paranoid android
Distrustful mechanical being
A paranoid android is a robot or artificial intelligence afflicted with anxiety, suspicion, or depression—emotions supposedly beyond machine capacity.
The phrase comes from Radiohead's 1997 song of the same name, itself echoing the chronically depressed robot Marvin from Douglas Adams's *The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy*.
It describes someone overwhelmed by modern alienation: I felt like a paranoid android scrolling through the news.
- robotProgrammable automated machine
- tin manMetallic humanoid or callous person
- anxiousTroubled by uncertainty
- dystopianDepicting oppressive imagined societies
- big brotherOlder male sibling
creep · mental breakdown · algorithm · surveillance · synthetic · lonely · mechanical · circuitry · glitch · existential · malfunctioning · sentient · wired · nervous · electronic · cold · metallic · watching
- Douglas AdamsArthur Dent, Ford Prefect, Marvin, 42, forty-two