Dilbert - C or D?

*I may be being a little melodramatic.

D: Elbonia. "It's a meeting - ABOUT MEETINGS!!!!!!! Do you see?"

I read someone (Bill Watterson?) arguing that the rise of non-artist Adams types was down to the space available for a strip shrinking and a (linked) lack of editorial concern/respect for drawing and storytelling in cartoons.

Obviously I agree with the pop stuff - outsource stuff you can't do well!

I just with that there wasn't so much shame in hiring someone to write songs for you if you're a good singer but a bad songwriter

It's true, you have to form a band with a good songwriter to make it socially acceptable. It would be kind of cool to be the Frank Sinatra of rock bands, though, like a cover band except you'd be playing songs no one has heard yet.

"SIR, TURN OFF YOUR LAPTOP!!!"
"No way, I've gotta bring this sucker in for a landing! (Can I do that in Excel?)"

The boss's laptop needs to be shaken to reboot it, because it is in fact an etch-a-sketch.

(I think it captured in detail that weird period when you had to have non-high-tech managers in high-tech companies, because that's all there was.)

"I was just wondering, if you died, would the coffee cup walk around by itself?"

(this is more universal, I suspect)

"40% of sick days are taken on Friday and Monday; this is unacceptable."

As for the comedy - sometimes stomach creasingly funny, innevitably suffers from massive production targets, of course. And the material, as pointed out above, IS dating, alas.

The books are plenty of the notions formalised and expanded to complete theories, and I'd hazard form a decent insight into employee motivations.

but there is nothing weird about that... bosses have boss skills, which are entirely different to doing things skills, so small wonder that bosses become head of the World Wide Wicket Corporation when they don't really know what a wicket is and whether you can eat it.

anyway, this is what you should be looking at: http://pied.nu/banned/the_Dilbert_Hole/tn/14.gif.html

(the best part is how Wally is virtually unchanged from the real comic strip)

this guy is a right wing creationist douche

Isn't he a Satanist?

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2007/09/a-feeling-im-be.html

^^^this is some high-end useful idiocy

If you let a guy like that express his views, before long the entire world will want freedom
of speech.

Um, is this sentence a joke?

OK, the whole thing's a joke.

I was gonna say!

Doesn't sound like a right wing creatonist here:

http://dilbertblog.typepad.com/the_dilbert_blog/2008/05/the-economics-p.html

Actuallt, if you read his blog, he sounds more like a science geek with some libertarian leanings rather than a right wing creationist. Where'd you get that idea?

A cartoon engineer, that's what he is.

Scott Adams, feminist

Ah, Dilbert. For so long, you have lingered there on the comics page, always ready to barrel-shoot the inanity of office culture with your humorously-coiffed characters and beleaguered engineers, locked forever in a corporate development hell that your humor at first mocked, and then later resembled.

Mostly, though, I haven't really paid attention to you at all, at least until today, when the internet discovered a post where Dilbert creator Scott Adams gave us all a piece of his mind in a post (since deleted) about men's rights, and the fact that he thinks men suffer a level of social injustice equal to women.

After all, women might get paid less than men in our society, but men die earlier, teen boys have to pay higher car insurance, and sometimes women want men to open doors for them, so it all comes out in the wash, right? I'm not making those examples up, either; those are his examples.

And then there's this:

"The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently. It's just easier this way for everyone. You don't argue with a four-year old about why he shouldn't eat candy for dinner. You don't punch a mentally handicapped guy even if he punches you first. And you don't argue when a women tells you she's only making 80 cents to your dollar. It's the path of least resistance. You save your energy for more important battles." -Scott Adams

Wow. Just wow. To recap: He's comparing women asking for equal pay to the selfishness and unreasonableness of children asking for candy, or mentally handicapped people lashing out violently. He's saying that women's concern for pay equity is a petty desire levied by an irrational group of people, and he's also suggesting a very specific strategy for the men in the audience: Remember not to care.

If the above block of text reminds you of Dave Sim at all, that's because this rhetoric does exactly the same thing as Sim's in terms of infantilizing women and casting them as primarily emotional and irrational beings that men can only deal with by ignoring them most of the time, or sighing bitterly while turning up the volume on their sports game.

Women, amirite? To his credit, he recognizes that this is basically an insane comparison to make, but then not to his credit, makes it anyway. (Note: Saying something and then saying that you're not saying it doesn't magically unsay it.) He continues:

"I realize I might take some heat for lumping women, children and the mentally handicapped in the same group. So I want to be perfectly clear. I'm not saying women are similar to either group. I'm saying that a man's best strategy for dealing with each group is disturbingly similar. If he's smart, he takes the path of least resistance most of the time, which involves considering the emotional realities of other people. A man only digs in for a good fight on the few issues that matter to him, and for which he has some chance of winning. This is a strategy that men are uniquely suited for because, on average, we genuinely don't care about 90% of what is happening around us."

Adams' original blog entry (since deleted): http://tinysprout.tumblr.com/post/3713649989/scott-adams-dilbert-deleted-post

More commentary (and apparently a comment from Adams) here: http://www.feministe.us/blog/archives/2011/03/24/scott-adams-to-mens-rights-activists-dont-bother-arguing-with-women-theyre-like-children/

haha omg

I can never tell when Scott Adams is serious and when he's trolling

If the above block of text reminds you of Dave Sim at all,

this was my first thought actually

Practically everything Scott Adams writes is dripping with about five levels of bitter, self-hating sarcasm, though, which makes it difficult for me to take this completely at face value.

Like, I would not at all be surprised if he was taking a Neanderthal tone in order to set up and pull the rug out from underneath people, which seems to go along with the shellshocked reactions some of these critiques are posting.

Having said that, I haven't read it yet so maybe the whole piece really is way out of step with his usual steeze, or just an epic failure in conveying appropriate tone, or maybe he is Dave Sim 2.0.

A woman had a show about bible secrets on the BBC the other week which was basically Chasing YooWHoo.

Adams since reposted the deleted blog entry and a "you are all idiots" followup. Perhaps downgrade from Dave Sim to Lileks territory?

what a weird guy

If any of you have a Salon account, could you do me a favor and head over to the articles by these binarian unibators and provide a link to my explanation of the Men's Rights controversy in its proper context?

I write material for a specific sort of audience. And when the piece on Men's Rights drew too much attention from outside my normal reading circle, it changed the meaning. Communication becomes distorted when you take it out of context, even if you don't change a word of the text. I image that you are dubious about this. It's hard to believe this sort of thing if you don't write for a living and see how often it happens. I'll explain.

(emphasis scott adams')

Dude has not been helping his case lately.

hoo boy

1. Adams has stated in his blog several times that evolution is a scientific fact. The citation someone gave here is in the context of his blog post explaining that the evidence for evolution smells wrong even if it isn't. That's an interesting point.

His prediction about evolution someday being rethought in scientific terms has to do with whether the arrow of time is an illusion. If time doesn't move forward, things aren't happening the way you think. That's an interesting point too. And it's a far cry from being an evolution denier.

^^^ certified genius I.Q.

so I guess the only requirement for claiming a genius IQ is smoking a lot of pot?

Well, he is in SF and all.

hahah this guy

in fairness, this is the funniest shit he's done in about 15 years

this makes me sad :-(

when i was a kid i read this book of prose fiction scott adams wrote called GOD'S DEBRIS in which a UPS guy delivered a package to an old man's home and the old man gave him this hundred-page-long speech about The Universe, which was mostly elementary einstein-era physics and probability theory with some stoney prognoses mixed in at the end and a whole lot of really odd categorical statements about obvious (like obvious even though i was 15 or whatever) personal resentments along the lines of "when an idiot and a genius disagree, generally the idiot will think the genius is wrong", and the whole thing had this utterly weird air of having been written by a person who'd decided that his respect for and understanding of Science and Rationalism was what separated him from the thick sea of morons who annoyed and obstructed him but did not actually have the intelligence or wit or generosity or even untainted curiosity to be an actual scientist and instead had to write boss jokes for the newspaper.

anyway the high point of this whole online thing is when someone on a reddit thread says that scott adams is dumb and scott adams under his ludwig von mises (lol of course) sockpuppet says:

You're talking about Scott Adams. He's not talking about you. Advantage: Adams.

dilbert is still one of the best daily strips, not that there's much competition.

Having dug a grave, he digs deeper.

Obviously an alias can be used for evil just as easily as it can be used to clear up simple factual matters. A hammer can be used to build a porch or it can be used to crush your neighbor's skull. Don't hate the tool.

lol

hoo boy

Dear Scott Adams,

You are on your own now, you big stupid nerd.

Middle-fingerfully,

DJP

I typed a vague rant of betrayal on behalf of teenage me, who mistook Adams' cynicism regarding clueless un-technical managers for some kind of anti-capitalist pro-science sentiment when apparently he was only ever yet another oblivious self-aggrandising jerk with an MBA, but then I remembered that it's already at least 12 years too late to give a shit. So.

