4 ms·

I never understood the hatred of Clippy. Certainly seems to be from an age where a whimsical touch was allowed in software, nowadays there just seems to be eith

I never understood the hatred of Clippy. Certainly seems to be from an age where a whimsical touch was allowed in software, nowadays there just seems to be either stern cynicism or forced chuminess in its place. Then again I was aged below ten when I first played with Office 97.

shp0ngle 4y ago
It’s cute and whimsical, sure. But it’s also generally useless. Imagine Siri/Cortana, but 100x worse, constantly interrupting whatever you are doing. (For what it’s worth, I always disable these assistants the first thing too. But Clippy was worse.)
- hef19898 4y ago
  At least Clippy didn't rely all of your questions back to some server farm somewhere where those questions are used by whomever to build a online profile of you.
dinobones 4y ago
Oops! Something went wrong! Tee-hee, looks like autopilot.exe is down right now. fail whale. Hope you don't mind crashing:)
- thrown_22 4y ago
  Gah!
- nerdponx 4y ago
  The difference is that Clippy was designed to be helpful (and occasionally was), kinda fun to mess around with, only slightly patronizing, could be disabled, could be customized, and generally left the user feeling in control of their own experience and interactions. Those "cute" wannabe-hip pseudo-hip error messages are the complete opposite. They show up only when you are already annoyed because something is broken, and they make the user feel disrespected. When I see an error message like that, it feels like someone is trying to appease me the way you might try to appease an angry kid with ice cream. They are an insulting attempt to pander to me in order to try to protect me from something I do not need protection from.
Razengan 4y ago
Clippy WAS "forced chuminess" Insincere and in a "How do you do, fellow kids" kind of way
mixmastamyk 4y ago
How about the search puppy from XP (I think)? While I thought it was cute saw no reason for it to exist as the Win2k input panel was the same, probably with a spinner.
jamal-kumar 4y ago
I remember the hate well. Clippy was this obnoxious know it all who did shit like lean in and wave his eyebrows at you tapping on the monitor glass condescendingly asking QUESTION after QUESTION when you were trying to do stuff like focusing on writing your dissertation or important TPS reports for the boss. It was so annoying. It even made noises. [1] I think it was appealing in a cartoony 90's kind of way for maybe 10 minutes for anyone who liked that kind of thing, but if you had to sit down and use this program for hours until you were done this character was the worst. Good thing you could turn it off, I remember a ton of people asking me how to do that back in the day. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G_uCbKoG5A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G_uCbKoG5A
- xattt 4y ago
  Grade 4 me thought Clippy was neat. I also like that you could change characters.
  - jamal-kumar 4y ago
    If you had shit to do, Clippy was the digital equivalent of some annoying pest of a person throwing out random numbers when you're trying to count cash. If that's not enough, he specifically creeped women out according to that article: Generally, Atteberry’s character tested well in focus groups—the best of any assistant in some cases. Yet its massive eyes could be buggy. Some women in the cohorts deemed Clippy a man, and the constant male gaze creepy. “There were comments about how Clippy was leering,” says Roz Ho, who worked in product planning for the PowerPoint team then. When Ho raised that concern, she says the men in the room—everyone else, basically—couldn’t process it. “It really wasn’t about, like, these guys were bad guys, or anything. It was just they had a hard time picturing that feedback.”
    - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
      Of all the reasons to criticize Clippy, the notion of it evoking a sense of the “constant male gaze” is… something. Clippy didn’t have a gender, how could something like this possible be avoided? I’m asking with a bit of snark, but I’m genuinely open to a serious answer. I’m worried that the solution would just be an attempt at making the dialogue even more obtuse, or making the avatar overtly feminine.
tmm84 4y ago
I remember being around 12 years old when I had Office as part of my first computer. Oddly, at that age and typing up reports, letters or anything else for school work it was nice to see Clippy right there tell me what he thought of what I was typing up. It was nice for him to teach me what I should do settings wise to get a nice document out of my printer for school. Being that young I wasn't likely to go and read everything about Office just to print out a school report (better off just hand writing it or typing it up on a typewriter). The closest thing I have to Clippy these days is the Doctor in Emacs who fills "tfc" hole I have some days.

