- cross-posted to:
- nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
- cross-posted to:
- nostupidquestions@lemmy.world
YSK: People are switching their profile pictures to Microsoft’s Clippy in protest of the unethical, immoral, anti-consumer practices by various companies. The movement was started by Louis Rossmann (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2_Dtmpe9qaQ) on August 7th, 2025.
@6:46 “Clippy’s a symbol that what used to be considered one of the worst annoyances in our life would now not only be welcomed, but for all of his flaws, celebrated as an idol. Because for all of these things that occur right now where there is negative malice of intent, […] Clippy just wanted to help. And if you were to turn him on today, unlike most cloud bullshit, he’d still work.”
Louis hopes for this to be a show of solidarity.
@5:44 “When a company CEO logs into their Slack and sees 10,000 Clippy’s looking back at them, what I hope occurs is that they intuitively understand that they no longer live in a world where they can get away with fucking over the consumer.”
@5:58 “[…] that [people] are alert and they are aware of what is going on, and they are going to politely but firmly push back against it. Every single one of those 10,000 people will be an obstacle to the anti-consumer practices and the anti-ownership practices, and they will no longer be another cog in the assembly line sending us all into a dystopia.”
Why YSK: I was curious about the number of Clippy avatars, and thought other people might be curious too.
@4:28 “Clippy never tried to normalize sex trafficking. He just wanted to help.”
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When a company CEO logs into their Slack and sees 10,000 Clippy’s
Software engineers will do anything but unionize
This right here. Unions are a much more potent way to tell management “that anti-consumer idea is bullshit and we won’t do it.”
I’ve been tech conferencing all week and I’ve already seen two talks about unionizing tech workers. Maybe the tide is turning?
“When a company CEO logs into their Slack and sees 10,000 Clippy’s looking back at them, what I hope occurs is that they intuitively understand that they no longer live in a world where they can get away with fucking over the consumer.”
Ahh yes. The CEO sees the slactivists’ avatars sand sighs loudly before turning their thoughts back to their yacht and upcoming golf vacation.
Were these people too young in the early 2000s to recognize Clippy for what it was? It was never benign—ChatGPT is exactly what Microsoft always wanted to make, but Clippy was as close as it could get at the time. They are part and parcel of the same thing.
This is like protesting Trump with pictures of George W. Bush.
Al Gore should’ve won the 2000 election
Uhhhh, that’ll show them…?
Probably the biggest problem with this is that you need to read an absolute wall of text or watch a YouTube video to actually understand what’s going on, something that the target audiences are unlikely to do, not to mention other issues like how ignorable it all is.
Truth!!
Fighting the global rise of fascism isn’t for the lazy or whinge-prone. If you can’t be bothered to read a single wall covered in writing (how ironic)… get the fuck out of the way, citizen.
Lazy politics leads to movements like MAGA. We need to educate and motivate our citizens to care enough to want to read an explanation.
How?