(Admittedly I already sort of knew part of this from the final chapter of whichever 90s book where he tells readers to visualise good futures for themselves and write them out 100x daily to make them come true, but I guess a little part of me still wanted that to be some really weird trolling.)

oh hahaha I remember that; I thought it was the funniest fucking thing

doesn't surprise me to find the whole "men's rights" thing was done tongue-in-cheek, I used to read the Dilbert blog from time to time and I know most of what he says on there is not meant to be taken straight. this whole weird thing about him defending himself is bizarre, but he kind of admits on his blog that he doesn't really have much integrity when it comes to public forums. In a way I kind of understand why he did it, his blog is EXACTLY the sort of thing that people can take out of context and use to slam the guy, but explanation or not this whole thing is kind of disturbing

Was I the only person who was put off by Dilbert from the beginning? The "capitalist servitude is the lolz" attitude just seemed like smokescreen for maintaining the status quo. Pointy-headed bosses will always rule, so put up with it.

Always felt that Dogbert was Adams' way of inserting himself into the strip a la Dave Sim and Viktor Davis.

Adams was equal parts Dogbert/Catbert/Alice/Wally IMO

it is definitely not questioning the status quo. and that's ok because it still has decent jokes.

ha that's actually a good point, I don't see how a strip that is basically "my job is soul-crushingly stupid and nothing I do seems to change anything" even comes under consideration as something that could be challenging the status quo

Guess I have a thin-skin when it comes to this, but I also work as a programmer. Too close to home?

well, I'm also a programmer; I always viewed the strip like the coworker who's always bitching

Was I the only person who was put off by Dilbert from the beginning? The "capitalist servitude is the lolz" attitude just seemed like smokescreen for maintaining the status quo. Pointy-headed bosses will always rule, so put up with it.

There was a whole book written about this 14-years ago.

http://ecx.images-amazon.com/images/I/61ZD9A4VJXL._SL500_AA300_.jpg

Its complaints are a little repetitive but on the whole it is a good read.

Admittedly I already sort of knew part of this from the final chapter of whichever 90s book where he tells readers to visualise good futures for themselves and write them out 100x daily to make them come true, but I guess a little part of me still wanted that to be some really weird trolling.

That was the Dilbert Future...I always wondered the same thing. He always is going on and on about pranking people at the office so the whole way I kinda thought he was pulling one over on us, but if you go back and re-read it, everything seems to sincere that it's a little hard to tell. The implications there were just a little too weird to comprehend. But he did manage to "re-wire" his brain and cure his "incurable" spasmodic dysphonia or something, so at least that's pretty impressive.

He always is going on and on about pranking people at the office so the whole way I kinda thought he was pulling one over on us, but if you go back and re-read it, everything seems to sincere that it's a little hard to tell. The implications there were just a little too weird to comprehend. But he did manage to "re-wire" his brain and cure his "incurable" spasmodic dysphonia or something, so at least that's pretty impressive.

― frogbs, Tuesday, April 26, 2011 2:54 PM (4 years ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

this is a good observation. he anticipated internet trolls.

this is a good one:

http://dilbert.com/strip/2015-06-07

Is there a way to make a comic strip an ILX board description?

Technically yeah, but it breaks mobile ILXing so it's verboten.

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/145456082991/my-endorsement-for-president-of-the-united-states

The only downside I can see to the new approach is that it is likely to trigger a race war in the United States. And I would be a top-ten assassination target in that scenario because once you define Trump as Hitler, you also give citizens moral permission to kill him. And obviously it would be okay to kill anyone who actively supports a genocidal dictator, including anyone who wrote about his persuasion skills in positive terms. (I’m called an “apologist” on Twitter, or sometimes just Joseph Goebbels).

0_0

I mean obvs he is batshit but sometimes it is still a shock to smell the shit of the bat

top-ten assassination target

I guess he read my diary.

hmmmm - was not aware of his batshit-ness until now :(

Yet another casualty of bouncing his increasingly-bizarre political ideas off the echo chamber of a drafting table for decades on end.

It must have the same effect as solitary confinement for some.

eagerly anticipating his "guys, I was just joking and y'all were too stupid to realize it" post when Trump does not win via landslide

Nah, dude has been tweaked for years. Rapidly tumbling into Sim territory.

Yeah, he's been spouting misogynist MRA and evolutionary biology bullshit for a long time now.

hmm, skimming through his blog it does sound awfully like the ramblings of a somewhat smart high schooler spending too much time on his own

https://twitter.com/Lubchansky/status/714872078713896961

hey dilbert guy, are you cool

http://dilbert.com/strip/2016-06-16

i mean
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/146361457021/the-humiliation-of-the-american-male-in-2016

How many of the married men reading this blog have received those same sweaters as “gifts” from women? Personally, I’ve received about 25 over the years. None from men. I received three of those sweaters so far this year. I throw them away. Nice try.

Many of you can’t talk about this topic without being accused of sexism, losing your jobs, and being cast out of your social groups. But I can talk about it because I endorse Hillary Clinton for president.

rooneyish

this guy is a psycho

as in, andy?

xp yup

funny how the guy who did a comic about how schlubby engineers are really smart and everyone else is really stupid turned out to be a self-satisfied womanhater dickhead

I think question #1 here is "why are you reading Scott Adams' blog?"

he's turned himself into some kind of sage for trump fans this election, it's the weirdest thing

classic material

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/139295746646/marriage-civilizations-biggest-mistake

yeah, andy -- in form, at least.

my submission is this graf from a recent piece about trump's mastery of persuasion:

For example, I have already used several persuasion techniques in the paragraphs above. If I were to see another writer use these same persuasion methods on me, I would recognize them. But most of you did not recognize the methods – at least not all of them – when I used them right in front of you.

Persuasion hides in plain sight.

genuine lol at "check out this commercial for dishwasher detergent."

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kydKTVLmP58

TRUMP'S "LINGUISTIC KILL SHOTS" EXPLAINED

"Linguistic Kill Shots" sounds like some PUA bullshit.

trump makes fun of people's looks. what a hypnotist.

How are we going to feel when Randall Munroe goes full douchebag? I feel it's inevitable

I mean it probably happened already, I just don't care enough to notice since (like Scott Adams) the majority of his output and fan base are just annoying

I think question #1 here is "why are you reading Scott Adams' blog?"
― volumetric god rays (DJP), Friday, June 24, 2016

Rapidly tumbling into Sim territory.

That v-neck sweater one totally reads like a Sim who was never smart.

classic material

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/139295746646/marriage-civilizations-biggest-mistake

this guy tries so hard to straddle the line between "see!! I was right about everything! you're just not open minded enough!" and "guys I was just trolling, get a sense of humor!", also lol @ him preemptively defending himself against people tweeting at him

like this

I can talk about it because I endorse Hillary Clinton for president. I did that for my personal safety,

is just the most disingenuous shit, you got such a Trumpboner just own it like a fucking man

also lol at the idea that Trump is some kind of master hypnotist deploying surgical linguistic kill shots to get the nomination, he got the nomination by being a radical candidate in a historically stuffed field, full of candidates who for whatever reason thought the way to beat Trump was to go to his level. He did it by stoking the same base you've been mocking for the last 30 years of your life. If he WAS actually savvy - if say, he had an actual campaign, any remotely consistent positions, or knew when and where was the time for his vile racism, maybe he would have some kind of shot, which is terrifying. As it is he's making unforced errors every week and most likely is going to get blown out, so who knows how Adams is gonna walk back that "Trump wins in history's biggest landslide" prediction

now taking credit for Brexit:

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/146709758156/the-time-i-accidentally-plunged-europe-into

Ok I give up. The man is insane

"Comments temporarily disabled" lol

"A-a-a-a-and I can be persuasive."

I have found the worst Dilbert tweet:

https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/759065486978002945

what a fucking asshole.

On a profound level how unhappy must this jerk-off be with his life and the way he views the world to behave the way he does? I wouldn't want his millions if it meant also seeing life through his jaundiced eyes.

also if it meant constantly thinking of like Amusing Dilbert Situations

at a restaurant & being struck by inspiration, ostentatiously shutting down conversation + hassling the server for a pen to scrawl like INSTALLING WINDOWS UPDATES ... V TIMELY on a napkin

What an awful bunch of depressing racist morons. Good link!

https://twitter.com/billkristol/status/758758123343581185

lol

election '16, pivotal moments

I've actually been thinking a lot about that Adams tweet and how it's emblematic of what's wrong with the right's demonization of expertise. Way too many people honestly believe, in a world with Wikipedia access, that they're capable of knowing and understanding anything these so-called "experts" know and understand, and in a tenth of the time it took those phonies to figure it out.

Alternative to the Kristol zing: 'Drawing.'

it's a sign of someone who has expertise in nothing. all you need is expertise in one somewhat esoteric or complex field to understand what is required to have expertise in other fields. if you don't know anything know about anything you don't understand what is required.

like one hour? there are certain trades (refrigeration, electrical, heavy equipment operation) that i've learnt a little bit about over the last few years and you don't need to be a genius by any means to become an electrician but after many many hours of studying it i still do not have anything approaching expertise.

nb he says political topics but a) politics are informed by real world expertise (how can you critique OSHA or the EPA if you know nothing about the fields they're designed to regulate) and b) i know he has shared similar sentiments about all areas of human knowledge.

a couple weeks ago I wrote a blog post suggesting that Adams' affinity for Trump was due to him seeing so much of himself there, claiming repeatedly that if you master hypnosis and persuasion you can achieve anything you want to in life. so Trump winning the presidency would effective vindicate everything he's said on the topic over the last two decades and I would wager that he's got a book on it ready to go. seeing Adams completely melt down amidst the criticism he's received for some of the above tweets solidifies this even further. they are essentially the same person.

Trump has better penmanship.

