The entire clippy thing baffles me.

Let’s use the mascot of Microsoft, a tech giant who invades every inch that they can, to say we don’t like tech giants!

I don’t think any company that uses AI or scrapes data gives two shits what your avatar is. It’s the equivalent of changing your twitter profile to show support for the victims of something, and then carrying on as usual.

Microsoft would kill for Clippy to be remembered as a friend. Because that just sanewashes their history as a company when clippy was a thing. Yes, please ignore the anti-trust busting in Congress. Please ignore how we made computers worse for the end user by restricting what you can do on your purchased computer.

“Clippy was your friend. Clippy didn’t want to steal your data. Clippy just wanted to help.”

Help infantize the masses with “It looks like you’re writing a document, do you want help with that? Yes, or maybe later?”

This entire clippy thing is just basically free whitewashing and advertising for Microsoft, one of the biggest players in the reasons why people use the avatar.

At least invent something new, if it’s about protecting artists, instead of copying a jpg from a 90s corporate milquetoast mascot.