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It’s a slur for the AI age.
In recent weeks, “Clanker,” a term originating from a Star Wars video game, has gained popularity as a derogatory label for technology perceived to be replacing humans. On TikTok, individuals have been seen taunting robots in public spaces using this term. The interest in “clanker” has surged, with notable mentions such as Sen. Ruben Gallego, D-Ariz., using it to promote new legislation via X.
“Tired of shouting ‘REPRESENTATIVE’ into your phone repeatedly just to reach a real person?” he shared on X. “My new bill ensures you can avoid interacting with a clanker if you prefer.”
In one video, which has more than 6 million views on TikTok, a small, four-wheeled delivery robot gets berated with the word.
“It makes me sick just seeing a…” remarks Nic, a 19-year-old student and budding content creator from Miami Beach, in a TikTok video as a robot approached him, adding, “Clanker!”
A slur typically refers to language intended to belittle an individual based on race, gender, religion, or a similar characteristic, often crossing the line from mere rudeness to overt discrimination. Such terms are almost exclusively targeted at people.
The term “clanker” burst onto the internet scene around early June, with Google Trends showing a spike in searches. According to KnowYourMeme.com, a site archiving internet culture, “clanker” dates back to the 2010s when Star Wars fans adopted it to describe battle droids in various series. Other sci-fi works, like “Blade Runner,” have also envisioned derogatory terms for machines, such as “skinjob” for advanced humanlike robots.
However, there’s an irony here. By applying a slur meant for humans to technology, people simultaneously belittle these machines while acknowledging their rising prominence in society.
am Aleksic, a linguist who is also a content creator focused on how the internet is shaping language, said he first noticed the emergence of “clanker” a couple of weeks ago. Its use mirrored classic slurs related to racial tropes and appeared to emerge out of a growing “cultural need” related to growing unease with where advanced technology is heading. In one video — somewhat ironically appearing to have been created by AI — a man berates his daughter during a family dinner for dating “a goddamned clanker,” before his wife steps in and apologizes to the robot.
“What we’re doing is we’re anthropomorphizing and personifying and simplifying the concept of an AI, reducing it into an analogy of a human and kind of playing into the same tropes,” Aleksic said. “Naturally, when we trend in that direction, it does play into those tropes of how people have treated marginalized communities before.”
The use of “clanker” is rising as people are more often encountering AI and robots in their daily lives, something that is only expected to continue in the coming years. The steady expansion of Waymo’s driverless cars across U.S. cities has also come with some human-inflicted bumps and bruises for the vehicles along the way. Food delivery bots are an increasingly common sight on sidewalks. In the virtual world, cybersecurity firms continue to warn about the proliferation of bots on the web that comprise a growing share of all web traffic — including as many as one in five social media accounts.
The anti-machine backlash has long been simmering but is now seemingly breaking to the surface. A global report by Gartner research group found that 64% of customers would prefer that companies didn’t use AI for customer service — with another 53% stating they would consider switching to a competitor if they found out a company was doing so. People are becoming more worried about AI taking their jobs, even though evidence of actual AI-related job losses is relatively scant.
“Clanker” is also not the first pejorative term for something related to AI to have spread across the internet. “Slop” as a catchall term for AI-generated content that is of low quality or obviously created by AI — such as “shrimp Jesus” — entered internet parlance last year and has since become widely used. Other anti-AI terms that have emerged include “tin skin” and “toaster,” a term that traces back to the science fiction show Battlestar Galactica.
And there’s even some pushback — joking and serious — about whether such slurs should be used. In a Reddit community for Black women, a post about “clanker” offered some sense of the tension: “And I know it’s probably a joke in all from social media, but I can’t help but feel like it’s incredibly tasteless.”
Others have noted that some of the enthusiastic embrace of “clanker” feels more about being able to throw around a slur rather than any deeper issue with technology.
Nic, whose TikTok video helped spark the “clanker” phenomenon, said he sees both why people have taken to the phrase as well as why some find it problematic.
Nic, who asked to withhold his last name out of privacy concerns, said he did sense some people were using the word as a stand-in for a racial epithet.
Still, Nic, who is Black, said he saw the term more broadly as a lighthearted way to express a growing anxiety with where technology is headed, particularly as it pertains to the future of employment.
“I see it as being a push back against AI,” he said. “A lot of lives are being changed because of robots … and me personally I see it as a stupid way of fighting, but there’s a little truth to it, as well.”
