Clippy Campaign

In August 2025, YouTuber Louis Rossmann started a movement (tentatively named the Clippy Campaign), a grassroots solidarity visibility campaign wherein participants changed their profile pictures on social media platforms in protest of unethical practices by corporations. Users changed their profile pictures to a "Clippy", referring to an image of the "Clippit" avatar of Office Assistant as seen in Microsoft Office from 2000 to 2003.

Campaign

On August 7, 2025, YouTuber Louis Rossmann uploaded a video titled "Change your profile picture to clippy. I'm serious" and encouraged his viewers to stand up against unethical practices of technology corporations (and companies in other industries) which violated consumer rights or otherwise proved detrimental to their paying customers. In the video, he suggested that members who join the movement could change their profile pictures on YouTube and other platforms to a Clippy, on the grounds that such an avatar was a fitting symbol, that avatars with a common theme would help participants recognize each other, and that the collective usage of the avatar in great numbers would raise questions among others and potentially draw attention to the movement.

Rossmann later uploaded a clarifying video on the 12th titled "You Changed Your Profile to Clippy: Now What? 📎📎📎" to elaborate on the meaning of the movement for participants and outsiders, and to call participants to action, offering ways in which they could actively contribute to creating effective results that could counteract or make conspicuous the exploitative and dishonest business practices they are protesting. Rossmann stated in the video that the act of changing one's profile picture is not the goal of the movement, but a prerequisite for realizing bigger changes; it serves as a simple task that gets users invested in the movement and increases its visibility, so that even if a participant is not able to effectuate much change on their own, they can make people who are capable of more tangible influence aware of the movement and, utilize their assistance.

The scope of the campaign intersects with the general resistance to anti-ownership practices by companies that have become more common throughout the 2010s and early 2020s, such as denying paying customers the right to repair the products that they had purchased.

Rossmann uploaded a follow-up video on the 16th titled "Progress of clippy movement one week in" in which he remarked on the rapid growth of the movement and thanked participants for actively working and making a difference, and not simply changing their profile pictures without doing anything else.

Why Clippy

Clippy as a symbol of escalating overreach

Rossman uses Clippy to show how technology used to work purely for its intended purpose, in contrast to dark patterns that are now widespread.

Change your profile picture to clippy. I'm serious 1:08

Whether or not you like Clippy, [...] the one thing that you could say—unlike Facebook, who is trying to profit off of young girls that feel suicidal: Clippy simply wanted to help.

He might have been annoying, but he just wanted to help.

There were no ulterior motives.

If you told Clippy you were having a bad day, he wasn't going to use that information to try and figure out which advertiser to sell you to, nor was he trying to steal your personal data to get you to purchase other Microsoft products. He had no ulterior motives, he was simply there to help.

[...] Clippy wouldn't even read the contents of your letter.

Impact

Rossman hopes that the group awareness created by the campaign will allow people to take action more quickly, due to already knowing that others around them are in alignment. Already it has been seen that many users on YouTube and other social media sites have taken part in the campaign. Some are even taking action to further spread word of the movement in hopes it will eventually get the attention of legislation, tech companies, etc. ^{[citation needed]}

You Changed Your Profile to Clippy: Now What? 📎📎📎 4:25

But if all of them know at the same time that we're on the same page:

We are tired of living in an anti-ownership society—check.

We are tired of living in a society where we subscribe to everything and we own nothing—check.

We are tired of being told it cost $8,000 to fix a f[---]ing power button—check.

[...]

If every single one of these people were not only on the same page, but knew they were on the same page, maybe each one in the chain would speak up when they otherwise wouldn't.

And when they're all moving together and all working together, what happens?

They choose a different vendor.

Within one week, there has already been visible progress due to this movement; namely, an increase in edits to consumerrights.wiki.

Progress of clippy movement one week in 1:06

We have something called Plausible. It's GDPR privacy-preserving analytics. [...Y]ou can see this jump over here [around 11 Aug] [...] also coincides with many articles that were incomplete, being edited to the point of being perfect[...]

As well as tangible progress outside of this wiki, the point of the movement is to encourage changes in individual lives so that these small changes accumulate: Progress of clippy movement one week in 1:56

[A]nd I'm very excited, not just by this, but by all of the emails that I've received from you, where you've told me in your own personal life where you made a different decision to try and make a difference.

Slogan

Clippy just wanted to help.

Gallery

• 
  A CC-0 (public domain) 3D model based on Clippy
• 
  The OG clippy render
• 
  Someone's custom clippy render
• 
  Clippy render against a blue background

References

https://youtu.be/2_Dtmpe9qaQ

https://youtu.be/SkL9vzW7nY0

https://youtu.be/hKhRUB8AwnA

https://youtu.be/joIQKaErNKc

https://youtu.be/0xAGUrkDsj4

https://youtu.be/MAgghxUw4kc

External links

• https://clippypfp.netlify.app/ - a generator for a custom Clippy profile pic