In a Facebook video posted earlier this week to reveal Mark Zuckerberg’s new AI companion Jarvis (a name taken from the Marvel movies, suggesting that The Social Network was pretty accurate with its depiction of Zuckerberg’s creativity), Zuckerberg asked the AI to play him “some good Nickelback songs.” The Morgan Freeman-voiced AI responded that it couldn’t do that because “there are no good Nickelback songs,” so Zuckerberg explained that his request was just a test. It’s not the funniest joke ever, but now he’s facing a bit of a backlash from the Nickelback fan community—a.k.a Avril Lavigne, who happens to be the ex-wife of Nickelback’s Chad Kroeger.
Lavigne explained on Twitter that Zuckerberg is allowed to have his own opinion, but to use his enormous platform to mock the band is “in poor taste.” She also adds that he “may want to consider being more responsible with promoting bullying, especially given what’s going on in the world today.” It’s a nice high-road response, designed to make Zuckerberg feel like a jerk, but then she undercuts it by adding “#NickelbackHasSoldOver50MillionAlbums.” She didn’t type that hashtag in the tweet, though, so it’s really just an excuse to highlight how successful the band is—though Facebook has over a billion active users, so it’s not like Zuckerberg would be impressed by that number anyway.
This all comes as part of a new wave of Nickelback jokes and Nickelback joke apologies, with a Canadian police department having to take back a gag from earlier this month about forcing drunk drivers to listen to the band’s Silver Side Up album. Apparently, we can now add “Nickelback jokes” to the long list of things that 2016 has taken from us.