It was just another day at the PC Gamer towers when a colleague posted a frantic message in Slack. They were bemoaning the jump-scares caused by "accidentally pressing the button in Google Docs that causes an AI woman to start reading articles at me."

I simply replied, "Clippy would never," only for them to retort, "Clippy has blood on its hands." That moment sparked a deep realization: Clippy has a canonical gender, and I had no idea.

The Truth About Clippy’s Canonical Gender

After a quick investigation, the truth finally emerged. While there are many versions of the truth, the word from the man who actually created the character carries significant weight.

According to an old Motherboard interview with illustrator Kevan Atteberry, the paperclip is officially male. This revelation came following a period where fan art depicting a pregnant Clippy went semi-viral.

"It’s important to me that people remember Clippy because as long as they do, I have cachet,” Atteberry told Motherboard in 2017. He also addressed the strangeness of the fan community's creativity:

"I’ve not seen anything weirder. I’ve seen pregnant Clippys, suicide Clippys, things like that. But to take him and, first of all, there’s no volume in a paper clip, and to use the paper to make him pregnant… The fact that I’ve always considered Clippy a male… How did he get pregnant? Maybe I’m reading too much into it. Who got him pregnant? How is this possible?"

From Mac Design to Subpar Erotica

The revelation that Clippy has a canonical gender is only one part of the character's strange history. Interestingly, the most iconic mascot in PC history was actually designed on an Apple computer.

"I totally understand the annoyance factor [with Clippy]," says Atteberry. "I didn’t really experience it myself, because I’m a Mac guy. In fact, I designed Clippy on a Mac."

The character's legacy has also inspired some... unexpected creative writing. Atteberry noted that he has received fan erotica featuring the character, though he wasn't impressed by the literary quality.

  • Fan Art Trends: Included everything from pregnant Clippy to "suicide Clippys."
  • Literary Critiques: Atteberry admitted that while people sent him free copies of the stories, "the writing was, um, it was really technically subpar. It was hard to get through that."

If you are an aspiring writer of Clippy erotica, you now know which pronouns to use—though you might want to focus more on your prose and less on the context.

Why We Miss the Era of Clippy

While Microsoft recently brought Clippy back as an Easter Egg in Copilot, it isn't the same. The "real man" is gone, leaving behind a sense of nostalgia for a simpler digital age.

In the modern era, AI feels much more intrusive than our old paperclip friend. As Kerry Brunskill wrote in the aptly titled article Clippy Did Nothing Wrong:

"It didn't take long before Clippy either completely misunderstood my text or was out of ideas entirely, but in the cold light of modernity I honestly appreciated bumping up against the edges of his database instead of being immediately funnelled towards similar 'services' in a company's 'digital ecosystem'."

Unlike modern tools, Clippy never tried to nudge us into online training icons or forced us to stare at stock images of people smiling at laptops. He never asked for a subscription to unlock better advice; he was just a paperclip, doing his best.