Clippy's New Purpose 📎

consumer protection

Clippy was an animated paperclip created by Microsoft in the 1990s to assist users. Most people found it annoying and intrusive, and Microsoft discontinued it twenty years ago. Now, in the past several months, Clippy has been reappropriated for another use. You'll see Clippy in profile pics in posts and comments all over the Internet. You might even see some bloggers using it 😉. Clippy is becoming the face of the consumer-rights movement.

In August 2025, Louis Rossmann posted a video encouraging people to use Clippy in their profile pictures.

"If you told Clippy you were having a bad day, he wasn't going to use that information to try and figure out which advertiser to sell you to, nor was he trying to sell your personal data, or get you to purchase other... products. He had no ulterior motives. He was simply there to help." — Louis Rossmann

This video spoke to me on a personal level. At the time Louis published it, I owned a second-generation Nest smart thermostat, which I had used for years. Google acquired Nest, and was in the process of eliminating support for the smart features of the older Nest thermostats. They were turning it into a dumb thermostat after I had already paid for the smart features. There might be reasonable technical and business reasons for doing this (or maybe it was a way to get people to buy new thermostats). Whatever the reason, Google rubbed me the wrong way, so I slapped Clippy into my profile pictures.

Posting Clippy in your profile is a statement that you are tired of:

  • Companies changing the terms of the sale after the sale.
  • Companies disabling products after the sale.
  • Companies requiring payment to re-enable products.
  • Companies censoring or promoting your comments arbitrarily.
  • Companies preventing you from fixing what you bought.
  • Companies eliminating ownership through subscription models.
  • Companies using your personal information for marketing and other purposes.

Will it make a difference? I have no idea. But it's something to try. Maybe if CEOs see Clippy staring back at them from every profile, they'll take notice.