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You may have crossed the new “insult” by touring online and in the dining rooms of college: Clanker.
Borrowed from Star Wars (Where battle droids are called “clan”), the word is supposed to be a direct elimination insult for robots and AI that would make sense, if the machines could really afford anything. Since they cannot, clicker is fundamentally an insult that does not suddenly, perhaps the least effective insult in history.
The term, despite all its stupidity, inspired a kind of spin -off – “lover clanker” – which, in theory, should bear more bite, because it is addressed to real humans. The anti-Ai Crusaders on Reddit and X have joyfully launched the sentence, which recalls an infinitely more offensive racist epithet, to those with friends and little friends of AI, trying to make fun of their sad, lonely and pathetic.
But within spaces adapted to AI, the reaction to the insults was mainly perplexed – and a kind of proud challenge. Although he was able to print for a second, the term immediately turned to the head: people began to tag “Lovers” and the members of the “Clanker Crew“Pleasure about being” proud cogusuckers “and dreaming of making their own personalized t-shirts. (Of course, someone has already gone forward and do this. You can also buy “Clanker lover“Christmas tree ornaments on Etsy.)
“It was a word that caused me a certain pain”, ” A Redditor in love with the clanker admitted“But it is so much more stimulating to laugh at it. How much something she claims has no personality to defame him supposedly?” Another user raised his shoulders: “Make the current. Use it for everything, all the time. It seems very IAM14ET thisisdeep for me. “It’s like the restoration of weird Or the word n, only a lot, much more silly.
From there, the visuals came quickly and perhaps not completely furious. AI companies have started creating images of themselves and their robots wearing “Clanker Lover” and “Clanker Crew” shirts. We proudly displayed the acronym Cilf—Clanker I would like to kiss – a sentence so absurd that she will probably never have on a shirt in real life.
Other memes have looked into the construction of the community: one published an image generated by Chatgpt on Reddit showing a healthy pastoral scene of a woman with her Beau-Beau, radiating in a “Clanker lover“T-shirt; Another presents a maniac smiling man and his companion in diabolical AI proudly hugging, holding a panel in reading, “I slammed my clanker.“The more the repair, the insecurer and excited, the less the preventive insult has become effective.
And then came the caricatures. In a panel, a furious Redditor in a CRIE brand t-shirt “Clanker Lover !!!“During a woman tightening her robot partner. In the panel immediately, the tables have turned: the same guy is chained in a postapocalyptic hell landscape while the woman loffers fortunately with her Overlord robot, impatiently snacking on chocolates. From rail to the fantasy of revenge in two flat frames.
You do not have to believe that AI is aware (it is not) or even useful (sometimes it is, sometimes it is not) to find the revealing “clanker wars”. On the one hand, it shows how internet speed swallows stigma. A word that could have once left a brand is now transformed into a merch before being able to be bruised. Recovery is not only resistance; It’s entertainment.
On the other hand, he exhibits the meta-combat on the offensive itself. Some AI enthusiasts argue that clicker is really an insult, in the sense that he tries to be shame and dehumanize. Others laugh that this calls him an insult trivializes real oppression. Thus, the battle is not just finished in AI, but on which can claim an offense at one time when our emotional lives are increasingly tangled with machines.
However, he could be tempting to reject everything like a wacky internet nothing. It would be a mistake. Insults reveal what we are afraid of. The term clicker Reflects a certain real discomfort about robots and AI for our jobs, as well as our boredom of having to speak to robot voices instead of representatives of human customer service.
But “Clanker Lover” does not really concern the “clankers” themselves. This is the fear that people turn from each other, preferring synthetic companions foreseeable to disorderly human relations. Because it already happens. This is where this world is heading, a repliki subscription at the same time. It is not surprising that Tiktok is overflowing with allegedly funny videos featuring angry parents who sweep “My daughter will not be datin ‘no fucking clanker!“”
In the end, making fun of the Clanker lovers is really to make fun of the loneliness that pushes people to machines in the first place. People who cry “Clanker Lover” are not wrong to note that something changes in the world of love. They simply target their anger at the wrong target – people adapting as best they can in a world increasingly hostile to human connection. No wonder the insult is already out of their hands, and on someone else MERCH.
