People love using thinly veiled existing racist/homophobic slurs against AI. “Tinskin”, “wireback”, “cogsucker”, “clanker.”

Yes, I know that “clanker” was in Star Wars. That’s not what made it so popular, and the majority of people using it today likely never saw it there. People also use “clanka” and leave comments about using “the hard r.”

We all know what you’re talking about. You know when you’re typing it out. It’s not alright.

There are people places like Lemmy who spent their lives being called or watching their families be called the terms people are so lightly tossing about today. Do you really think that doesn’t bother any of them?

It seems like so many people were just eagerly waiting for something they felt it was socially acceptable to hurl slurs and abuse at, and happily reached for terms just like the ones they already knew.

Some kids at my niece’s school now think it’s cute to stare at black kids and talk loudly about how much they hate “clankas” making it very clear what they mean by it.

It’s one thing to dislike AI, how it’s been developed, and the intent of replacing human jobs. To insult AI and the people behind it.

It’s something completely different to jump in with constant streams of thinly veiled existing slurs that can and do hurt real people.

  • prowe45@piefed.socialEnglish
    0·
    2 days ago

    You know, overall I think I agree with you, and I suspect you’d be facing a lot less pushback if you’d made your argument a bit more generic and not specifically about AI. If the argument is “co-opting existing hate speech language is not cool, even if you’re using it to talk about things that most people dislike, and even if those things aren’t capable of having feelings of their own.” If I saw a guy on the street stub his toe on a mailbox and then heard him angrily call it a “metal f*g”, I’d think he was a weird homophobe. I still remember people in the early 00’s using the term “wigger” to refer to Caucasian rapper wannabes, and how it pretty quickly fell out of use because it was obviously gross, even for the time.

    I must not run in the same kinds of circles as you, online or IRL, because I think I’ve only heard one or two people use the term clanker and I haven’t heard anyone use the other terms you mentioned. The times I’ve heard/read clanker, it didn’t seem like the people were trying to make allusions to the n word. They certainly weren’t doing any of that “clanka”, “don’t say the hard R, yuck yuck” type stuff or I definitely would have clocked what they were doing. The other terms you mentioned are, to me, way more obviously derived from existing slurs.