Music

Idaho police arrested and detained two men for yelling 'Nickelback!'

by Mark Teo

Usually, whenever we hear the word “NICKELBACK!” yelled, it’s followed by the word “sucks.” But when two Coeur d’Alene, Idaho men yelled out the word—after hearing Chad Kroeger’s nauseating bellow blasting from a nearby car—a completely different set of words followed, and they probably sounded something like this: “You’re arrested.”

Wait, arrested for liking Nickelback? That’s too good to be true, right?

Sadly, yes—and, as it turns out, it’s not illegal to be a Nickelback fan in Idaho. When Dylan Swinford and Riker Morrow pulled up to a gas station, they heard a Nickelback song blaring from another car, and to show their appreciation, they yelled out the band’s name. Nearby cops, however, heard another thing entirely—they thought the two men were yelling “nickel sack,” and assumed they were buying or selling weed.

(The hilarity hasn’t escaped Urban Dictionary, which already lists a nickel sack as “A fictional amount of weed that dumbass police officers will accuse you of trying to buy when you were really making a reference to the band ‘Nickelback.'”)

What followed, however, is less funny. The two men filmed the entire event, which they posted on YouTube for the world to see. They were eventually released, and for better or for worse, it remains legal to enjoy Nickelback.