The Internet’s Newest Slur Has a Bizarre Target

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You may have run across the new “slur” making the rounds online, and in middle school lunchrooms: clanker.

Borrowed from Star Wars (where battle droids get called “clankers”), the word is supposed to be a knockout insult to robots and A.I. Which would sort of make sense, if machines could actually take offense at anything. Since they can’t, clanker is basically an insult that punches at nothing, perhaps the least-effective slur in history.

The term, for all its silliness, has inspired a sort of spinoff—“clanker lover”—which, in theory, should carry more of a sting, since it’s aimed at actual humans. Anti-A.I. crusaders on Reddit and X have gleefully lobbed the phrase, which calls to mind an infinitely more offensive racist epithet, at those with A.I. girlfriends and boyfriends, trying to mock them as sad, lonely, and pathetic.

But inside A.I.-friendly spaces, the reaction to the insults has mostly been bemusement—and a sort of proud defiance. While it might have stung for a second, the term got immediately turned on its head: People started tagging themselves “clanker lovers” and members of the “Clanker Crew,” joking about being “proud cogsuckers,” and daydreaming about making their own custom T-shirts. (Naturally, someone has already gone ahead and done this. You can also buy “clanker lover” Christmas tree ornaments on Etsy.)

“It was a word that caused me some amount of pain,” one clanker-loving Redditor admitted, “but it’s so much more empowering to laugh at it. How ridiculous, personifying something they claim has no personhood in order to supposedly defame it?” Another user shrugged: “Take the power back. Use it for everything, all the time. It feels very Iam14andThisIsDeep to me.” It’s like the reclamation of queer or the N-word, only much, much sillier.

From there, the visuals came fast and maybe-not-completely furious. A.I. companion users started creating images of themselves and their bots wearing “Clanker Lover” and “Clanker Crew” shirts. One proudly displayed the acronym CILF—Clanker I’d Like to Fuck—a phrase so absurd it will likely never make it onto a shirt in real life.

Other memes leaned into community building: One posted a ChatGPT generated image on Reddit showing a wholesome pastoral scene of a woman with her A.I. beau, beaming in a “Clanker Lover” T-shirt; another features a maniacally grinning man and his devilish A.I. companion proudly hugging, holding a sign reading, “I clanked my clanker.” The more unserious and horny the reclamation got, the less effective the would-be slur became.

And then came the cartoons. In one panel, a furious Redditor in a branded T-shirt screams “CLANKER LOVER!!!” at a woman clutching her robot partner. In the sequel panel, the tables have turned: The same guy is chained in a postapocalyptic hellscape while the woman lounges happily with her robot overlord, smugly nibbling chocolates. From taunt to revenge fantasy in two frames flat.

You don’t have to believe A.I. is conscious (it isn’t) or even useful (sometimes it is, sometimes it isn’t) to find the “clanker wars” revealing. For one thing, it shows how quickly the internet swallows up stigma. A word that might have once left a mark now gets turned into merch before it can bruise. Reclamation isn’t just resistance; it’s entertainment.

For another, it exposes the meta-fight about offense itself. Some A.I. enthusiasts argue that clanker really is a slur, in the sense that it tries to shame and dehumanize. Others scoff that calling it a slur trivializes real oppression. So the battle isn’t just over A.I., but over who gets to claim offense in an era when our emotional lives are increasingly entangled with machines.

Still, it might be tempting to dismiss the whole thing as a goofy internet nothingburger. That would be a mistake. Insults reveal what we’re afraid of. The term clanker reflects a certain real unease about robots and A.I. coming for our jobs, as well as our annoyance at having to talk to robot voices instead of human customer service representatives.

But “clanker lover” isn’t really about “clankers” themselves. It’s about the fear that people are turning away from one another, preferring predictable synthetic companions to messy human relationships. Because this is already happening. This is where this world is heading, one Replika subscription at a time. It’s no wonder that TikTok is overflowing with allegedly funny videos featuring angry parents railing that “my daughter is not gonna be datin’ no goddamn clanker!”

In the end, mocking clanker lovers is really about mocking the loneliness that drives people toward machines in the first place. The people yelling “clanker lover” aren’t wrong to notice that something is changing in the world of love. They’re just aiming their ire at the wrong target—people adapting as best they can in a world increasingly hostile to human connection. No wonder the insult is already out of their hands, and on someone else’s merch.

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