Remember “Clippy”? That was the single-least-helpful idea in computing, a virtual assistant that used to pop out of the ether like a zombie bursting from his grave to “help” the user of Microsoft products. Finally, in 2006, he was discontinued.
But in much the same way that under-cooked poultry or shrimp that has spent a summer afternoon on the porch has a way of coming back on you, Clippy has returned.
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Clippy was universally hated. In addition to being cutesy (and who doesn’t enjoy that when they’re trying to get work done?), it seemed to specialize in asking you if you wanted to do the one thing no one sane would or offering to help you with something you were already successfully doing (and would probably be done with if you didn’t have to stop to shut the asinine thing down).
Well, now those high-larious Gallifanakii at Microsoft’s Office Labs have resurrected the thing for their company training video game, Ribbon Hero. The sequel, “Ribbon Hero 2: Clippy’s Second Chance” is available as a web download. To the public!
Don’t these monsters know what they’ve done? Their winky stab at irony means that someone in a position to approve it likes this thing. If the game it’s in proves successful, and according to Geek Wire the first version was surprisingly so, someone somewhere in the lightless underground command hexagon in Redomond is, inevitably, going to say, “You know, I bet we could do it right this time.”
That proposal will, inevitably, percolate up through the barriers of charcoal, strontium 30 and magic that guards the MS HQ and Clippy will be loosed once again on an unsuspecting world. But this time, he will be immune to any weapons that we could throw at him. Mutated beyond recognition from his passage through the bone, rowan and oak of Microsoft, he will walk amongst us, the dark center in a cloud of blood. And nothing will ever be the same again.
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