In the early-to-mid 2000s, a website popped up that simply played their "Someday" and "How You Remind Me" simultaneously, unaltered, with one song through the left channel and the other song through the right channel. There was a slider bar that would slowly mute one side while elevating the other. The slider bar was there in case you didn't believe what you were hearing and needed proof, because what you were hearing was that these songs could be played right on top of each other and it was nearly seamless.
It's not so much that people "hated" them. They were just very bland, very generic, and inexplicably ubiquitous. You couldn't escape them, especially in a grocery or retail environment. When large numbers of people are basically forced to hear something over and over, especially something almost aggressively bland, and they literally can't get away from it, that's going to leave a lasting negative impression.