Remember Microsoft’s Clippy? He was that annoying little virtual paperclip that popped up in the corner of your screen whenever you were in the midst of writing a Word Document.
“It looks like you’re writing a letter,” he’d rudely assume. “Would you like help?”
Side note: The fact that we once used Microsoft to WRITE LETTERS is mind-boggling, but so is the rise and fall of Clippy, the paperclip you hated to love and loved to hate.
Clippy was born in 1997. He was popping up on our screens offering unsolicited advice until 2001 when he was sadly killed off Office Assistant and replaced with features like smart tags and task panes.
Earlier this year, Microsoft briefly resurrected the paperclip in the form of a series of animated stickers in the company’s chat software, GitHub. Unfortunately, his new life didn’t last long and a day later he was killed off yet again.
“Clippy has been trying to get his job back since 2001, and his brief appearance on GitHUb was another attempt,” a Microsoft spokesperson told The Verge in March. “While we appreciate the effort, we have no plans to bring Clippy to Teams.”
But that wasn’t the end for Clippy. Fans of the animated paperclip started a since-declined petition to ‘Bring back The Clippy Sticker Messaging Pack’ and just this week, he’s been popping up in a fresh batch of very dank memes and Tweets.
Perhaps the re-emergence of Clippy in our lives has a deeper meaning than we think. The pushy paperclip was once an annoying feature, but now, he represents a cry for help. These days, we’re born with technology is in blood: babies exit the womb zooming and swiping, and creating a Word Document is just an assumed skill. Does the little guy let us know it’s okay to ask for help?
Either way, Clippy needs to make a comeback ASAP.