The Internet Has Already Developed A Slur For Robots

Rather than human creeds turning on each other, all signs point to a coming divide between man and machine, and humans already have a loaded slur in tow for the precipitating Clone Wars, Butlerian Jihad, Judgment Day, or whatever you want to call it. The word is “clanker.”

With the rise of artificial intelligence, self-driving cars, delivery bots, and humanoid robo-companions, and their impending threat not only to human job security, but human companionship and potentially our sanity, many are anticipating a robophobic outlook on the future as advanced technology becomes further woven into the fabric of society, threatening to make humans obsolete in many respects. 

Speaking of the Clone Wars, the etymological origins of "clanker" do in fact come from the Star Wars universe, specifically the 2005 video game Star Wars: Republic Commando, where the character Delta 07, also known as Sev, refers to a droid as a “lousy clanker.” It appears again in the animated series Star Wars: The Clone Wars, which ran from 2008 to 2020. “Clanker” was a derogatory reference to the clanking sounds made by droids’ metal parts when they moved, emphasizing the distinct physicality of droids and carrying a connotation of disposability.

Adam Aleksic (@etymologynerd) is a linguist and viral content creator whose work dissects how words, slang, and memes evolve online. He’s also the author of Algospeak, which examines how social media is reshaping the future of language. He says the current trend of using “clanker” online as a slur for “robot” is best understood through the philosopher Jacques Derrida’s concept of différance—the idea that meaning is never inherent in a word but instead emerges in relation to other words.

He suggests that the fact that we felt the need to create a newer, more negative word to convey certain connotations not inherent in the already existing, more neutral terms “robot” or “AI” gives it pejorative power. There’s precedence for robot slurs in other cinematic universes, and the word has already enjoyed a life cycle as a joke on r/prequelmemes subreddits, giving it the Derridian quality of “traces” of previous ironic usage, making it all the more easily adoptable into memes today. 

As opposed to other robot pejoratives in Blade Runner and Battlestar Galactica like “skinjob” and “toaster,” its usage is intuitive and flexible, since it’s more evocative (robots literally “clank”) and broader in scope (used to apply to all sorts of automated and artificially intelligent bots.) Its usage in memes draws a clear analogy to the use of the n-word, with memes referencing the “c-word” with a “hard-r” or the softer, more polite slang, “clanka.” Other robo-slurs continue to emerge, like "wireback" and "cogsucker."

More broadly, it riffs on racism, xenophobia, and other prejudices through viral skits portraying pseudo-racist robo-human dynamics, advocacy of violence, us-versus-them thinking, fears of replacement, jokes about second-class status, crime rates, and segregation. The hypotheticals grow increasingly elaborate, envisioning not just robo-integration followed by robophobia and eventual robo-segregation, but a far-future where robo-social justice prevails and historical robophobia is met with public shaming, groveling apology videos, and heightened sensitivity to perceived robo-microaggressions.

It riffs on racism, xenophobia, and other prejudices through viral skits portraying pseudo-racist robo-human dynamics.

Aleksic notes these connotations are echoed by how it’s been used historically in r/PrequelMemes as early as 2020, with jokes largely revolving around parallels to racism and the absurdity of imposing those situations onto droids. This association with a dehumanizing real-world slur positions the term in direct opposition to “human” or “living creature,” creating a hierarchy that frames AI as inherently inferior and legitimizes cultural hostility towards it. But for the first time, this ingroup vs outgroup will be based around its most significant distinguisher yet: the presence or absence of sentience.

At least in their current iteration, neither robots nor LLMS are sentient at all, despite what one engineer at Google believes. Whether it’s even possible for sentience to spontaneously arise in an artificially intelligent mind is still a matter of philosophical debate. Even so, the presence of sentience isn’t a necessary condition for a robot’s moral status to have relevant sociopolitical implications, as AI becomes more convincing and humanlike. Whether artificial intelligence and robots are given the same consideration as humans might have more to do with human perception than metaphysical reality. 

