Nobody thinks Clippy was good, and that’s the point. In the original video Louis Rossmann does talk about Microsoft’s shenanigans with IE at the time.
The point is that Clippy was widely considered to be bad, and everyone considered Microsoft to be bad at the time, but everything involving technology has become so much worse since. Microsoft would be considered the most ethical tech company in the world if they still operated the way they did in the 90s. It’s not the Microsoft was good in the 90s (far from it!) it’s that Microsoft and all of the other tech companies have gotten so much worse since then.
The clippy thing is kinda genius really. We’ve been boiling the frog on a lot of things and we don’t really think about how much worse things are now than they used to be. People in positions of power now probably did encounter Clippy when they were younger. Reminding them about how annoying Clippy was may make them realize how much more annoying they’re being when making decisions about technology.
I hate clippy. As a millennial who did use the version of MS office (briefly anyway) that had clippy I did get a bit of nostalgia and I installed a VM of windows 95 and installed the version of office with clippy in it.
Then… I instantly remembered WHY I hated him. The reason is that when he pops up to offer you useless advice, he fully takes control and interrupts your work and you have to dismiss him to continue what you were doing. He does it often, too.
100th comment: Thank you for drawing, Mr. Clippy artist
Damn! I forgot a pen and now I have to memorize clippy’s source code.
I know that it is common to turn a symbol initially built against you into one which now benefits you, but I don’t think that’s whats going to happen with Clippy primarily because of message here isn’t “Clippy wants us to move into a future where we own our tech/social infrastructure” but instead “man, im really nostalgic for the way corporations used to treat us”
I have no problem using a symbol developed my Microsoft to spread anti-big tech messaging. The problem is that to a lot of people, the messaging doesn’t feel ant-big tech or anti-capitalist so much as it is just nostalgic. Microsoft was never a nice company. Even in the 1990s they were exercising their E.E.E (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish) strategy to beat federated and decentralized platforms and technologies. The goal of these companies (and you can see it now in their attitudes towards AI) is to own as much social infrastructure as they can. From where you get your news to where you get your friends. The only way to work against this is to work against big tech. There is no other way.
Part of me wonders if the message behind the current Clippy symbol can be bent into something more forward facing, but I also feel that that would be hard/would feel artificial because of the fact that Clippy is just now so connected to nostalgia.
I know that it is common to turn a symbol initially built against you into one which now benefits you
The idea behind using clippy was that when created, it wasn’t against you; it was always just there to help, with no alterior motive.
The problem is that to a lot of people, the messaging doesn’t feel ant-big tech or anti-capitalist
Seeing clippy is more of a message without a message. It could have been any image, but seeing this one thing everywhere starts to show you how many of us there are and that we are capable of working together to achieve a goal (in this specific case: outreach).
I’ve recently got an idea (a paranoid one) that this
Microsoft was never a nice company. Even in the 1990s they were exercising their E.E.E (Embrace, Extend, Extinguish) strategy to beat federated and decentralized platforms and technologies.
is a popular wrong myth.
Because Sun was still alive. That Sun. Seeming as if half of its employees were geniuses. Seeming as if they had a plan for all the industry for a 100 years forward. Which was the original “corporation of good”, almost nobody dares to treat it as something not sacred.
Sun’s plan was extremely hierarchical, and definitely not decentralization\federation minded.
Saying that a technology is universal (or not) requires understanding of it down to elements.
Maybe the Internet itself is conceived the way that it will always lead to centralization and hierarchy, as a tool to change the society.
See how IRL democracy and interoperability and choice in various situations were and even are absolutely normal, in friend groups and often in community places, but on the Internet you come to a place and it has moderators, appointed by other moderators and administrators, and administrators are gods, and there’s often no interoperability. And the longer it exists, the less interoperability there is.
Maybe we need a new global network, reimagined from ground zero with understanding of the risks. That is, a new common layer, where IP is in the Internet.
it looks like you’re trying to invoke nostalgia for older days, do you want help with that?
It’s a symbol, it’s easily recognizable for it’s simplicity and only aim to help.
It helps us feel less alone and to find the resolve to fight togheter.
Y’all just love to feel miserable don’t you?
I don’t even use computers.
That’s just it, kid: you’re in one.
Everything’s computer!
(Some pedophile)
How can you stand to lie to yourself about reality, which is miserable?
I couldn’t live with myself if I didn’t face reality and instead pretended I didn’t see what was in front of my eyes
It is just homemade Reddit after all.
not really. meaningless acts like this only serve to satisfy people enough that they don’t feel the need to do something more meaningful. a protest that doesn’t inconvenient anyone is not a protest. it’s compliance with an asterisk.
meaningless acts like this only serve to satisfy people enough that they don’t feel the need to do something more meaningful
someone who is satisfied by doing a “meaningless act” wouldn’t do something more direct either way.
