The Tech Industry's 10 Most Annoying Fictional Characters

In this slideshow, we'll examine the very worst fictional characters that marketing departments have unleashed on the general public over the years, ranging from smarmy wireless salesmen to dotcom-promoting sock puppets to annoying graphics of paperclips that SIMPLY REFUSE TO GO AWAY not matter what you do.

CueCat: And while we're on the subject of dumb late-'90s fads, we would do well to remember the CueCat, a legendarily dopey invention that was designed for people who liked reading magazine advertisements while they surfed the Internet. No, seriously: the CueCat was a small device that you attached to your computer that would scan the barcodes of magazine advertisements and then direct you to the product's website. Unsurprisingly, the CueCat was really just a clever ploy to track consumers' spending habits, as it would track your movements and send information on every single ad you scanned to a marketing database. Although the now-defunct CueCat hacked up its last official furball years ago, hackers have found more subversive uses for it since then.

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