this post was submitted on 15 Jun 2026
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Also we already have "clanker".
Ah yes, lets pretend to use slurs against the chatbot, that will show em
I despise that shit, marker of an unfunny person
Yeah, it just reeks of reddit.
I thought it was funny for about two days until I saw how white people were having way too much fun making little skits, like one I saw where it's a 50's style diner and the people inside it refuse to let a clanker take a seat.
This is the kind of shit im talking about but some people here all just telling on themselves in my replies/dms
Wtf?
ridiculous stretch of the meaning of the word "slur". if it isn't applied to people it can't be a slur
it functions well as a derogatory term for LLM chatbots because it sounds like a slur, but that doesn't make it a slur
People have been saying "clanker" on star wars games online for years referring to the droids, it's definitely the same people who often say other slurs, like calling something "gay" as a slur is still a slur even if it's not referring to a person.
Sounds like a slur, used like a slur, carrys the same energy as a slur, but since the target is not human it doesnt cause harm to anyone at all
Youre coping lol
slurs are bad because they because they hurt people. the term clanker isn't targeted at people, so it isn't a slur
if you think critical for two seconds about what makes a slur a slur and what makes them offensive you will see this
Hard disagree. Using language like that even if not targetting real groups still normalizes the use of similar language towards other groups, including real racism, and can still cause harm to people due to the similarities to real slurs
Youre just simply ignoring the impact and optics of your actions to make yourself feel better
Calling clanker a slur is the same as calling cracker a slur. The exact same amount of systemic harm is being perpetuated by those two words.
I thought Clanker was a Star Wars slur thing that the clones would say to the droids. Unless i'm misremembering stuff.
Could be, I'm not a big star wars fan and don't base any of my worldviews on it. The point still stands though, star wars droids are a fictionally oppressed class in the same way that white people are a fictionally oppressed class.
I think calling chatbots clankers is stupid but calling it a slur is minimizing the actual harm to real people targeted by real slurs
Crackers will make it into a slur.
Someday in the far far future when actually sentient robots exist and are oppressed, yeah probably
I may be wrong but I've seen it used against people that use LLMs, not against the text generator themselves (which would indeed make no sense). A use for which it seems more useful - if only to shame these people.
I've never really seen it used that way myself, when the trend kicked off it was mostly just making some kind of racist sounding statement but replacing the racial slur with clanker. "No daughter of mine is going to date a..." and so on.
IIRC I've seen it used that way on SneerClub on
; no idea how generalized it is.
isn't clanker usually used to describe the llm bots themselves, as opposed to their users?
I was convinced once I saw an article about people basically just quoting westerners about indigenous and black people but saying 'clanker'. Before that I couldn't imagine why we should care. But the article cited some black creators (also definitely at least partially motivated by clicks, to be fair) describing how hurtful it was to see jokes about apartheid America being made light of by just saying clanker instead of rhe N-word in very specific things to anti-black pre-civil-rights-racism
the problem here is racism, not hating LLMs. no doubt there is plenty of cracker scum who use the term clanker because it makes them feel like they're getting away with saying the n word
that said, i don't think it's fair to conflate "using the term clanker bc LLMs are bad" with "using the term clanker bc you're a racist who simply can't avoid conflating bad things with black peolle"
i still think there's some value in using as derogatory a term as possible for LLMs, just to discourage people from using them. they should not be allowed to be perceived as cool or good or useful in any way
I thought that was a star wars slur for the Droid Army that fought against the republic?
https://starwars.fandom.com/wiki/Clanker
i don't know anything about star wars, i'm an adult
I've seen it used for the users themselves, but given you're the third one to make the same remark I'm pretty sure I'm wrong.
fair enough, maybe the use of it has extended to users since the last time i saw the word "in the wild" so to say