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For others who, like me, didn't know what "clankers" are: it appears it's a popular derogatory term for robots or AI, arising from the Star Wars universe where
by newfocogi 1y ago
For others who, like me, didn't know what "clankers" are: it appears it's a popular derogatory term for robots or AI, arising from the Star Wars universe where clone troopers used the term as a derogatory term for droids.
- ffsm8 1y agoReally? I could've sworn it was from Futurama, or at least preceding the 2000s, strange.
- Dracophoenix 1y agoThere's a robot mafioso character named Clamps. Perhaps that's what you were thinking of?
- aquova 1y agoDidn't they call them clankers in Battlestar Galactica?
- zerocrates 1y agoToasters?
- aaronbrethorst 1y agoFracking toasters
- beng-nl 1y agoAnd canner in I, robot (the movie).
- esseph 1y agoPer the Wikipedia article: >The word clanker has been previously used in science fiction literature, first appearing in a 1958 article by William Tenn in which he uses it to describe robots from science fiction films like Metropolis.[2] The Star Wars franchise began using the term "clanker" as a slur against droids in the 2005 video game Star Wars: Republic Commando before being prominently used in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which follows a galaxy-wide war between the Galactic Republic's clone troopers and the Confederacy of Independent Systems' battle droids.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
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- toomuchtodo 1y agohttps://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clanker https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clanker
- n4r9 1y agoWhich links to https://sfdictionary.com/view/3048/clanker https://sfdictionary.com/view/3048/clanker
- schrectacular 1y agoLolol THANK YOU. I totally parsed it as these guys and was mystified https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clangers https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Clangers Apparently those guys have a g instead of a k.
- brightbeige 1y agoI thought it was this again: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conkers https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Conkers
- balamatom 1y agoWonder if they have those in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yonkers,_New_York https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yonkers,_New_York
- lepicz 1y agothat would be very sad christmas :D
- weinzierl 1y ago"Clangers (usually referred to as The Clangers)[2] is a British stop-motion animated children's television series, consisting of short films about a family of mouse-like creatures who live on, and inside, a small moon-like planet. They speak only in a whistled language, and eat green soup (supplied by the Soup Dragon) and blue string pudding." Sounds like early 70s. "The programmes were originally broadcast on BBC1 between 1969 and 1972, followed by a special episode which was broadcast in 1974." What else!
- LetsGetTechnicl 1y agoI feel like it started as a joke, but now people are just using it as a stand-in for racial slurs against Black and brown people, and it's honestly sickening. Like TikToks of people making classically racist jokes about Black people but changing it to "clanker" as a workaround.
- dcminter 1y agoSadly there are no technological solutions to humans being arseholes to each other.
- esseph 1y agoIt's also used in RL when talking about Waymo or food delivery robots, or when talking about the automaton faction in Helldivers 2.
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoHelldivers is excessively/satirically facist and xenophobic though, I mean uh, managed democracy, rah rah!
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- dcminter 1y agoThanks, all I could think of was a Harry Potter reference which definitely didn't fit!
- moffkalast 1y agoJust like the simulations
- dist-epoch 1y agoFrom the world first robophobe, humano-fascist: Robot Slur Tier List: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoDDWmIWMDg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IoDDWmIWMDg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpRRejhgtVI https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RpRRejhgtVI Responding To A Clankerloving Cogsucker on Robot "Racism": https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zAIqNpC0I0 https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6zAIqNpC0I0
- SLWW 1y agoJREG is the only Canadian I would accept as a Presidential Candidate for the US, and i don't even agree with half of what he says. I just think he'd do a better job than most.
- Cthulhu_ 1y agoTBH the bar is on the floor at the moment.
- GeoAtreides 1y ago>humano-fascist ? Are you implying prioritizing Humanity uber alles is a bad thing?! Are you some kind of Xeno and Abominable Intelligence sympathizer?! The Holy Inquisition will hear about this, be assured.
- noduerme 1y agoFor anyone who struggles to understand what fascism is, the comment above is fascist trolling in its purest form. And here's why: The essence of fascism is to explain away hatred toward other groups of people by dehumanizing them. The hatred of an outside group is necessary, in the fascist framework, to organize one group of people into a unit who will follow a leader unquestioningly. Taking part in crimes against the outside group helps bind these people to the leader, who absolves them of their normal sense of guilt. A fascist will use "fascist" to sarcastically refer to themselves in ridiculous scenarios, e.g. as a human defending humanity against robots, or a human exterminating rats. All of this is to knowingly deploy it in a way that destigmatizes being called a fascist, while also suggesting that murderous measures taken by past fascist movements have not been genocidal, but have been defending humans against subhumans. I'm not joking. Supposedly taking pride in being an anti-AI fascist is just a new twist on a very old troll. It's designed to mock and make light of mass murder, by suggesting that e.g. Nazism was no different from a populist movement defending themselves against machines, e.g. Jews. Don't be seduced by the above comment's attempt at absurdist humor. This type of humor is typical of fascist dialect. It aims to amuse the simple-minded with superficial comparisons. It is deep deception disguised as harmless humor. Its true purpose has nothing to do with humans versus AI. Its dual purposes are to whitewash the meaning of fascism and to compare slaughtering "sub human groups" to defending humanity against AI.
- glimshe 1y agoDon't confuse with "clUnker", an old car/machine.