This is not a protest, this is a rally to arms, misery doesn’t motivate change
- Step 1: Change your profile picture
- Step 2: ???
- Step 3: Surveillance Capitalism is defeated
I’m sorry, next time we start a movement we’ll be sure to send you a detailed plan step by step dumb proof, sorry for trying to get people onto even acknowledging an issue and making people realise that they are not alone
Thank you, that would be a good step in the right direction so we can coordinate together.
BTW, I think it’s more of a call to arms to boycott companies that follow these practices, as a step one. Other steps might be more similar to how one fights fascist regimes.
Are you not familiar with Louis Rossman? I think this “change your pfp to clippy” thing is dumb as hell too, and I’m upset that this is the thing from him that broke into the “mainstream”.
He’s been championing right to repair, boycotting shit companies, documenting corporate bait and switches for years. He started and runs consumerrights.wiki, to document companies pulling shit like pushing out an update to smart TVs that blocks you from continuing to use them unless you agree to let them harvest your data. And ways to work around it. Trying to hold these fuckers accountable.
Only a few weeks ago he put up a $5000 bounty for anyone that could jailbreak a specific smarthome product that is trying to get owners to now pay $100 a year to keep running.
Again, I loathe this clippy bullshit, but “it’s not enough” applies to the people doing it, not the guy who started it. There is a movement, this is just so far the only part of it to hit mainstream.
Louis Rossman’s cool, pure virtue signaling is less so.
if us lefties could only jump over the hurdle of choosing the exact flavour before doing anything. there are more than enough people on the left side of the middle to achieve real change. but we are too caught up fighting minor differences.
fasci, on the other hand, need nothing in common, except an indistinct hatred for random people. the german fascists didn’t like religion at all, but officially worked with the christian church. still they rallied behind a religious symbol and would have died holding it up…
meanwhile we are arguing if even having a symbol is worthwhile
So… where can we buy this in sticker form?
“Clippy sucked and everyone hated it but tech giants currently do mych more and nobody complains.”
- If I knew it was lucrative to steal and sell your data. In clippy’s era this was unheard of.
I didn’t think I’d get a chance to use this again.
steal your data
How does this theft work? Do they break into my computer or accounts & take it unauthorized? Is it my data?
It’s mostly passive tracking of network traffic. You data could be further compromised depending on the operating system you use and the threat model under which you operate.
It’s mostly passive tracking of network traffic.
That data seems as much the recipient’s data as the sender’s or of any system capable to observe transport. If I see someone go down the street & stop somewhere, is that traffic observation really their data? The internet protocol wasn’t built for privacy of that layer of activity.
data could be further compromised depending on
A protocol disclosing data as designed is compromised? Are we talking about (1) actually compromised systems permitting unauthorized access to data or (2) services working as designed & getting data per usage agreement?
Theft is the taking of another person’s personal property with the intent of depriving that person of the use of their property.
If we’re talking about (2), then how is that theft?
afaik if you accept to log in to a microsoft account when you install windows 10 or 11, it’ll set up your documents, photos and some other directories for sync to your onedrive account.
but if something’s running on your computer outside of a browser or VM, it has access to all your files anyway.
We’re sorry to see you disapproval of corporate capitalism. Please take 1 hour of your day to send us some feedback so we can improve.
First, just download our UMata app from the app store, by reading this message you have already agreed to our terms of surveillance. Once the UMata app is installed on your device, it will be granted kernel level access so it can periodically extract biometric identifiers like facial and iris scans in the background without you needing to do anything. After verifying your facial scan against our database of government identities, the UMata app will generate a unique URL for you to take a “totally anonymous”™ survey.
Once at the survey page, you just need to enable JavaScript, disable adblocker, accept our cookies and solve a simple CAPTCHA identifying any homeless people. If the UMata app was somehow not able to record you breathing for your biometric signature to our licensing agreement, you will be asked to breathe harder.
We are excited to hear back from you!
I will just as soon my Jack2Head finishes downloading the latest update!
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'Finally, give your automated friend hand the secret handshake, so we know your privacy is secure for us.
I’m reading ‘The Circle’ by Dave Eggers right now, and he totally foresaw all knowing corporative control back in the 2010s.
It is a tome at 500 pages, but a great read, so far.
Not gonna shit on Eggers or anything, but I don’t think that concept was new in the 2010s.
Snow Crash is one that comes to mind right away, but I haven’t read The Circle, so maybe I’m wrong about what you’re referring to. I think William Gibson probably wrote about similar themes at some point as well.
If you haven’t read Snow Crash, btw, you should. It’s fucking awesome
Definitely loved Snow Crash. Similar message that everything will be shared/recorded. In The Circle it’s a bit more chilling, for me at least, because every person is a ‘Gargoyle’ that HAS to record and share every thought and emotion and event, and it’s all happening in a somewhat boring cyber-corpo near future dystopia, whereas SC was a madcap over the top cyberpunk playground.
