for some people, be pumped loud from a pickup truck by some people, and be go-to music when a diverse crowd of listeners exists. Although it may lack nuance, its existence is inevitable. It is music for the masses.

The fact that 1.5 million people became ‘fans’ of a pickle is of no consequence. These people are not fans of any specific pickle, or of any meritorious action that any specific pickle has ever committed. They simply clicked a button. They spent two seconds reading the premise, clicked that button, spent two seconds looking at how many people were currently in the group now that they had joined, and then proceeded to watch a video of a dog dragging its ass on the carpet (you are always two seconds from seeing a dog drag its ass on the carpet on the internet). That’s it.

Coral Anne, the proprietor of the pickle group, must be learning some lessons from this. What we here at Brasky.org hope that she learns is that social networking groups have subtly changed from being a facilitative utility to something like a keychain. People no longer have to even join or become active within a group, they simply have to ‘like’ something, and even if you have forgotten that you ‘liked’ something (unfathomable in real life yet commonplace in virtual life) your social network will remember your preferences for you… Nickelback’s pickle became part of your tag cloud, filed somewhere between Chocolate Rain and Wear Red for Haiti. You may see it in a couple years and think ‘Ha, I remember that,’ or you may never see it again at all.

Do 1.5 million people not care for Nickelback? Confirmed. Did 1.5 million people get a non-sequitir joke? Confirmed. How about this for a social network group: I’ll bet this Non-Profit Organization can get more fans than Soundgarden. Or: I’ll bet this Awareness Campaign can get more followers than Three Day’s Grace. If we can herd people mindlessly, let’s herd them into something with substance.

That being said, make sure to become a fan of Brasky.org on Facebook and Twitter. thx

Tags: editorial facebook Music nickelback pickle