If only Trump acquired some neurological ailment that rendered him unable to speak... (which his staff is probably praying for)

like one hour? there are certain trades (refrigeration, electrical, heavy equipment operation) that i've learnt a little bit about over the last few years and you don't need to be a genius by any means to become an electrician but after many many hours of studying it i still do not have anything approaching expertise.

Seriously. I spent an hour watching youtube videos just to figure out how to turn off one valve to stop a leak in my house. I'm not a fucking plumber now.

well he clarified this in a blog post, the idea being that the President basically just defers every decision to his/her team of experts which is uh probably not how things actually work

already he's starting to flip on his prediction, arguing that "Clinton's side is winning the persuasion war by painting Trump as mentally unfit"...isn't it the things he says and does that are actually doing that? Clinton's stayed pretty silent after the convention.

https://theringer.com/scott-adams-interview-dilbert-donald-trump-3064e6996421

If you were to name some famous people who’re the best at writing short sentences of humor, I’d be on the short list. Top 100, I think. It’s what I do for a living. So to me it’s always hilarious that people pick a fight with me in public, in a realm in which I’m overarmed and they’re underarmed.

covering Trump this much is doing strange things to his brain

same tbh

i mean this part: covering Trump this much is doing strange things to his brain i am not agreeing w/Scott Adams lol

need to know if scott adams considers himself amongst the top 100 humorists of all time or just of our moment

The Tenth Annual Award for Famous People Who're the Best at Writing Short Sentences of Humor goes to the following 100 famous people...

He's really hedging on his supposed humor cred there.

I feel like I should give him credit for admitting that he a shitty though wildly successful cartoonist. But eh

that kristol burn tho

I’m overarmed and they’re underarmed.

http://www.doctorseanrice.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/08/excessive-underarm-sweating-www.newbeaty.com_.jpg?

The “learning any topic in one hour” tweet was meant to confuse dumb people so they would talk about it. [Laughs.] It was the purpose. If they got into a conversation about how hard it was to learn the job of president, then my message got through.

a masterful trap

Learn the secrets of 10th dimensional mind chess from the creator of Dogbert.

Dilbert is meant to confuse dumb people into thinking that Scott Adams is a shitty cartoonist.

I'm just wondering what the endgame is for all this - does he have a book in the can in case Trump wins? His record this election has actually been pretty poor - outside of "Trump will win the nomination" he's been off about pretty much everything. Not that it's stopped him this far.

endgame is him dying rich and bitter

why would he be bitter?
he's just trolling for attention and it's working

bitter because a life wasted spouting false platitudes, celebrating Mammon and drawing glorified stick figures

Dilbert, Dogbert, Catbert... how can I ever forget them...

https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/764196587228712960

now in full-on "the polls are skewed" mode

"That was joeks, U R Dumm" - sounds like he's angling for a cabinet position?

I'll be interested to see what kind of career the master manipulator whips up once he goes a little too ham on one of his fringe obsessions and starts getting dropped by newspapers.

he's not being subtle about his motivations to start a new career, so i'm betting this is already happening. well, that and the death of Print Media

now straight up admitting that Trump isn't trying to win...but he totally could if he wanted to

http://www.breitbart.com/big-government/2016/08/15/dilberts-scott-adams-breitbart-trump-not-trying-win-moment/

“The thing he got attacked for is something that — I have to swear to make this point — there isn’t one fucking person in the world who disagreed with him. Not one fucking person disagreed with what he clearly said, which is, ‘Why isn’t she talking?’ Because there’s nobody in the United States that I’ve ever met who doesn’t believe that Islam has some questions to answer about gender.”

That moment, he said, removed “any pretense the media had”

Wow

“The election has come down to nothing but persuasion,” Adams said, referring to the art of using words to change people’s behavior —

whew was worried I was gonna have to look up "persuasion" on conservapedia

this unidentified "godzilla" of persuasion he keeps (here and in several blog entries) talking about having joined the clinton team, rescuing her from her own haplessness as she entered the general--

“Clinton stopped talking about her boring policies, and details, and her experience, and she went to pure persuasion. She went to the bigger scare.

“The reason that Trump had done so well is he used fear as his main persuasion point. ‘Hey, immigration will bring the terrorists in, ISIS is controlling the world, the economy is falling apart.’ Those are big fears. And that really helped. Because fear’s a good persuasion. And that was more effective than what Clinton had, which was, ‘I’m experienced, steady hand, same as before, blah blah.’ At a time when people wanted change, those are the very worst messages: ‘I’ll give you more of the same.'”

But then, he said, Clinton changed her approach — possibly because she hired a persuasion expert, whom he calls “Godzilla.”

...

“So the Clinton persuasion game went from non-existent, which I reported on for months, to solid-gold, weapons-grade, almost instantly, as soon as Bernie Sanders dropped out.”

the man's never seen a pivot before and the only explanation he can think of for hillary's performing one is the shadowy presence of a skyscraper-sized penis

which I reported on for months

UPDATE: Clinton still not using persuasion. Watch this space in the PM for news.

the "I reported on for months" part i believe

If you are an American voter, in all likelihood you are deeply hypnotized already and don’t know it. I mean that literally. At this point, nearly every voter is in a deep hallucination. I could give you lots of reasons why I know that, but you wouldn’t believe any of them because cognitive dissonance won’t let my words penetrate your bubble of non-reality.

it's like being in the cave staring at the wall and there's a guy lying facedown on the floor who will not stop shouting about how he's given up trying to get anyone to join him outside

it makes me so angry that this guy is such a moron. idk why maybe bc i liked dilbert as a child and some lingering affection makes it feel like a betrayal. or maybe it's just his incredibly smug way of conveying idiotic sentiment as though it represents the pinnacle of human thought. the mismatch between the quality of his thinking and his self-regard is blanche duboisesque in its self-delusion.

For the most part I think the infuriating thing is his constant need to be right about everything, he gets off on taking the dumbest and most indefensible positions and accusing anyone who disagrees with him of being brainwashed or a "science denier" because his argument contained something like "studies show that men get angry if they don't have sex". His entire worldview is literally "I'm smart and everyone else is dumb", and his argument for Trump is basically "this guy is as smart as I am!" He blatantly plays both sides of the fence as often as he can and acts as though nobody else sees through it. For example this idiotic "I endorsed Hillary Clinton for my personal safety" garbage that he feels the need to tack onto every article and interview he does as though it's some stroke of genius. If Trump is "a poor man's idea of what a rich man is like", then Adams is a moron's idea of what a smart person sounds like.

specifically, scott adams'

otm. i really liked dilbert too when i was a kid mordy -- in retrospect, and even at the time, kinda weird, altho not rly cuz the strip's always had way more going for it as absurdity than as satire (btw i laughed at dilbert just yesterday, the sunday strip w wally's "2%" sophistry :/) -- but even then his prose writing, most notably the very weird artifact "god's debris" (but also "the dilbert principle" etc) seemed full of dull contempt. i quoted it years upthread (in a pre-trump idyll) but there's a sentence in god's debris that goes "when an idiot and a genius disagree, generally the idiot will think the genius is wrong" and i without exaggeration remember the moment i read this, the room i was sitting in, etc., because it was one of the first times i got the real sense that sometimes the words in a book told you more about the person writing them than about anything else.

was thinking the other day about the B-grade newspaper strips i devoured and bought collections of pre-high-school and felt a warm sense of almost-certainty that bill amend, whom i haven't checked in on in over a decade, did not turn out a trumpist.

has Jim Davis made public his views on Trump? I don't think that I could take Davis being a Trump booster.

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/128474925371/how-to-spot-a-wizard

Here's an even more blatant example, he's so obviously writing about himself

Dilbert was huge for me when I was a kid too...I spent a lot of my paper route money on his books. And the strip is still pretty funny, at least for a newspaper comic. But yeah the books were so strange sometimes. I remember the "aspiration" chapter in The Dilbert Future really doing my head in because I could not tell if he was trolling or if he honestly believed in what was just about the strangest pseudo-science I had ever heard in my life. I mean he wrote like a hundred pages on how dumb people will believe anything, then he launches into this. What really turned me off him was this story he told about being on a plane sitting next to two people reading The Dilbert Principle who were convulsing in laughter, unaware that they were sitting next to the author - I remember getting this sinking feeling because I wanted to believe it but it just sounded so made up.

The wizards, in this context, have learned the rules of hypnosis and persuasion.

my friends and i were obsessed w/ hypnosis and persuasion in 9th grade. we read books on the topic and tried to hypnotize one other and then grew out of it within the year alongside our star wars rpg campaign and trying to summon dybuks in benji's basement with lit candles. i'm not entirely hostile to the idea that there are actors who exert a higher level of influence on society (thru money, of course, but 'thought leaders' too even tho gag that idiom but like there are ppl who i think have a larger memetic share culturally than the rest of us - sure) but it's so childish to think that what is happening is adult men and women are using secret arts of persuasion to hypnotize ppl into carrying out their will. it is literally the thinking of the 9th grader.

why can't we have the universe where scott adams just becomes an obsessive kanye fan

(don't answer that)

So you look at Dilbert, for example. You’ll notice that — well, you wouldn’t notice until I told you — you’ll notice that I’m using a hypnosis-inspired technique. Which is, Dilbert doesn’t have a last name. His first name is one you’ve almost never heard. Very few people have that. He doesn’t live in any town that’s specified. The company name is never mentioned, it’s a workplace. You don’t know how old he is. You don’t know his boss’s first or last name, or any of that. And that’s a hypnosis technique, where you stay general, and you let people fill in what they want to fill in. And I did that so people would say, “Hey, that’s my job.” Because I haven’t given them reasons to exclude it.

