On Tuesday morning, NBC News published an article about the new internet trend where people were calling A.I. and robotic technology “clankers.” Instead of just leaving it at that, NBC pushed a narrative that “aimed to suggest” the term “clankers” was an offensive slur for its negative connotations to technology. Going as far as to associate it with slurs like the n-word.
The word clanker, as it was used in the new trend, could be traced back to the popular franchise Star Wars. It was a slang term particularly used in The Clone Wars animated series to describe the clanking sounds of B-1 battle droids and B-2 super battle droids. This important backstory disproved the argument that it was created with undertones to the n-word.
Today, online creators use it as a funny joke, often depicting scenarios where people use it in a negative connotation to A.I. and robots.
NBC decided to ruin the joke by throwing in woke arguments from people that have nothing better to do then cancel a fake “slur" about robots that didn’t even exist yet.
They ran a clip of Adam Aleksic, a Harvard-educated linguist with a large TikTok following, he stated it was “incredibly clear that clanker spread through analogy with the n-word, meaning that part of its power emerged from deferral to an actual dehumanizing slur.”
Instead of writing off the trend as a funny or silly way to draw attention to growing public distaste for A.I., people like Aleksic took it further and equated the fake slur with the n-word. Of course, we’re talking about a hypothetical slur towards a nonliving thing incapable of emotion and somehow equating it to a slur towards black people. It’s impossible for “clanker” to be “actually dehumanizing” when it’s directed at something that's not actually human.
If you went into the videos comment section, you would see many accounts bringing up their own problems with why people shouldn’t be using the fictional slur.
NBC then cited a Reddit post on a community for black women, where someone called the trend “incredibly tasteless.” You can’t make fun of fake robots anymore without someone in the world comparing it to hardships they didn’t even face.
The guy who helped the trend to blow up on TikTok was black and said himself that he saw the word “clanker” as a “lighthearted way to express a growing anxiety with where technology is headed.” Not some crazy conspiracy theory that people are using it as a substitute for real slurs like the n-word.
This outrage for the sake of being outraged drew similar comparisons to the recent Sydney Sweeney American Eagle promotion where people on the left equated her ad to white supremacy and Nazi eugenics.