The Internet's Newest Slur Has a Bizarre Target

Sign up for the Slatest to get the most insightful analysis, criticism, and advice out there, delivered to your inbox daily. You may have run across the new "slur" making the rounds online, and in middle school lunchrooms: clanker. Borrowed from Star Wars (where battle droids get called "clankers"), the word is supposed to be a knockout insult to robots and A.I. Which would sort of make sense, if machines could actually take offense at anything. Since they can't, clanker is basically an insult that punches at nothing, perhaps the least-effective slur in history. The term, for all its silliness, has inspired a sort of spinoff--"clanker lover"--which, in theory, should carry more of a sting, since it's aimed at actual humans.