I love how he talks about this incredibly common trope as though he is the first guy to come up with it. Same as how he's going on all these TV shows to talk about how Trump is using these masterful persuasion techniques, yet all Scott's really doing is explaining what confirmation bias is and suggesting that maybe, just maybe...he's saying outrageous things to get media coverage. Like...thanks dude, I think we all figured that out already. This isn't 4-D Chess, it's Marketing 101.

Dilbert can be kind of funny in its use of comic strip shorthand to document absurdity. Unfortunately, that's not Scott Adams using skills as a cartoonist in creating dialogue. That's his actual total world view, which is not reducible to short sentences in cartoon panels, but actually is short sentences in cartoon panels. It's why his weird rant actually looked like a legit Dilbert strip when inserted as dialogue.

MRA Dilbert funnier than Dilbert ever was

I love how he talks about this incredibly common trope as though he is the first guy to come up with it. Same as how he's going on all these TV shows to talk about how Trump is using these masterful persuasion techniques, yet all Scott's really doing is explaining what confirmation bias is and suggesting that maybe, just maybe...he's saying outrageous things to get media coverage. Like...thanks dude, I think we all figured that out already. This isn't 4-D Chess, it's Marketing 101.

― frogbs, Tuesday, August 16, 2016 8:55 AM (29 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

I was typing my own response to that dumb Adams quote but it was pretty much just this, so frogbs otm (and also otm about Adams as moron's idea of what a smart person sounds like). This fucking guy.

xxp Yeah it's pretty clear that Dilbert is the guy he used to be and Dogbert is the person he sees himself as now. All of Dilbert's girlfriends are Scott Adams' view of how women really are - vapid and one-dimensional, they break up with him because he's too smart, too logical, too willing to "tell it like it is". Even the whole "what if the smartest man in the universe was a garbageman?" thing is clearly his own personal fantasy, just replace garbageman with "newspaper cartoonist".

harsh noise wally a much better comic

http://pied.nu/banned/the_Dilbert_Hole/tn/03.gif.html

Also he's got to be the only cartoonist on the planet who wears his inability to draw like a fucking badge of honor, as though learning how to draw would shatter this whole illusion of Scott Adams as guy who succeeded in a field he shouldn't have due to being so damn brilliant. Even the XKCD guy cares about visual presentation. With Adams it's all about the subtext of "can you believe how much money I made from this?"

still guiltily quote the dilbert hole with friends. there was a period of time when we realized it was misogynistic, homophobic trash, but these days it's still less so than scott adams

"i'm spurtin here!" is more classic than any one line in dilbert

btw I sincerely believe that this whole thing is just a desperate ploy to be known as something other than The Dilbert Guy. he used to write on a bunch of different topics (always in the form "what if X was actually Y? just asking questions"), now it's all Trump all the time

maybe you missed the 90s when office people and youth who found the comic strips entertaining were tricked into buying "funny" books of scott adams platitudes

tbf "the dilbert principle" holds up about as well as anything malcolm gladwell has published

yeah. I had 3 or 4 of those books and I remember them well...but they were basically Dilbert books with more words in them. I mean they even had like 100 strips apiece throughout.

Adams is like the embodiment of the 'better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt' thing. People would likely hold him in higher esteem if his public persona was more like Watterson's. I certainly never thought he was stupid until I became aware of his voice beyond the strip.

I also liked Dilbert a lot as a kid, and actually spent a lot of time drawing my own Dilbert comic strips. (I think one of the reasons I like it was because as a child who loved making comic strips but didn't have much artistic talent it was encouraging that Scott Adams was a worse draughtsman than I was) (though I think the visual style works in the context of the strip, and it's not like Dilbert would be any funnier if it looked like Little Nemo in Slumberland or whatever)

http://assets.amuniversal.com/c40ba290a0a4012f2fe600163e41dd5b

I distinctly remember reading this strip when I was about 12: I found the "pompous airbag" uncomfortably familiar and felt somewhat chastened, at that age I probably did unreflectively consider myself more intelligent than my peers on account of my ability to reel of facts/names/dates that they mostly couldn't, even though I didn't have any kind of deep understanding. In retrospect though it seems like some proto-Trumpian contempt for learning and expertise - if you are an ubermensch who can master any subject with three hours cramming then so-called experts *are* just ostentatious windbags, I guess.

I still think that "you combine arrogance with trivia and try to pass it off as intelligence" is a fairly pithy skewering of a certain type of awful, overbearing person who is not as smart as they think they are, it's just that Adams is also a (different) type of awful, overbearing person who is not as smart as they think they are. Sad!

memory is for sure an element of intelligence but i agree that just having an impressive memory and not having a quick grasp of complex topics or the ability to think novelly makes that particular skill somewhat superficial. but still like if you've ever seen prodigious feats of memory* i think you'd have to be pretty arrogant yourself to discount it entirely. * there's something in the orthodox yeshiva world called the pin test. that's when you take a pin and stick it through a volume of talmud and then recite from memory every word, page by page, that the pin pierced. i've only seen this done once in my life but it's extremely impressive imho.

in adams defense he's never tried to trick anyone into thinking he was less smug or awful than his comic voice, or stuck a pin through his books.

i'm not sure that constitutes a defense

defense insofar that anyone feels betrayed for liking his comics

Ratbert: I'm debating on the internet! Ha ha! I'm winning every argument by saying the same thing!
Dilbert: What's that?
Ratbert: "How would you like it if Hitler killed you?"

biggest revelation of this thread for me is that dilbert wears different clothes now

Adams is like the embodiment of the 'better to remain silent and be thought a fool than to speak and to remove all doubt' thing. People would likely hold him in higher esteem if his public persona was more like Watterson's. I certainly never thought he was stupid until I became aware of his voice beyond the strip.

Exactly - it's so strange because he turns out to be exactly the kind of person that Dilbert seems to regularly mock. I mean part of me thinks this is all some dumb Nathan Fielder-type publicity stunt but then I remember that this is the same guy who created his own sockpuppet to defend himself against people who called him out on his MRA bullshit.

lol the metafilter incident

You're talking about Scott Adams. He's not talking about you. Advantage: Adams.

bwahahaha

dilbert/catbert is just as jerky as adams though?

another fun thing, if you look at the negative reviews of his latest book, he basically comments on all of them some variation of "you read it wrong". at least he's doing it under his own name.

http://www.achewood.com/index.php?date=07312008

Later on, horse dogg maniac

the disses were not the best when Ray went at Dilbert, but they were accurate

his runs at Cathy and Garfield were classic

omg i forgot about the last panel of the cathy one

what do you think the odds are of this guy posting an angry article about Gawker being bought in the next couple days

Scott Adams ‏@ScottAdamsSays 1h1 hour ago
#Univision disgraces its employees and shareholders by buying #Gawker. Worst CEO decision of the past 100 years.

the guy really loves the number 100

can't believe it's been 5 years since this masterpiece of a blogpost

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/102881545031/pegs-and-holes

wow, that's something alright

how can someone this stupid have convinced themselves that they're a deep thinker?

I also asked the Swiss man what kind of problems they have in Switzerland. He laughed again. The answer is “none.” Literally.

Good economy.

Plenty of jobs.

No racial strife.

Low crime rate.

Highest standard of living.

No real pollution.

No litter.

No homeless that I could see.

He also told me that it is illegal to build a mosque in Switzerland because they don’t want to change their national character, which is 95% Christian he estimated.

[Correction: Switzerland only bans minarets, presumably for architectural reasons. Mosques are allowed.]

He said (and I did not fact-check) that the Swiss allow no immigration at all unless the person has special skills or marries a citizen.

And the gun ownership in Switzerland is 100% for adult males. That’s their militia. Yet crime is low.

[Correction: The government issues guns to males between the age of 18-34. Ammo is strictly controlled.]

Make of that what you will. It’s simplistic to think that a total ban on immigration plus a high level of male gun-ownership helps Switzerland have no real problems. But you can’t rule it out, either.

Trump is trying to make America a bit more like Switzerland. Clinton is trying to make America less like Switzerland. Spend a day in Switzerland and tell me who has the better plan. This country is amazing.

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/151599421561/quick-debate-reactions-from-switzerland

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i2XTuc6i1Uo

Clinton’s body language was defensive. Trump is physically larger and prowled the stage. He won the optics.

well this would be the moment i finally passed into guilt at paying attention to this guy for lols, feel free to call it late

He seems exceptionally unintelligent but really he's just emblematic of his demographic - this is how [apparently, if the polls are to be trusted] most white men think. Trump was stalking her like a giant gorilla - he won on the optics of looking like he could murder her and feast on her bones which is #1 consideration for American voting public.

He can't even prowl well! He humped a chair and looked like Peter Boyle's idiot brother.

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/151288850856/presidential-temperament

I’ll wrap this up by summarizing the alleged risks of each candidate so you can see how they compare on the “scariness” dimension.