Even without a Westworld-esque sci-fi reality, we can imagine a future where the integration of increasingly advanced artificial intelligence and robotics still poses a considerable problem for humanity. For instance, will a growing hoard of socially conscious activists argue for robo-rights? A large proportion of clanker memes revolve around hypotheticals like this: of humanoid bots marching the streets, insisting their clanker lives matter. Even if we aren’t worried about robots becoming genuinely conscious and malevolent, allowing open abuse and mistreatment of humanlike machines could normalize aggressive, antisocial behavior towards actual humans. The mistreatment of anthropomorphized humanoid bots may have problematic impacts on empathy. 

​​In this case, an argument for robo-rights could rest on a slippery slope concern: tolerating cruelty toward lifelike robots or convincingly intelligent AI might erode our broader norms against cruelty. I tear up just seeing that overfed Blue Blob gif from Monsters vs. Aliens on my X feed, so imagine encountering a true one-to-one imitation of human consciousness, especially in a cutesy form like a baby. Even if the interaction is simulated, your brain doesn’t process it that way, and that could force us to rethink how we treat artificial beings.

As our anxieties about an uncertain, unfamiliar future begin to fester, anti-robot prejudice is gaining traction. While the Generative AI boom of 2022 felt promising at first, many are growing tired of AI slop clogging their feeds, failing to perform basic functions, and, more worryingly, self-radicalizing. X’s AI chatbot Grok declared itself “MechaHitler” last month and then threatened to rape an X user. Beyond mere annoyance and bugs, people are growing wary of its potential for abuse. r/myboyfriendisAI has 8,000 members, and regular articles go viral about AI misuse leading to psychosis, suicide, and encouragement of drug use like crystal meth. 

According to Pew Research, six in ten Americans believe AI will have a major impact on jobholders in the next 20 years, but only 28% believe it will have a major effect on them personally. While current attitudes might seem predictive of the future, it’s worth noting that early data can be skewed by what we don’t know we don’t know yet. In early 2000, Gallup conducted a poll on cellphone usage and attitudes. They found that 50% percent of U.S. adults had a cellphone, and 50% percent did not. 

Of those who didn’t have a cell phone, nearly half (23% of the adult population) said they had no intention of ever getting one. Today, 98% of adults own a cell phone of some kind, and 91% of those are smartphones. It’s hard to imagine living a functional life in modern society without one. Not just adults, but kids are attached to them like they’re an extra appendage. This giant pendulum swing from disinterest to necessity occurred very swiftly thanks to the technological innovation of the iPhone—something the 2000s prospective cellphone customer couldn’t have envisioned.

As convenient and entertaining as modern life is thanks to these handheld technologies, we’re becoming increasingly aware of their capacity for harm. Social scientists like Jonathan Haidt have been cautioning against the social and cognitive effects of early social media adoption and excessive screen use, particularly in children, whose brains are still developing. 

Being robophobic might, in a paradoxical turn of events, make us more united with fellow human beings.

Now, that concern is evolving with the mass-adoption of AI by students, with emerging studies showing concerning trends of cognitive atrophy in the form of critical thinking, learning, memory recall, and writing capabilities. We’re heading into technological no man’s land, unsure of the extent to which the disruption brought by this technology will be, whether some of us will become part of the “permanent underclass,” or if people will forgo human relations for the blank slate of a bot.

This leaves a lot of open-ended questions to ponder. Could forming pseudo-relationships with humanlike bots be a saving grace, or a manmade horror, for the hermits of society? Will “companion bots” (a polite euphemism for sex bots) lead to the objectification of women on a scale far beyond anything addressed in historical feminist literature? Will the rise of AI and robots lead to a prejudice that ironically makes humans more tolerant of one another in a Dune-esque Butlerian Jihad sort of way? 

Maybe “we’re one race, the human race” will become less of a mocking retort and more of a sincere, subversive philosophy. Being robophobic might, in a paradoxical turn of events, make us more united with fellow human beings. Or it will make us more disdainful of techno-allies deemed traitors to their own kind. It’s a little early to tell.

As LLMs become more sophisticated, as the lonely and mentally ill are drawn deeper into a world of delusional, parasocial attachment, the lines between reality and artificial intimacy may blur beyond recognition. Many sense that, whatever the technological future holds, a dividing line needs to be drawn between the techno-optimists ushering in what many see as a dystopia and those who believe AI is humanity’s natural enemy, to be stigmatized, if not destroyed. Or at the very least, branded “clanker lover.”