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this post was submitted on 21 Aug 2026
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Fuck AI
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AI, in this case, refers to LLMs, GPT technology, and anything listed as "AI" meant to increase market valuations.
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Clanker, wireback, cogsucker... all of the common anti-AI slurs are variations of existing slurs against humans. People use them in the same exact ways.
The terms didn't start as just being anti-AI. They started as racist or homophobic slurs that were then altered slightly by people who thought it would be cute to use slight variations of them against AI.
Instead of coming up with new terms entirely, people just ran with that. Now when someone in a community that sees those anti-ai terms increasingly used in place of the original slurs mentions that they tend to get swarmed in down votes and responses saying it's not the same and calling them thin skinned.
You can look just on Lemmy much less the rest of the internet and find people being called "clanker lover", discussions about using the "hard r" instead of saying clanka, and people saying "my clankas."
It's not a clean term. Yes, it was used in star wars. That doesn't make it better. Slurs in general do nothing good. They don't have any positive effect on the world, the people hearing them, or the people using them. It feels good to vent hate at something we feel justified in othering and hating. That's a relic from evolutionary psychology, it's not a good thing.
Go read through people using "clanker" and you'll know the other word that would have fit perfectly in it's place. Normalizing that doesn't do any good. It doesn't make AI feel bad. It doesn't make the people funding AI rethink their decisions. It's just a vent for hate and the only victims it impacts are human victims you may not intend, but who do get hit by it.
You are just being cryptic. In what world could clanker mean anything except robot. You are trying to educate someone on what you think is right, tell us what words you think it is replacing. Tell us how any of the things you’ve listed are variations of older slurs. And tell us how directing hate at something that isn’t human is somehow worse than directing it at humans. Would you rather people be using slurs against each other or against something with no consciousness?
People do use those slurs against other people.
This is not being cryptic. If you can't understand that it's being used in direct replacement of the n-word and folk who spent their lives hearing it are taking abuse from your new beloved twist on the slur then you're actively trying to not understand.
You're sitting there arguing with a near 50 year old black man that the word "clanker' can't offend humans about a week after I had to go try talking to my 10 year old niece's principal because racist kids there have decided it's cute and fun to stare at black kids and loudly talk about how much they hate "clankas."
Want to know her response? This same stupid shit of trying to "educate" me and reassure me than clankas means AI and they weren't being racist at all. Try explaining to a 10 year old girl why all the people in charge who say they're so caring don't actually give a fuck because they have a convenient excuse to hide behind.
Those words you're calling insults didn't just appear as AI insults. They're all based on slurs used against groups of humans for generations. That's the problem.
It gives racists an easy new slur to use because it was based on the slur they want to be using anyway, except it also gives them an out from the social repercussions because they can lie and say they were just talking about ai since people online defend using those terms so fiercely.
I have nothing against insulting AI or the people that want to use it to replace human labor. Using slight modifications of existing human slurs that are used in the exact same manner as those human slurs is not a great way to do that.
Telling people that they're being thin-skinned for seeing the clear connection between clanker and the n-word when clanker is now actively being used by racists against black children is a very bad vibe.