Alleged Clinton Risks

Dementia risk (because of age)
Low energy (maybe can’t perform the job)
Temperament (alleged to yell and throw things)
Might allow more terrorists into country via immigration
Influenced by lobbyists to start wars (Eisenhower warned of this)
Drinks alcohol (We don’t know how much or how often)
General brain health is questionable lately
Adversaries won’t know who she serves or how she will react.
Alleged Trump Risks

Dementia risk (because of age)
Trump is “literally Hitler” (This risk is cognitive dissonance, not real)
Con man (Sure, but we’ll be watching him closely)
Temperament (responds proportionately every time)
Race riots (Clinton’s side created this risk by framing Trump as a racist)
Inexperience (But Trump routinely succeeds where he has no experience)
If you think Trump is risky because of his “temperament” or because he is “literally Hitler” you are experiencing cognitive dissonance caused by Clinton’s persuasion game. I mean that literally. And remember that I’m a trained hypnotist. That doesn’t mean I’m always right, but it does mean I’m trained to spot cognitive dissonance and you probably aren’t.

I don’t think any of us is smart enough to evaluate the relative risk of either candidate. And that’s my point. If you think Trump is the dangerous one, that isn’t supported by his history, his patterns, or the facts. It is literally an illusion created by his opponents.

"None of us is smart enough - and that's my point - but Trump is the smart choice."

I need to take hypnotism training so I can become a better observer of American politics.

that's the dumbest fuckin thing i've read in quite a while

If you think Trump is risky because of his “temperament” or because he is “literally Hitler” you are experiencing cognitive dissonance caused by Clinton’s persuasion game. I mean that literally. And remember that I’m a trained hypnotist. That doesn’t mean I’m always right, but it does mean I’m trained to spot cognitive dissonance and you probably aren’t.

This... is not what cognitive dissonance means. Unless hypnotists use it differently to everyone else? Is that a thing? Hypnosis lingo? Or... wait, is he hypnotising me right now?

"And remember that I'm a trained hypnotist" is spectacular

if he's using hypnosis to trick us into believing he is stupid and/or insane, it's working

what if dogbert is the embodiment of a cocaine demon

good thing you didn't read his article about the Trump tape, it's a doozy:

8. If the LGBTQ community wants to be a bit more inclusive, I don’t see why “polyamorous alpha male serial kisser” can’t be on the list. If you want to label Trump’s sexual behavior “abnormal” you’re on shaky ground.

the worst part about power and relating to other people is that those with it, or are perceived to have it, can do things to those without it without fear of repercussion. there's no doubt that women shut up when a truly disgusting human groped, kissed, and commented on them as if they were property because they could lose what little they did have

on the other hand, a great thing is that creating Dilbert confers very little power on a human being. even if money imparts some influence, it's somewhat balanced by the fact this guy's claim to fame is Dilbert

and being a trained hypnotist

My favourite thing about his writing is the equivatory little disclaimers he puts everywhere:

"I don’t think any of us is smart enough to evaluate the relative risk of either candidate..."
"That doesn’t mean I’m always right, but..."
"It’s simplistic to think that a total ban on immigration plus a high level of male gun-ownership helps Switzerland have no real problems. But..."
"foes that make me directly responsible for the coming economic collapse in Europe? Well, probably yes, and probably no..>"

And his use of the word literally.

"That creates millions of young male zombies willing to die for a chance to get laid in heaven. Literally."
"I mean that literally. And remember that I’m a trained hypnotist. "
"In my view – and I mean this literally, not satirically – marriage is the biggest contributor to mental health problems"

In any case it's completely untrue that Switzerland has a "total ban on immigration", there are large communities of people in Switzerland from e.g. Portugal and the various successor nations of the Former Yugoslavia.

remember that i'm a trained hypnotist

https://i.ytimg.com/vi/m1hmgZFY9w8/maxresdefault.jpg

good research work, Chuck

A work lunchtime well spent, ugh.

My favourite thing about his writing is the equivatory little disclaimers he puts everywhere:

yeah I absolutely hate this about him, he effectively says "you're an idiot if you believe me" and "you're an idiot if you disagree with this" at the same time

lately ppl have been asking him on Twitter if his "98% chance Trump wins" still stands and he replies "sure, but you have to figure out if that was a prediction I was serious about" and it's just like...fuck off, old man

explains why he's divorced

"What do you want for dinner?"
"I'd love pizza!"
*half an hour later*
"This pizza is horrible!"
"You said you wanted pizza!"
"Yeah, but is that what I meant, or what I wanted you to think?"

Somewhere Dave Sim seethes -- "Why am I broke and he's a millionaire? We're saying the same things!"

hey man Dave is kind of crazy but he's a much better writer of rants

also sim's work is significantly better looker and more interesting than anything adams has ever done

idk if there's something about being a cartoonist/writer that lends to really evaluating interpersonal relationships post-breakup or divorce but it's definitely a common theme. maybe lots of people have these thoughts and just lack the creative outlet

now I'm imagining Dilbert strips with Gerhard backgrounds and giggling

http://i.imgur.com/GvzKNdb.png

you're just looking for my praise now!

idk if there's something about being a cartoonist/writer that lends to really evaluating interpersonal relationships post-breakup or divorce but it's definitely a common theme. maybe lots of people have these thoughts and just lack the creative outlet

I suspect for people who have become accustomed to a creative schedule that demands fairly constant output, it's really difficult to separate any personal obsessions from sucking the work into their orbit, and maybe at a certain point that self awareness that serves as a barrier starts to crack, and then whoop bop a loo bop the snake eats itself.

And of course for a lot of creative people a failed relationship or other really upsetting events can be fuel for genuinely valuable insights and expression that don't come across like a dog preaching that his own butthole contains the secrets of existence, but if your thing is pencil drawings of stubby dudes being sarcastic about society, the odds maybe aren't great

Didn't he have some weird stroke or aphasia that made him unable to talk?
Any speculation that his jerk logorrhea is an untreated medical symptom?

I think he's always been this way; you can definitely see the signs in his early writing, which at least held it together by attempting to be funny most of the time.

To be honest I don't think he puts much thought into Dilbert anymore, and probably hasn't for what, 15 years? I think he admitted he crowdsources most of the jokes and does it solely for the money now; he cares way more about his books/blog/Twitter account. I think he's all in on Trump now because a Trump victory would make Adams look like some kind of sage, and he might feel he can parlay that into a nice book deal and a second career as a pundit or political advisor. I think he's convinced himself that he's way too smart to just go down in history as "the Dilbert guy" and is looking for a way out.

I guess he doesn't have the chops to go the Jim Davis route and open a Dilbert fine art gallery

Why doesn't he hypnotise himself to be a better artist?

cuz he's proud of being a terrible artist - he loves to boast that he's made millions and millions as a cartoonist despite sucking at it, therefore he must be some sort of singular genius

This thread made me think of Garfield last night - so I started reading it and found out that Jon is now dating Liz, and Liz now has ginormous, poorly-drawn lips.

https://thecomicninja.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/garfield-lost-my-shoes.gif

I wonder what poor sucker is actually writing/drawing it

Davis consults heavily with the head writer, it's been drawn by Paws staff since about 1979

"plenty of foot paint" is actually a pretty good/weird line

I know, sic! Has anyone ever written about Paws, Inc. and who actually works on staff? It'd be an interesting subject for a profile/interview, at least to me.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZC0Mi5jXg88

Yeah, there was a huge RC Harvey profile revised on the Journal a few years ago. A guy called Brett Koth is the co-writer, he and Davis each do layouts as part of the writing, and Gary Barker has been the penciller for decades.

(Koth was hired away from Marvel animation to draw US Acres, ended up writing it too, and moved to writing Garfield when it was axed. Barker also draws a Boom! Garfield comic that Mark Evanier writes. Evanier has also written and voice directed pretty much every Garfield TV cartoon since 1988. I guess Davis sticks with people as long as they want to stick with him.)

that garfield video is totally what I expected, and yet somehow edifying/clarifying. love the moment when jim davis adds his signature to three other people's work, and how they almost go out of their way to not give you a close-up of any kind of the 'thumbnail sketch' he supposedly started things off with.

omg @ Dilbert/Cerebus mashup

I guess Davis sticks with people

ha, new penciller/letterer was the letterer for over a decade before apparently levelling up

classic small office problems, no career path when there's only a few of you

I'll have to track down that Harvey profile

Body oils?

i like that the still image on that youtube of "How Garfield is Drawn" is a guy standing over what looks like a xerox machine

Jesus Christ, he is a bitter old man:

Anyway, getting to the point of this post, if Clinton wins, it will be because women voted for her in landslide proportions while men (on average) preferred Trump. And that means two things of historic importance.

1. We will elect the first woman to be President of the United States. That’s good for everyone.

and…

2. Everything that goes wrong with the country from this point forward is women’s fault.

I feel some relief about that. The next four years are likely to be some of the worst in our country’s history. The Republican establishment will make sure of that because a failed America is in their best interest in the short run. Four years from now they want to offer their chosen savior (Paul Ryan). Trump would have a good chance of bullying the Republican establishment as he has done so far. Clinton, not so much. She’ll be buried in scandals, both real and imagined.

Men had a good run. We invented almost everything, and that’s cool. But we also started all of the wars and committed most of the crimes. It’s a mixed record to be sure. Now it’s time for something different, apparently.

Hillary Clinton is all yours, ladies. She and her alleged rapist husband are your brand now. Wear them well.

leaving aside the many breathtakingly wrongheaded statements in those few paragraphs for now, if paul ryan is the best the gop have to offer in 2020 then they're super-double-fucked

Thanks, women!

