As one of the original creators to make clanker-themed TikToks, Stewart, who goes by Chaise online, was dubbed the “clanker guy” by his fanbase after racking up millions of views. But in August, the 19-year-old content creator, who is Black, announced that he would no longer be publishing any more videos on the subject. The joke, he said, and responses to it, had become racist.

  “When I go into my comment section and people are starting to call me ‘cligger’ and ‘clanka’ or ‘you’re a dirty clanker’—not voicing those slurs at AI and electronics, but at me—I don’t find that entertaining or funny at all,” Stewart explains in the video.

  ...

  On TikTok and Instagram, however, the ongoing backlash against AI has taken on the form of short video skits, envisioning a future where robots have been fully incorporated into society. The term “clanker,” along with “tinskins,” “wirebacks,” and “oil bleeders” are used as pejoratives in these skits. But some of these skits appear to be using clankers as stand-ins for Black people, perpetuating racist tropes and scenarios that harken back to a pre–Civil Rights era.

  In one skit, creator Samuel Jacob dresses up in a police officer’s uniform and throws out phrases such as, “Don’t you know clankers sit in the back of the bus, Rosa Sparks?” and “Come on George Droid, looks like it’s jail time for you, rust monkey.” Another skit by TikTokker Stanzi Potenza depicts a waitress at a diner acting out a scenario in which she’s refusing service to the subject with the words “pov: you’re a clanker in 2050” sprawled across the screen. Speaking in a Southern drawl, she tells the camera, “Didn’t you see the sign outside? We don’t serve clankers here.” The caption underneath the video is a variation of a common phrase often used by people to defend their own prejudices: “Don’t worry, I have robot friends.”

Clearly there's been some strong parallelism in usages of clanker and nagger, just as there were in usages of ginger and its anagram by Tim Minchin in his song Prejudice.