Where I’m at in The Circle, employees of the big tech company are expected to share pics of everything they do and comment on everything their coworkers do. Fill out a minimum of 500 survey questions a day on top of their daily work quota. Everyone’s work performance is shared for Friendly Competition.
I’d go on, but there’d be spoilers.
So, like you said, definitely not an original idea, just a slightly more current and boringly believable dystopia than rad pizza delivering samurais and viral languages developing on pirated barges floating in trash gyres in the Pacific.
I was referring to the setting of Snow Crash. Corporate-owned exclaves, etc.
That sounds interesting though…
The RIAA in the early 1999/2000 was the epitome of corpo-surveillance and capitalist bullshit.
We got a notice and suspended Comcast account (Roadrunner at the time but all the same company underneath). Because someone uploaded Metallica songs to a server my little brother was running to share 3D models and shaders.
There were lawsuits about shared IP addresses, open Wi-Fi networks for days and the recording and later, movie industries doing this shit for over 25 years now.
BonziBuddy was a herald of the apocalypse.
Lol my ex made that YouTube video. Hilarious to see it here
I love this!
I wonder if anyone under the age of ~30 would get the meme.
We shouldn’t have stopped at punching the monkey. We should have been punching CEOs.
Personally, I was spanking the monkey.
This is my new pfp btw
That’s allowed!
I love u 😳
Holt shit this is so good
One of my favorites of theirs, easily.
Isn’t it about clippy and not microsoft
Yes, the people who are somehow getting the message that Louis Rossman was praising Microsoft either didn’t watch the video or generally struggle with nuance, or both.
It’s not irrelevant. Using a corporate mascot as a symbol against another corporate mascot/product isn’t going to spread the message Louis intended. You argue the people complaining about it aren’t getting his point, but do you really think it will/has survived the word-of-mouth spreading it? The game of telephone that viral trends like this follow is lightning fast and warps messages in extreme ways. And it’s not much of a stretch to assume that, if MS churned out a new Clippy chatbot, people would rally around it to spite the others since they have no understanding of why they were doing it in the first place.
*Also, people already mischaracterize the sincerity of early tech giants. I’ve certainly seen many people lament “the good Internet” of the mid 2000s, as if the very issues we have today weren’t percolating back then. None of those companies were ever good or harmless, the idea that them or their products are “different” now is naive, and relying on that naivety to push for change is a mistake.
My take: if Rossman came out swinging as an anti-corporate revolutionary, his ideas wouldn’t have wide appeal right now, since many people still think the problem is just “bad” mega-corporations. So instead, he’s arguing for less-shitty tech corporations as a first step (symbolized by Clippy, of a less-intrusive software age), rather than “destroy all tech corpos now.” No, Microsoft wasn’t good then, but they were less awful.
If his video were starkly anti-capitalist, it would not have reached 2.5 million people, and I’d say getting that many people to start thinking about rejecting invasive software is a great step in the right direction, as opposed to ideological purism that would only resonate with those who already agree. The need for these baby steps is frustrating for those who already see the big picture, but a few chats with my coworkers quickly reveal how shockingly little some people have actually thought about the sins of big tech.
No, Microsoft wasn’t good then, but they were less awful.
what? when? you could arguably say that about google, but ms was famous for being a major tech ghoul in the late 1990s, early 2000s
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iIr8Bk8QOHE 3:45 is when he starts talking about his “frustrations with the vocal minority of FOSS cancer”
Watching the video, he doesn’t seem too found of FOSS or any type of anti-capitalist approach (at one point, he uses the word “communistic” in his descriptions of FOSS) Unfortunately the clippy symbol (as also seen in the post we are commenting on) seems less of a “We should move to an internet we control” and more of a “im nostalgic for when corporations were nicer to us” as if control like this has never been the end goal.
Yeah the “good” thing about the Internet of the nineties and the naughties was the difficulty of actually making any money on it. There wasn’t much reason for big corporations to try and take over, and the companies that did have a significant presence on it were mostly run by tech nerds, not finance bros. The web was mostly static sites and the concept of collecting data on users beyond their IP addresses didn’t really exist.
The companies and the products are different now, because the people in charge now have different ideas about what is possible, reasonable and profitable compared to 20 years ago. Add to that all the changes to the underlying technology and social norms - it’s a very different environment.
It’s true that we can’t go back to the way things were, because that would require the context of the entire world to shift. But we can still indicate our desire for products that are less invasive, less exploitative.
deleted by creator
I didn’t say it wasn’t perfect. I said it was a mistake.
this! i’m about to create another account just to upvote this again
It’s also not explicitly not about them either. Kinda the problem with symbols is that they’re marred by association. This movement is ultimately symbolic and the Clippy people (Microsoft) are at the heart of everything this symbolic gesture goes against.
It would be like me trying to make a symbol of how cars are bad by simply showing an old one.