He just fails on so many levels - logic, prognostication, analysis, his pathological misunderstanding of how gender works - no wonder he's a Trump fan.

he did okay when his predictions were purposely vague and outlandish like "evolution will be disproven in the next century"

problem is now he's actually predicting specific things which are easily disprovable - in fact he's getting things so blatantly, hilariously wrong that I can't imagine he'll have any reputation left when it's all over.

did he really predict evolution will be disproven? is he a christian nut too??

no, he just stated it "doesn't pass the sniff test" or whatever

it's a dumb prediction, he's just casting it out there so he can look like a genius in case any big discoveries are made

Thanks, women!

"ladies" rather

I think I've said it before but "evolution will be disproven" is such a vague assertion depending on how you define evolution that there are a half dozen studies you could point to right now and say, "hah! see, evolution is wrong!"

but nothing that disproves the fundamental idea that species have changed over time

well yeah but the idea has never been to contribute to critical thought, it's been to come off like a genius who has a better intuition about the nature of life and the universe than everyone else

uh yeah but that wasn't what he really meant by evolution xp

what did he mean? if you say you're going to disprove evolution it's not sufficient to disprove some minor feature.

I think you're not familiar with people who make arguments like this. You make some assertion, and whether it's really vague or not, you later claim something proves you right. If someone says "yeah, but you said evolution, not macroevolution of humans" and then they just act like you're an idiot for thinking they meant all evolution.

yeah, you're probably right. my entire exposure to evolution denial is fundamentalist religious denial which is full scale denial (since humans were created from dust in the garden of eden - they didn't come from monkeys).

How did Adams get to be the kind of person people talk about, exactly? I mean, beyond the fact that it's fun talking about idiots.

he was able to glom himself onto the loose twitter/internet coalition of aggrieved fake-deep men in an election season

he was one of the first people to offer an explanation of why so many people were voting Trump that wasn't "racism" and I think a lot of media outlets liked that

of course his explanation was "hypnotism"

a person who recognizes idiocy, and having monetized it, is now committed to its perfection and continuation.

@ScottAdamsSays
Is Twitter shadowbanning me? If so, I see it as treason: bit.ly/2eiLsfF #Trump #Clinton

didn't click through but i'm sure it's v. convincing

can y'all PLEASE tell this guy you aren't seeing his tweets so we can watch him attempt to take down Twitter

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CvEgavlXYAA9zsN.jpg:small

trolling at this point

lol

http://cdn0.dailydot.com/cache/31/ed/31ed2d07932675f493426090bc3d6918.jpg

going hard in the airplane lane

in five seconds an alpha is about to speak

Echidne thinks he might be depressed:

http://echidneofthesnakes.blogspot.com/2016/10/where-echidne-dons-her-pseudo.html

I think the consensus here is that's a bit generous

possibly nsfw: https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/788806380840886272

oh cool scott adams is weighing in on climate change! http://blog.dilbert.com/post/154679929646/watching-the-climate-science-bubbles-from-the

Given the wildly different assessments of climate change risks within the non-scientist community, perhaps we need some sort of insurance/betting market. That would allow the climate science alarmists to buy “insurance” from the climate science skeptics. That way if the climate goes bad at least the alarmists will have extra cash to build their underground homes. And that cash will come out of the pockets of the science-deniers. Sweet!

i would suggest consulting someone other than the non-scientist community but scott adams already hypnotized me into thinking that the ideal solution to rising sea levels would be an underground home. that's what i get for being a climate science alarmist i guess.

My bottom-line belief about climate science is that non-scientists such as myself have no reliable way to evaluate any of this stuff. Our brains and experience are not up to the task. When I apply my tiny brain to sniffing out the truth about climate science I see rock-solid arguments on both sides of the debate.

Trained scientists might be able to sort out the truth from the B.S. in climate change science, although I’m skeptical about that too. But non-scientists have no chance whatsoever to discern which side is right. I consider myself to be bright and well-educated, and from my perspective both sides of the debate are 100% persuasive if you look at them in isolation. And apparently that’s what most citizens do.

So, he doesn't believe in deference to scientific authority? I wonder what other scientific results he's agnostic about because he isn't an expert in those fields.

Light bulbs: evidence of "electricity," or the final proof of our invisible pixie friends and their commitment to well-lit human interiors? I see rock-solid arguments on both sides of the debate.

And I think I spotted a new cognitive phenomenon that might not have a name.* I’ll call it cognitive blindness, defined as the inability to see the strong form of the other side of a debate.

I think this gets to the bottom of it - dude thinks he's the be-all-end-all of intellectual discussion, and simply doesn't read anything

in case you didn't think his take on climate change could get any dumber

Remind your scientist that as far as you know there has never been a multi-year, multi-variable, complicated model of any type that predicted anything with useful accuracy. Case in point: The experts and their models said Trump had no realistic chance of winning.

Your scientist will fight like a cornered animal to conflate the credibility of the measurements and the basic science of CO2 with the credibility of the projection models. Don’t let that happen. Make your scientist tell you that complicated multi-variable projections models that span years are credible. Or not.

one of the dumbest motherfuckers around

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/156591306416/the-persuasion-filter-looks-at-torture-does-it

lol @ this guy defining both "the persuasion filter" and "the Hitler filter" THEY'RE THE SAME THING YOU IDIOT (okay that's from a different post but still)

But if President Trump – The Master Persuader – tells you someone else’s facts are bullshit, you can usually take that to the bank. The man knows bullshit when he sees it. And with his skillset he can also smell it coming from miles away.

*head explodes into a thousand pieces*

also lol at the idea that people literally prepared to blow themselves up for a holy war would crack after 5 seconds of torture

he is a bullshitter that means you can trust him

I kind of love that the guy who does dilbert is obsessed with corny bunk like NLP and spends his days wanking over a copy of the game and writing smug crackpot blog posts about hypnosis. Because how could he not be?

really makes u think (that u are a chicken)

this is astonishing

http://blog.dilbert.com/post/158812654486/trump-and-healthcare

With the failure of the Ryan healthcare bill, the illusion of Trump-is-Hitler has been fully replaced with Trump-is-incompetent meme. Look for the new meme to dominate the news, probably through the summer. By year end, you will see a second turn, from incompetent to “Competent, but we don’t like it.”

I have been predicting this story arc for some time now. So far, we’re ahead of schedule.

In the 2D world, where everything is just the way it looks, and people are rational, Trump and Ryan failed to improve healthcare. But in the 3D world of persuasion, Trump just had one of the best days any president ever had: He got promoted from Hitler to incompetent.

let me remind you that this line of argument comes from one of Trump's most diehard supporters

Adams has the constant air of a chump trying desperately to convince you that everything that has happened is exactly as they expected it would be.

does the theory explain why Trump didn't just make people just think he was competent in the first place, rather than getting there via Hitler and incompetent?

true hypnotists have long known that Hitler and Incompetent are the essential first two steps to total control. amateurs often miss that which is why they are not president. scott adams could be president too, if he wanted to.

oh man how did no one link the article about him where a vague comment referenced his ex-wife still being employed as his assistant? maybe i'll find it later

https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-03-22/how-dilbert-s-scott-adams-got-hypnotized-by-trump

I read it and thought it presented him in a pretty good light. Adams himself of course proceeded to whine endlessly about it, even though he said he knew from the beginning that it would be a "hit piece".

He made the case that even the most erratic Trump moments were tactically brilliant—and that this was an insight that he alone could see. “My predictions are based on my unique view into Trump’s toolbox of persuasion,” Adams wrote at the outset, reminding readers that he was a certified hypnotist. “I believe those tools are invisible to almost everyone but trained hypnotists and people that study the science of persuasion.”

ok so, about this. have any other 'certified hypnotists' or 'people that study the science of persuasion' came out of the woodwork to say the same? seems like it's a totally unique view because it's total bullshit.

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net/aliens/images/0/0b/Hypnotoad.gif/revision/latest?cb=20081007151100

How is this dude not already a key player in the administration?

When Trump insulted Carly Fiorina—saying “Look at that face!”—Adams declared it a “linguistic kill shot” that would end her bid. “She does have what I call the angry wife face when she talks politics,” he wrote. “Guys, you know that face.” When Trump referred to Mexican immigrants as “rapists,” Adams said he obviously hadn’t meant all Mexican immigrants, only some—and that “intentional exaggeration is a … standard method of persuasion.” When Trump called for a ban on Muslim immigrants, Adams wrote: “In the 3D world of emotion, where Trump exclusively plays, he has set the world up for the most clever persuasion you will ever see.” He dubbed Trump’s technique “pacing and leading”: He was getting the attention of anti-immigration crusaders, before scaling back to a more moderate stance. When Trump asserted that things were worse for African-Americans in 2016 than at any time in history—prompting many to remind Trump about slavery—Adams wrote, “Facts don’t matter. Every trained persuader knows that.”

Only trained hypnotists are smart enough to recognize these brilliant methods of persuasion: hate speech and lies.

Adams’s house is a shrine to the cartoon character that made him rich. One section, visible from the pool area outside, clearly resembles Dilbert’s head, with two oval windows for eyes, connected by a thin line that suggests spectacles. “They look out from the cat’s bathroom upstairs,” Adams told me. The structure is full of indulgent quirks. In the kitchen, Adams installed three microwaves so he “can make a lot of popcorn at once.” Nearby, he transformed a bar area (Adams doesn’t drink) into a display case for Dilbert books and paraphernalia. Other features include a 10-seat movie theater, a gym, and a room filled with beauty salon equipment, where his ex-wife (now Adams’s personal assistant) used to host spa days for friends. Off to the back is an indoor tennis court.

used to or... still does

Adams has the constant air of a chump trying desperately to convince you that everything that has happened is exactly as they expected it would be.