shp0ngle 4y ago

It’s cute and whimsical, sure. But it’s also generally useless. Imagine Siri/Cortana, but 100x worse, constantly interrupting whatever you are doing. (For what it’s worth, I always disable these assistants the first thing too. But Clippy was worse.)

hef19898 4y ago
At least Clippy didn't rely all of your questions back to some server farm somewhere where those questions are used by whomever to build a online profile of you.

dinobones 4y ago

Oops! Something went wrong! Tee-hee, looks like autopilot.exe is down right now. fail whale. Hope you don't mind crashing:)

thrown_22 4y ago
Gah!
nerdponx 4y ago
The difference is that Clippy was designed to be helpful (and occasionally was), kinda fun to mess around with, only slightly patronizing, could be disabled, could be customized, and generally left the user feeling in control of their own experience and interactions. Those "cute" wannabe-hip pseudo-hip error messages are the complete opposite. They show up only when you are already annoyed because something is broken, and they make the user feel disrespected. When I see an error message like that, it feels like someone is trying to appease me the way you might try to appease an angry kid with ice cream. They are an insulting attempt to pander to me in order to try to protect me from something I do not need protection from.

Razengan 4y ago

Clippy WAS "forced chuminess" Insincere and in a "How do you do, fellow kids" kind of way

mixmastamyk 4y ago

How about the search puppy from XP (I think)? While I thought it was cute saw no reason for it to exist as the Win2k input panel was the same, probably with a spinner.

jamal-kumar 4y ago

I remember the hate well. Clippy was this obnoxious know it all who did shit like lean in and wave his eyebrows at you tapping on the monitor glass condescendingly asking QUESTION after QUESTION when you were trying to do stuff like focusing on writing your dissertation or important TPS reports for the boss. It was so annoying. It even made noises. [1] I think it was appealing in a cartoony 90's kind of way for maybe 10 minutes for anyone who liked that kind of thing, but if you had to sit down and use this program for hours until you were done this character was the worst. Good thing you could turn it off, I remember a ton of people asking me how to do that back in the day. [1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G_uCbKoG5A https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3G_uCbKoG5A

xattt 4y ago
Grade 4 me thought Clippy was neat. I also like that you could change characters.
- jamal-kumar 4y ago
  If you had shit to do, Clippy was the digital equivalent of some annoying pest of a person throwing out random numbers when you're trying to count cash. If that's not enough, he specifically creeped women out according to that article: Generally, Atteberry’s character tested well in focus groups—the best of any assistant in some cases. Yet its massive eyes could be buggy. Some women in the cohorts deemed Clippy a man, and the constant male gaze creepy. “There were comments about how Clippy was leering,” says Roz Ho, who worked in product planning for the PowerPoint team then. When Ho raised that concern, she says the men in the room—everyone else, basically—couldn’t process it. “It really wasn’t about, like, these guys were bad guys, or anything. It was just they had a hard time picturing that feedback.”
  - DiggyJohnson 4y ago
    Of all the reasons to criticize Clippy, the notion of it evoking a sense of the “constant male gaze” is… something. Clippy didn’t have a gender, how could something like this possible be avoided? I’m asking with a bit of snark, but I’m genuinely open to a serious answer. I’m worried that the solution would just be an attempt at making the dialogue even more obtuse, or making the avatar overtly feminine.

tmm84 4y ago

I remember being around 12 years old when I had Office as part of my first computer. Oddly, at that age and typing up reports, letters or anything else for school work it was nice to see Clippy right there tell me what he thought of what I was typing up. It was nice for him to teach me what I should do settings wise to get a nice document out of my printer for school. Being that young I wasn't likely to go and read everything about Office just to print out a school report (better off just hand writing it or typing it up on a typewriter). The closest thing I have to Clippy these days is the Doctor in Emacs who fills "tfc" hole I have some days.