There are those who seek to intentionally offend others. Those people are indeed arseholes.
I prefer "being an arsehole". Rather person A saying something that "caused offence", person A acted like an arsehole.
"It takes two to fight" means that if anyone tried to fight you, you had to go to a teacher and report them. That was the only sanctioned remedy.
It worked about as well as you'd imagine. I wonder what would happen if we applied the same logic to adult arguments and crimes.
I incidentally disagree with you completely. The blame is rightly on the victim. What offends is usually personal, vague and often illogical. It's not reasonable to hold anyone responsible for doing perceived offensive things (provided they don't actually do anything otherwise illegal; I shouldn't have to point this out but I'll hedge).
That may seem like nitpicking, but the distinction is very important.
Why isn't it pet hamsters like cheeseburgers? Why isn't it puppies that like cheeseburgers? Why isn't it parrots that like cheeseburger? The meme is that cats like cheeseburgers. Does it make sense? Is it something even worth bothering to analyze?
If it isn't worth analye, why are we posting on HN and why are we discussing it? Because it is worth analyzing. Because people, we, all do put in subjective thoughts when we make stuff. And it is worth asking whether that's a good practice or not, whether it is following code of ethics of not. It is part of ethics.
Why did they pick anybody to pick on in the first place? That's easy: publicity. It got people talking about their product.
Why do people in general pick on Justin Bieber or Nickelback? I don't really know. If I had to guess, I'd say that people dislike successful celebrities or musicians who they think have undeserved praise or success. That "undeserved" is of course highly subjective. Most people who dislike Justin Bieber are likely not in his target audience. Since his target audience is fairly narrow, you have a reasonably large pool of people to get onto your "Justin Bieber memes train".
It probably works the other way around too. Mention "Rush" and "rock and roll hall of fame" in the same comment on Reddit and see what happens.
On the other hand, many of the complaints leveled at Rush and Nickelback by critics are the same. Both have been called formulaic and repetitive (I don't agree with that, but I have heard it). So what is the difference between Nickelback, who get internet hate, and Rush, who get internet praise? I don't know. The obvious answer might be that Geddy Lee and Neil Peart in particular are both widely recognized as being extremely technically talented musicians, giving Rush something that other formulaic bands cannot fall back on... but I don't think that is a satisfactory explanation.
This article isn't really on HN because people want to discuss the merits of an internet meme about Nickelback. The origin/merit of the meme is rather incidental.