This is the entire lynch pin of dude's worldview; he's basically a real-life version of Pangloss from Candide.

Pangloss is my favorite beta male.

pangloss orbiter

nice throwaway on "the cat's bathroom"

yeah, that article is full of amazing deadpan observations about the patently bizarre world of scott adams, the man who has an inkling that straight-up losing the power of speech for a couple of years might have contributed to the decline of his marriage and who is currently the the paramour of an instagram bikini model

btw, has adams ever explained why the master persuader trump nevertheless has so many people fervently opposed to everything he says and does and don't seem likely to ever change their minds?

I try to ask that question and the answer I get back is usually something like "he persuaded the people he needed to in order to win the presidency". which is kinda like saying the Patriots intentionally played like shit the first three quarters of the Super Bowl so they could win it in OT.

the bit that gets me is that he's constantly tooting his horn on this: "you should listen to me because I'm the only one who got it right when everyone else got it wrong", which is like...okay, but you also kept saying "landslide" like an idiot, when in fact your guy won by a slim EC margin and had the biggest negative vote differential in history. plus your prediction changed every week as Trump continued to brilliantly shoot himself in the foot day after day. reality is a lot of people were calling a Trump victory, but they were mostly people like Bill Mitchell who I'd imagine a guy like Adams wouldn't want to associate with too much.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CxzrnQgVEAAGuBO.jpg

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/CyoHcQ-VEAAZtDn.jpg

Adams goes full Alex Jones on the tragedy in Syria:

I’m going to call bullshit on the gas attack. It’s too “on-the-nose,” as Hollywood script-writers sometimes say, meaning a little too perfect to be natural. This has the look of a manufactured event.

My guess is that President Trump knows this smells fishy, but he has to talk tough anyway. However, keep in mind that he has made a brand out of not discussing military options. He likes to keep people guessing. He reminded us of that again yesterday, in case we forgot.

'a manufactured event?' does scott adams believe poison gas attacks are usually natural occurrences? are those dead kids actually faking it? what a fucking tool

maybe he means the CIA did it

imagine being so insane that you can look at a pile of corpses and think it's 'too perfect'

the conspiracy theory du jour from idiot the_donald'ers is that assad is winning the war so he wouldn't have any reason to delegitimize his regime further by using chemical weapons now. the deep state manufactured the attack in order to force trump to attack syria and discredit his administration.

*looks at schindlers russian word primer list* "says right here it's more of that horseshitsiya!"

Dilbro's argument is even worse - hows this for an opening sentence

According to the mainstream media – that has been wrong about almost everything for a solid 18 months in a row – the Syrian government allegedly bombed its own people with a nerve agent.

always thought this dude was idiotic but the sudden turn into Infowars territory is a bit surprising

if you truly believe that trump is a genius then i guess no further logical leap is too far

http://i.imgur.com/fJQQt74.png

idgi, is he saying that neocons are the ones who orchestrated this supposed false-flag war crime in Syria? is he on some kind of Jewish conspiracy tip?

beginning to see why Adams usually doesn't usually make falsifiable predictions

its a bit.......unusual

If you've got a couple hours to kill his appearance on Sam Harris's podcast is...something. I think the idea was to find an "intellectual" Trump supporter to debate and Dilbro was the best they could do. It is horrifically cringeworthy, with Adams starting out of the gate arguing that there really is no such thing as objective reality, then proceeding to ding Harris for using analogies and making assumptions about what Trump is really thinking, even though Adams can't get through a single thought without doing either of those things. Harris does an okay job busting his balls on his idiotic nonsense but he lets so much slide, mostly because Adams won't stop interrupting him. But mostly it's interesting to hear how hard a Trump supporter has to flail when confronted with reality. Some of the things Adams is saying - like the idea that Trump is playing nice with Putin in public but actually "fucking him under the table", or that Trump is actually motivated by complete selflessness, taking shots to his image In order to do the right thing - are insane to the point where you wonder if Adams developed some sort of degenerative brain disease in the last 15 years.

knowing what I do of Sam Harris, I wouldn't even want to hear him, let alone Adams

Yea I'm not really a fan, just wanted to hear someone actually challenge the dude

afaict Sam Harris only picks arguments with people he knows he can "beat" in a debate, or in stronger confrontations, refuses to release unedited audio/video

I listened to a bit of it, but Adams is fucking boring and he was just going on and on.

Hey guys, Scott Adams has finally received his due attention by academics!

Call for Abstracts

Scott Adams and Philosophy
Edited by Dan Yim, Galen Foresman, and Robert Arp

“My hypothesis is that the political side that is out of power is the one that hallucinates the most—and needs to—in order to keep their worldview intact. For example, when President Obama was in office, I saw all kinds of hallucinations on the right about his intentions to destroy America from the inside because he ‘hates’ it. That was a mass hysteria. If President Obama wanted to destroy America, he failed miserably. We’re stronger than ever” (from “The Magical Thinking Opposition,” Scott Adams’s Blog, August 22, 2017, http://blog.dilbert.com/).

You wouldn’t expect a quotation like this to come from the likes of a guy who produced the comic strip, Dilbert, but satirists like Scott Adams are usually pretty sharp people. So sharp, in fact, that a week after the first Republican debate in August of 2015 where most everyone in America thought Trump had definitely done himself in with his Rosie O’Donnell reference in response to Megyn Kelly’s obviously loaded question about Trump’s misogynistic comments, Adams predicted in his blog: “he will be our next president” (“Clown Genius,” August 13, 2015). As the Trump campaign continued on, Adams kept pace and blogged almost daily about Trump’s ability to hypnotize and persuade the American public. In October of 2017, Adams’s book will be published: Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter. Besides the impressive array of philosophical topics exhibited in Adams’s blog posts, there are, of course, the topics that have been expressed over the 28 years or so that Dilbert has been produced. This book seeks to explore many of Adams’s philosophical thoughts, ideas, and arguments.

Any relevant topic considered, but here are some possibilities to prompt your thinking:

- Logic and the use of persuasion
- Grandiose delusions, self-deception, self-efficacy, self-serving bias, and their usage in persuasion
- A description and assessment of Adams’s persuasion filter
- Adams’s understanding of hypnosis as a persuasive tool
- How to characterize stupidity
- Adams’s assessment of the everyday person’s procedure of rational justification for belief assessment
- Whether truth is over-rated.
- Might truth be a kind a grand project of chasing after windmills?
- Fake it until you make it: adaptive self-deception.
- Socrates, self-awareness, and the Dunning–Kruger effect
- Philosophy of humor
- The epistemic value of humor
- Can humor reveal the truth about reality in ways that formal arguments cannot?
- What is the philosophical usefulness of satire?
- Dilbert, and the nature and value of corporate bodies
- On Norm Solomon’s claim, “The Dilbert phenomenon accepts—and perversely eggs on—many negative aspects of corporate existence as unchangeable facets of human nature... Dilbert speaks to some very real work experiences while simultaneously eroding inclinations to fight for better working conditions.”
- Is the Peter Principle a real principle?
- Eudaimonia and the meaningfulness (or lack thereof) in vocation.
- What role does work or vocation play in the flourishing human life?
- Normative ethical systems and workplace behavior
- Four stages of competence and ultracrepidarianism in the workplace or other areas
- Characters of Dilbert comics as tropes of different philosophical theories of human nature
- Pessimism versus optimism about the human condition
- Nietzschean perspectives on life
- Sartrean existentialist perspectives on life
- Camus’ absurdist perspectives on life
- Kierkegaardian hope in the midst of absurdity
- God’s Debris, The Religion War, God, and panpsychism in philosophy of mind
- God’s Debris, The Religion War, self-deception, delusion, and religious belief
- God’s Debris, The Religion War, and the epistemology of religious extremism
- How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, happiness, and the good life

CLASSIC

This popular culture and philosophy stuff is way off the rails.

