John Oliver urged Canadians not to vote for Stephen Harper on his Oct. 18 show, dragging out a laundry list of bad things the prime minister has done in office.
One of those things was a photo of Harper with Nickelback lead singer Chad Kroeger, saying this is one of “the least rock ‘n’ roll things ever.”
Largely because of the widely-accepted cultural hate for Nickelback, the audience found it funny.
The main reason, and perhaps the most alarming reason, for why people hate Nickelback is because they know everybody hates Nickelback.
This is the tip of the iceberg of a larger cultural problem.
Everyone has to fit in, and everyone has to hate this band or that movie because all of their friends do. It shows a lack of critical thinking.
This herd mentality has proven to be dangerous.
To bring up an example close to home, in early April of this year, the Charlatan reported on fire alarms going off in the MacOdrum Library. Students waited and continued sitting in the library. There was no fire that day, but the people waiting in the library couldn’t know that for certain. They merely looked around them and saw others sitting there, so they waited it out as well.
In 2008, researchers at the University of Leeds in England performed experiments where volunteers were told to walk randomly in a large hall without talking, but a few were given instructions on where to walk.
Unsurprisingly, the five per cent who were told where to walk influenced the other 95 per cent, who blindly followed them.
While I’d like to think human beings should have risen a little higher than that by now, it speaks to our psychology as social animals.
I’ll admit to being one of the few people who didn’t hate the Star Wars prequels. I even know some others who agree, even though public opinion forces them to second-guess it.
So if you like the Star Wars prequels even though your friends mock them, or if you think you might potentially die in a library fire even though nobody else seems to care, don’t give in.
As for Nickelback, I will go on the record and say they are not that bad. “Someday,” “If Today Was Your Last Day,” and “Rockstar” are good songs, and they played a good show that everyone enjoyed when I saw them in Ottawa years ago.
It’s time for everybody to stop automatically agreeing with their buddy and think for themselves just a little more.
