In July, simply after receiving an e mail pitch concerning the “excellent” AI girlfriend, content material creator Harrison Stewart made a TikTok skit utilizing the anti-AI slur “clanker.”
Pretending to be a disapproving father, he confronted his daughter’s robotic boyfriend within the 12 months 2044. “What’s your identify? No it’s not. It’s mannequin quantity 626 S Collection. That’s your identify, you soiled clanker,” Stewart says within the video.
As one of many authentic creators to make clanker-themed TikToks, Stewart, who goes by Chaise on-line, was dubbed the “clanker man” by his fanbase after racking up hundreds of thousands of views. However in August, the 19-year-old content material creator, who’s Black, announced that he would not be publishing any extra movies on the topic. The joke, he mentioned, and responses to it, had grow to be racist.
“After I go into my remark part and persons are beginning to name me ‘cligger’ and ‘clanka’ or ‘you’re a unclean clanker’—not voicing these slurs at AI and electronics, however at me—I don’t discover that entertaining or humorous in any respect,” Stewart explains within the video.
The origins of clanker date again to late Nineteen Fifties creator William Tenn, who used the phrase to explain robots from science fiction movies, however its adoption as a form of slur got here from the Star Wars franchise, the place it was used as a derogatory time period towards the antagonist droids and troopers. In latest months, it has grow to be a protest of types in opposition to the speedy implementation of AI into just about each side of society.
Over the previous three months, the time period has garnered over 2 million Google searches and at the least lots of of 1000’s of social media posts. In an X post in July, Senator Ruben Gallego of Arizona wrote, “Sick of yelling ‘REPRESENTATIVE’ into the cellphone 10 instances simply to speak to a human being? My new invoice makes positive you don’t have to speak to a clanker when you don’t need to.”
On TikTok and Instagram, nevertheless, the continuing backlash in opposition to AI has taken on the type of quick video skits, envisioning a future the place robots have been absolutely integrated into society. The time period “clanker,” together with “tinskins,” “wirebacks,” and “oil bleeders” are used as pejoratives in these skits. However a few of these skits seem like utilizing clankers as stand-ins for Black folks, perpetuating racist tropes and situations that harken again to a pre–Civil Rights period.
