2020 In One Sentence: 'Hanson' Fans Are Mad Because the '90s Band Won't Say 'Black Lives Matter'

Brittany M. Hughes | November 11, 2020
DONATE
Font Size

Mmm-nope.

It turns out fans of the ‘90s band Hanson are mad that the trio of brothers isn’t “woke” enough, slamming the kinda-pop stars for not being obnoxiously vocal about the death of George Floyd, Black Lives Matter, or progressive ideology.

(To remind, this is a boy band that hit its stride back in the early ‘90s with hits like”MmmBop” and….well honestly, that’s the only one I can remember. Oh, and they made a Christmas album that one time.)

But apparently, Hanson's still got plenty of fans - many of which, believe it or not, upset with these now-grown men for not publicly backing the Black Lives Matter movement. After catching flak for not proactively addressing the officer-involved shooting death of Floyd back in March, the band began tentatively expressing support for "justice" and police reform, but avoided using the phrase “Black Lives Matter.” This fell short of the appropriate “wokeness” level fans were looking for.

To explore this absurdly ridiculous non-issue further, Vice actually reached out to some Hanson fans – and yes, I do realize how ridiculous that sounds – to ask their opinion on the band’s public stance. One fan told the outlet, “They went from being the princes of pop to the kings of being tone deaf.” Another said that, “For me, to say ‘Black lives matter’ should be as easy as saying the sky is blue because it’s a fact. Period. So, to have them duck and dive and do everything that they could possibly do to not say Black lives matter was really interesting. It was just weird.”

Though it's arguably even weirder to demand that a 20-plus-year-old boy band support a political cause.

Things got so nasty that Zac Hanson has actually apologized for his Pinterest page after social media mob discovered it was full of pro-gun posts, including one meme that compared owning an AR-15 to Rosa Parks' right to sit at the front of a bus (fact check: true) and another showing a man being consoled by a woman with the caption: “I told her guns make me feel uncomfortable. She said we should both see other men."

According to this, the youngest Hanson admitted to being the holder of the now-deleted Pinterest account, which went by the name “Commanding Officer." Despite the fact that gun ownership is legal in the United States and it’s anyone’s right to support the Second Amendment, fans with nothing better to do in their sad little lives than obsess over a singer’s personal views lost their minds over the page. Hanson has since removed it and apologized for daring to have his own opinion.

And with that, everything is stupid. 

donate