- fsckboy 1y agonor with "clackers", and insanely dangerous early 70s toy consisting of two glass balls you smash together at accelerated speeds right in front of your face. I guess they were trying to make us feel better that they were taking our jarts away.
- jimmydddd 1y agoThanks for the reminder of that! This girl who sat behind me in second grade was great with clackers. Also, my memory is a bit foggy, but I don't think the jart ban was until eigth grade. So no causality there. Pop Rocks causing internal explosions and spider eggs in Bubble Yum occured somewhere between Clackers and Jarts. :-)
- initramfs 1y agonor with clappers https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJBAnr1lgPg https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GJBAnr1lgPg https://www.curiousmindsbusybags.com/products/new-large-hand-clapper-clacker-noise-maker-clicker-clap-toy-fun-classic-novelty-music-party-favor-toy https://www.curiousmindsbusybags.com/products/new-large-hand...
- taneliv 1y agoLOL, what I did just read? I did not understand the concrete nouns in your comment, except for "girl". The "spider eggs" you mention do not seem to be the ones I thought. Without searching on the internet, I wouldn't even know the context on the level of which decade or country. Fascinating!
- aaroninsf 1y agoI wouldn't say _popular_ It has a strong smell of "stop trying to make fetch happen, Gretchen."
- boston_clone 1y agoAaron, I say this with love, but we're getting old buddy. We're no longer the generation that decides what's popular in pop culture. Mean Girls is 21 years old btw.
- sniffers 1y agoIt's commonly used in at least ten discords I'm in. It's pretty popular ime.
- toofy 1y agoit’s wildly popular, it’s all over tiktok, tiktok comments, twitch chats everywhere, my 11 yo niece and her friends say it when something looks ai, i literally heard a group of teenagers saying it in line at a restaurant today.
- edm0nd 1y agoFetch will never happen but clankers is already here and widely used.
- ThrowawayR2 1y agoThat's what I thought about "enshittification" but now it's all over the place.
- aaroninsf 1y agoI wouldn't say popular It has a strong smell of "stop trying to make fetch happen, Gretchen."
- bongodongobob 1y agoIt is. I'm seeing it all over social media lately. https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%203-m&geo=US&q=Clanker&hl=en https://trends.google.com/trends/explore?date=today%203-m&ge...
- bbor 1y agoIt's definitely popular online, specifically on Reddit, Bluesky, Twitter, and TikTok. There's communities that have formed around their anti-AI stance[1][2][3], and after multiple organic efforts to "brainstorm slurs" for people who use AI[4], "clanker" has come out on top. This goes back at least 2 years[6] in terms of grassroots talk, and many more to the original Clone Wars usage[7]. For those who can see the obvious: don't worry, there's plenty of pushback regarding the indirect harm of gleeful fantasy bigotry[8][9]. When you get to the less popular--but still popular!--alternatives like "wireback" and "cogsucker", it's pretty clear why a youth crushed by Woke mandates like "don't be racist plz" are so excited about unproblematic hate. This is edging on too political for HN, but I will say that this whole thing reminds me a tad of things like "kill all men" (shoutout to "we need to kill AI artist"[10]) and "police are pigs". Regardless of the injustices they were rooted in, they seem to have gotten popular in large part because it's viscerally satisfying to express yourself so passionately. [1] https://www.reddit.com/r/antiai/ https://www.reddit.com/r/antiai/ [2] https://www.reddit.com/r/LudditeRenaissance/ https://www.reddit.com/r/LudditeRenaissance/ [3] https://www.reddit.com/r/aislop/ https://www.reddit.com/r/aislop/ [4] All the original posts seem to have now been deleted :( [6] https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/13x43b6/if_we_had_a_slur_for_ai_what_would_it_be/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/13x43b6/if_we_ha... [7] https://web.archive.org/web/20250907033409/https://www.nytimes.com/2025/08/31/technology/clanker-anti-ai.html https://web.archive.org/web/20250907033409/https://www.nytim... [8] https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/clanker-cogsucker-robot-ai-slurs-viral-1235401262/ https://www.rollingstone.com/culture/culture-features/clanke... [9] https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/68364/1/clankers-grokkers-botlickers-ai-slurs-chatgpt-grok-artificial-intelligence https://www.dazeddigital.com/life-culture/article/68364/1/cl... [10] https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-need-to-kill-ai-artist https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-need-to-kill-ai-artist
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- duxup 1y agoI find the term a bit confusing as it's common use in my experience are folks who only vaguely have an idea what AI is. Not to say their concerns are wrong (very generally) but it's usage doesn't usually convey much knowledge about the topic. It conveys more passion and drama than sense in my experience. Maybe that will change.
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- ramon156 1y agoSo many people missing the meaning of clanker. Its a satirical way of talking about GPT's. Don't dig too deep
- wyclif 1y agoIt can actually mean both, depending on the context. Both meanings are valid.
- catigula 1y agoIt's also a pretty ineffective term because it's clearly somewhat endearing.
- m463 1y agowell, actually: The word clanker has been previously used in science fiction literature, first appearing in a 1958 article by William Tenn in which he uses it to describe robots from science fiction films like Metropolis.[2] He actually taught science fiction and had lots of interesting stories of the classic era of scifi, like BEM's - a bug-eyed-monster, arms wrapped around a woman in s "brass brassiere". hmmm.. which now I realize explains "the flat eyed monster"... https://www.baen.com/Chapters/9781476780986/9781476780986___4.htm https://www.baen.com/Chapters/9781476780986/9781476780986___...