Clanker

Clanker is a slur for robots adapted from the franchise, first appearing in the 2005 video game . In 2025, the term became widely used to discuss distaste for machines ranging from delivery robots to large language models. This trend has been attributed to anxiety around the negative societal impacts of artificial intelligence. For example, in June 2025, United States Senator Ruben Gallego tweeted that his "new bill makes sure you don't have to talk to a clanker if you don't want to," referring to proposed legislation that would require call centers to disclose their use of automated customer service agents to callers in the United States and offer the option to switch to a human representative.
In Star Wars media, robots are routinely depicted as the subjects of discrimination. For example, in the original film, C-3PO and R2-D2 are abducted by Jawas and sold to the family of Luke Skywalker. When visiting a cantina in Mos Eisley, both robots are refused by the bartender, who remarks that "We don't serve their kind."
Linguist Adam Aleksic has described clanker as an evolution of racial slurs that anthropomorphizes robotic systems. While other science fiction media includes pejoratives for robots, such as "skinjob" and "toaster" from the and franchises, respectively, clanker is believed to have gained popularity because its usage is intuitive and flexible. Internet memes incorporating the term often joke about adapting historical prejudice toward interracial marriage into discrimination against advanced robots.

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