the myth of the good tech giant

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).

So... where can we buy this in sticker form?

here!

it looks like you're trying to invoke nostalgia for older days, do you want help with that?

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.

"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.

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)
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

We're sorry to see your disapproval of corporate capitalism. Please take 1 hour of your day to send us some feedback so we can improve.

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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
I will just as soon my Jack2Head finishes downloading the latest update!
- Please drink verification can to continue

Somebody in the MS marketing department: 'Everyone hates clippy. What can we do about this?'

'Paste a couple gifs of a CGI dog on top of it?'

'Genius! Let's go to our two week lunch!'

It was kinda hilarious that when you disabled the Windows XP file search dog there was actually an animation of him sadly walking away.
30 years later:
'Everyone hates us. What can we do about this?’
'Make it fashionable for people born in 2003 to pretend to be nostalgic for Clippy?'
- How long until there is a Clippy Fortnite skin?
- It started from right to repair advocate Louis Rossman. If MS has got their claws in him the right to repair movement has just stalled out.

I didn't think I'd get a chance to use this again.

No! If we just change our avatars to Clippy the tech giants will feel really bad and stop harvesting our data and locking us out of our products! Then we'll be able to keep forking our money over to those same companies but it'll be okay 'cause they'll be nice now!

Clippy, how much is my information worth to you?
- This communication serves as a formal notice regarding your unauthorized use of the likeness of Microsoft Clippy, a trademarked character owned by Microsoft Corporation. Your actions constitute a clear violation of our intellectual property rights.
  The use of Clippy’s likeness in your project not only infringes upon our trademarks but also creates significant consumer confusion regarding the origin and sponsorship of your work. Such misrepresentation poses a direct threat to the integrity and reputation of the Clippy brand.
  Please be advised that if you do not immediately cease and desist from this unauthorized use, we will take all necessary legal actions to protect our rights, including but not limited to the potential shutdown of your servers to prevent further infringement.
  You are required to remove all references to Microsoft Clippy from your project and provide written confirmation of compliance by [specific date, e.g., 14 days from today]. Failure to comply will compel us to pursue legal remedies without further notice.
  We expect your immediate attention to this serious matter.
the tech giants will feel really bad and stop harvesting our data
That's not what changing your profile picture is meant to do, nobody (as far as I'm aware) is claiming that's the goal. The goal is to get people wondering why others have a Clippy profile picture, then they might search it up and learn about consumer rights and enshittification.
Lol... I saw that headline ("Everyone should change their avatar to clippy. Seriously," or something like that), and saw that it linked to a video, and I was just like 'nah'.
- It comes from Louis Rossmann. He said this, so that we (i changed my profile pic as well) know, that we are not alone, and see how many of us there are. Obviously if we dont do anything else, this clippy thing wont do anything.

'Looks like you could use some help investing in crypto! Let me help, but you should have a solid investment in a couple tech stocks first...'

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.

https://lemmy.blahaj.zone/post/30427558
And so the game of telephone begins.

I have a sudden urge to play Universal Paperclips

I have a sudden urge to play Universal Paperclips
Wonderful game, unironically a masterpiece
If you don't understand why this blank page clicker is amazing; go play it, finish it, and you will be enlightened
- Wonderful game, unironically a masterpiece
  
  My favourite song in the game is onto's Expanding Head Band - Riversong

The teeth are terrifying lol

Isn't it about clippy and not microsoft

Yes, the people who are somehow getting the message that Louis Rossmann 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.
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.

They certainly knew how to collect it back then. They just didn't yet have anyone willing to buy it from them.

If it's 97, there's a good chance the computer doesn't even have an internet connection.
- And even if it did, it wasn't always connected when running.

I think if Clippy had teeth back in 1997, he might have been remembered a little differently.

you have been putting out gold the past few days, love that clippy has teeth but hes talking out of his eyes

Clippy, I pirated your software in '97 and I'd do it again if there wasn't just hot garbage to pirate.

Embrace, extend, and extinguish

Ahh, I thought that there were some recent controversies with it (reading from the other comments), but I didn't understand if there was

Is this the anti rosman propaganda kicking in

Ofcorse its true. The point is it couldn't and it possed us off enough they removed it

I'm out of the loop on this one, is it related to real events?

here, the video which started all: https://odysee.com/@rossmanngroup:a/change-your-profile-picture-to-clippy.:e
and where he goes a bit more into detail and talks about many of the points seen in this thread: https://odysee.com/@rossmanngroup:a/you-changed-your-profile-to-clippy-now:6
- Ahhh, thanks for the link, everything makes sense now
It's about Clippit, which was a mascot that notoriously annoyed MS Office users in the 90s and 2000s. It did not yet collect your data the way everything does now.

Thanks I hate it

Another banger.

My corporation good, my corporation strong... my corporation kicks you corporations ass.

Seeing Boeing bootlickers, apple dickriders, intel nazis do this shit for decades was annoying... At least now they learned STFU for the most part. useful fucking idiots.

steal your data

How does this theft work? Do they break into my computer or accounts & take it unauthorized? Is it my data?

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.
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?
  Legal definition
  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?