Clippy was pretty universally hated back in it's day though. The way it just refused to let you do anything without it's help was annoying.
People complain about getting AI shoved down their throats. Clippy was worse in this regard. At least AI doesn't have a dancing animated character that eats up half your processing power with it's silly animations.
> I must have been a target audience, as a kid learning windows it made the computer feel less threatening
I don't think we, as kids, were the core audience for Clippy. I think Microsoft just wanted to make home users feel like their computer was some kind of friend, and not a cold machine.
But I agree, using Clippy as a kid was fun and I loved seeing all the animations.
People complain about getting AI shoved down their throats. Clippy was worse in this regard. At least AI doesn't have a dancing animated character that eats up half your processing power with it's silly animations.