It was a favorite of mine as a kid. I can still sing the whole thing, including the radio DJ part.

But I also liked Styx. So.

I probably would have liked Rush then too, but wasn’t really exposed to them until later, so they remain in the pile of culture-things I’ll simply never understand.

People bond over mutual hatred even if they didn't come to that hatred on their own. Seems like for this song, it was during slow news period when a list of worst songs came out, and it went viral. Soon it became one of those things that everyone just repeated uncritically, like your mattress doubling in weight due to dead mites. There have been many lists of worst songs before that list and many since, but once "We Built This City" took hold in the collective cultural consciousness as being the worst, there was little that could be done to change the dominate opinion.