The Return of the Clippy
If you've been somewhat observant on certain social media platforms, such as youtube, for the past week or so, you might have noticed something interesting: a resurgence of a paperclip with eyes, a friend from the past, Clippy. Users across the internet have been changing their profile pictures to images of Clippy, but why?
Clippy is the front-man of a worldwide movement, kickstarted by Louis Rossmann in one of his recent videos, as a form of protests against the tech giants of the world.
In today's world, it often feels like our attention and happiness is being squeezed and squeezed by big tech companies, doing whatever is best for them to boost their record-breaking profit numbers. This could be anything from bricking perfectly functional devices because they no longer want to support the product (I'm looking at you Spotify) or hiding the control of your thermostat behind a paywall. We live in a world driven by greed, where the goal is having the highest net-worth, instead of doing what is best or what is "right" for the general population.
Clippy represents a time in which products and services were designed with people in mind instead of money. An assistant who didn't scrape your data, didn't listen to your conversations, didn't require payment, but just wanted to help, no strings attached. This is why Clippy has returned in the medium of profile pictures. It shows that people are tired of "enshittification", and won't stand to be served AI slop any more.
The online tension is certainly high between big tech and their consumers. It will be interesting to see what impact is actually made by the Clippy movement. I personally, am hoping that this a shift in tides, where this leads to changes for the better of the people, but only time will tell. Will you be joining the Clippy movement?
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Giving names to my devices