I remember the hate well. Clippy was this obnoxious know it all who did shit like lean in and wave his eyebrows at you tapping on the monitor glass condescendingly asking QUESTION after QUESTION when you were trying to do stuff like focusing on writing your dissertation or important TPS reports for the boss. It was so annoying. It even made noises. [1]
I think it was appealing in a cartoony 90's kind of way for maybe 10 minutes for anyone who liked that kind of thing, but if you had to sit down and use this program for hours until you were done this character was the worst. Good thing you could turn it off, I remember a ton of people asking me how to do that back in the day.