alt Hacker NewsClippy 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 was there too and Clippy was annoying because it popped up here and there but you definitely could do whatever you wanted without it.
To be fair, I kind of liked it. I must have been a target audience, as a kid learning windows it made the computer feel less threatening, dunno.