That’s an odd stance bc at the time it was introduced clippy was almost universally reviled and seen as an example of microsoft taking something that was fine (office 95) and making it objectively worse (office 97 introduced product activation, the stupid paper clip assistant, an arguably dumb UI refresh, and the most hostile part: a new version of the proprietary doc format that wouldn’t render correctly in word 95, forcing people to upgrade)

enshittification wasn’t a concept back then but microsoft certainly lived up to it time and time again

If anything this comic doesn’t make sense because no shit, microsoft started selling your data the nanosecond it became viable to do so. They were always evil. Whereas google at one point literally had a motto of “don’t be evil” in their guidelines or whatever, which fooled a lot of people in the 90s. they famously had to remove because once data collection was becoming obvious it was kind of silly to keep that bit around I suppose

[–] killeronthecorner@lemmy.world 9 points 19 hours ago

Louis makes a lot of the points you're making in the video. He points to Clippy as an example of universal repulsion where we "didn't know how lucky we had it", versus the wolf dressed up in social media's clothing we have today.

I agree with a lot of what you said, but it's still worth watching the video. His overall aim is an honourable one and the choice of Clippy is pretty smart in light of the aims.

[–] Korne127@lemmy.world 12 points 23 hours ago (1 children)

It definitely is strange. But that doesn’t change that it has submerged as this symbol (just look up some new videos about clippy on YouTube). Many people probably do that because of counter-culture; clippy is liked because it had been hated for a long time and many (most?) people don’t know why.

[–] Eheran@lemmy.world 4 points 23 hours ago

Link here. Clippy never tried to sell our data. He just wanted to help, even if he was bad at it.

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