Hannibal Lecter and Philosophy, edited by Joseph Westfall (2016)
The Ultimate Walking Dead and Philosophy edited by Wayne Yuen (2016)
The Princess Bride and Philosophy edited by Richard Greene and Rachel Robison-Greene (2015)
Louis C.K. and Philosophy edited by Mark Ralkowski (2016)
Batman, Superman, and Philosophy edited by Nicolas Michaud (2016)
Discworld and Philosophy edited by Nicolas Michaud (2016)
Orphan Black and Philosophy edited by Richard Greene and Rachel Robison-Greene (2016)
David Bowie and Philosophy edited by Theodore G. Ammon (2016)
Red Rising and Philosophy edited by Courtland Lewis and Kevin McCain (2016)
The Ultimate Game of Thrones and Philosophy edited by Eric J. Silverman and Robert Arp (2016)
Peanuts and Philosophy edited by Richard Greene and Rachel Robison-Greene (2016)
Deadpool and Philosophy edited by Nicolas Michaud and Jacob Thomas May (2016)
The X-Files and Philosophy edited by Robert Arp (2017)
Mr. Robot and Philosophy edited by Richard Greene and Rachel Robison-Greene (2017)
Hamilton and Philosophy edited by Aaron Rabinowitz and Robert Arp (2017)
The Man in the High Castle and Philosophy edited by Bruce Krajewski and Joshua Heter (2017)

Forthcoming Titles: 2017 and Beyond

Community and Philosophy (2017)
Lady Gaga and Philosophy (2017)
The Americans and Philosophy edited by Robert Arp (Fall 2017)
Jimi Hendrix and Philosophy edited by Theodore G. Ammon (Fall 2017)
Twin Peaks and Philosophy edited by Richard Greene and Rachel Robison-Greene (2018)
American Horror Story and Philosophy edited by Richard Greene and Rachel Robison-Greene (2018)
Scott Adams and Philosophy edited by Robert Arp (2018)
1984 and Philosophy edited by Ezio Di Nucci and Stefan Storrie (2018)
Iron Man versus Captain America and Philosophy edited by Nicolas Michaud and Jessica Watkins (2018)
Stephen King's Dark Tower and Philosophy edited by Nicolas Michaud and Jacob Thomas May (2018)
Amy Schumer and Philosophy edited by Charlene Elsby and Rob Luzecky (2018)
Perry Mason and Philosophy edited by Heather Rivera and Robert Arp (2019)

Iron man vs captain america AND philosophy hardly seems fair.

that's like the book publishing version of those spamferences, isn't it.

- Defending yourself online through the use of sockpuppet accounts

uh oh

I predict that kneeling teams will generally lose to standing teams. Kneeling triggers submissive body chemistry. #NFL #Kneeling

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) October 23, 2017

counterpoint: kneeling produces an active hypnotic effect, leading to confusion and sleepiness in opposing team

That didn't take long. Where are all my haters from this morning? https://t.co/mq9fDweHeV

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) October 23, 2017

starting to think Scott Adams has not yet watched the requisite one hour of football which would make him an expert on the subject

also lmao @ him making his prediction AFTER all the games had ended and still getting it wrong

he means in the long term, obviously. one day isn’t a significant statistical sample

or however you can spin it in order to make scott look right

That argument would hold some water if he wasn’t currently declaring victory by citing a Fox News article written over a month ago

see? victory!

i used to work in the same building where scott adams got all his dilbert stuff. pretty sure the dude who inspired wally (at least visually) was in a cubicle across the hall from me

on a more positive note, the harsh noise wally comic had a couple updates I missed: http://harshnoisewally.tumblr.com/

how the hell did nobody inform me about harsh noise wally until today

I blame everyone but myself

i apologize

I think I shared it here before but maybe just messaged rrrobyn lol

Has he followed it up yet, with his usual "Of course I could be wrong about this" disclaimer?

I want a white noise tie!

The unreported tragedy of 2017 is that managers will likely hire fewer women to reduce their perceived legal risk. #WeinsteinEffect

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) November 4, 2017

his ratios are depressing

#POTUSRap @ScottAdamsSays @realDonaldTrump @DonaldJTrumpJr 🤘🇺🇸💯😎🤣 pic.twitter.com/dlaCv6EQ7O

— Kathie 🇺🇸💎ツ (@MustangGirl3) January 28, 2018

remember when this dude had a somewhat functioning sense of humor

no.

lmao he's still defending the women = mentally handicapped joke and whining incessantly about being labeled and MRA and "alt-right". seems like all the dudes out there who never shut the fuck up have finally came to roost in 2018

I would have used public schools as my example. https://t.co/Ywwq9FlO6l

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) June 17, 2018

Only took a year to go from “if he exhibits any Hitler-like behavior I’ll kill him” to this

Clearly still upset about his first day in kindergarten

Members of my family literally died here! Fun jokes.

Not sure who that's directed at. Don't think anyone was making light of the holocaust.

Adams being flippant. No one here!

brain worms really seem to be kicking into overdrive lately

You took the pro-child-trafficking side over the temporary cages side. There were only two options on the table. https://t.co/53zTFaOwug

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) June 19, 2018

BREAKING: “Wouldn’t” is the new Rosie O’Donnell play. Or is it? https://t.co/w9i0n6jr2T

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) July 17, 2018

not watching this but it's pretty lol watching him have a fully fledged meltdown in the comments

are those readable somewhere?

I mean the replies in the thread, such as:

Your confusion and lack of context are noted. You probably shouldn't make comments in a public forum. It isn't your strong suit.

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) July 18, 2018

How ignorant of you. I criticize the president on healthcare, race relations, statues, immigration, and other stuff. You just lost all of your credibility.

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) July 18, 2018

Goodbye Hitler.

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) July 17, 2018

ah I clicked on the periscope embed, not the twitter embed

Scott Adams is the dril 'I'm not owned' tweet made flesh

the startup he's affiliated with is hilarious bubble bullshit

https://interface.whenhub.com/

sign me up, I'm an expert

Tomboto, What are the top five keywords that attract viewers to your platform?

amazing how Scott Adams in 2018 is currently pushing an idiotic tech startup with no clear use case while spending his spare time mounting a full-throated defense of the Pointy-Haired Boss

lmao say hi to the new chief of staff

Today I had the honor of meeting your favorite president. I already feel sorry for whoever runs against him in 2020. @POTUS @realDonaldTrump pic.twitter.com/Ln1kpX6tUn

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) August 2, 2018

Reality is wrong

Having characters like the pointy-haired boss and Topper, Adams' fawning POTUS admiration lacks so much self-awareness it's almost impressive.

just imagining Scott Adams thinking of this as the validation of his life's work and his one chance to steer American history while Trump forgets everything he told him 5 minutes afterwards

https://i.imgur.com/zYr2bOy.png

this is exactly where I figured he'd end up in 2018

Rest in peace :(

#RacistGoogle won't take down the photoshopped image of me in Nazi uniform. Why not? @sundarpichai This marks me for death. pic.twitter.com/kwUSjjpp99

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) December 19, 2018

wow marked for death. what a cool society i didn't realize we lived in where just being photoshopped w/ a swastika armband means you will soon be reaped.

it's a shame, he was a horrible cartoonist and a terrible human being.

seems miserable and completely neurotic

I know this is an unpopular opinion, but I don't think Scott Adams should be murdered, and it's a real shame that he's going to be

perhaps he can try hypnotizing his murderer into turning the gun on himself

Hey @Patreon, this guy posted racist memes of me photoshopped into a Nazi uniform. That is hate speech. Puts my life at risk. Please deplatform him immediately. https://t.co/sf78vfcYN6

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) December 20, 2018

geez Scott did you forget about the hundreds of people you called Nazis because they disagreed with you

grifters gonna grift

Dilbert guy Scott Adams is using the garlic festival shooting to direct market mass shooting survivors (at a time when public info on this was that the shooter was still at large) on his app pic.twitter.com/9EgGfSGkuz

— LVL 45 CHAOS POTUS (@thetomzone) July 29, 2019

we're reaching levels of persuasion which shouldn't even be possible

lmao

https://www.thedailybeast.com/dilbert-creator-scott-adams-tries-to-sell-interviews-with-gilroy-garlic-festival-shooting-survivors

Anyone who signed up to discuss the shooting could also have been paid in the WHEN Token, a cryptocurrency Adams has used to fund his app that is currently worth slightly more than one cent. Shortly before Adams announced WhenHub’s cryptocurrency aspect in 2017, Dilbert watchers noticed that the characters in the comic, who are typically suspicious of poorly understood business crazes like blockchain, were suddenly running straightforward explanations of blockchain in an apparent effort to drum up interest in Adams’s cryptocurrency.

It would've been interesting to see how newspapers responded in a world where a comic strip version of Cerebus had been the public forum where we watched Dave Sim's mind unravel.

he’d have jordan peterson’s career

https://static.coindesk.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/Dilbert1016.jpg

Some amazing replies from Scott fans pic.twitter.com/JvlMZhRSTk

— pixelatedboat aka “mr tweets” (@pixelatedboat) July 29, 2019

probably goes without saying but this WhenHub app is hilariously dumb, it's pretty much exactly the sort of thing that Dilbert was satirizing back in the 90's. 500 features and no clear use case, plus it uses a blockchain for some reason - this "pay to speak to an expert" thing is clearly NOT what the app was designed to do, though it's kinda hilarious that there's a dude offering to chat about football for 20 bucks an hour

I retroactively hate that this guy had a guest spot on NewsRadio.

(and don't @ me about Rogan)

What a piece of shit.

https://www.scottadamssays.com/2019/09/23/a-message-for-children-about-climate-change/

seriously laughed at this

If you are worried about rising sea levels, don’t be. The smartest and richest people in the world are still buying property on the beach. They don’t see the problem.

its really something to read through the past 1.5 decades of this thread tracking the slow reveal of Adams' right wing brainworms.

LOL in hindsight @ posts from 2011 wondering if hes serious or if hes doing some kind of kaufmanesque meta-satire of right wing idiots. Simpler times, man.

still laughing at the whenhub dot com portrait of Adams

Throughout all modern history, when we humans see a problem coming from far away, we have a 100% success rate in solving it.

I don't know if he earnestly believes any of the shit he writes but if so god damn must he have a privileged existence to believe this is even remotely true

imagine thinking in all seriousness that the richest people are the smartest people and vice versa

must be so nice to live with a worldview so simple and so fucking idiotic

well we can only go extinct once

Throughout all modern history, when we humans see a problem coming from far away, we have a 100% success rate in solving it.

what about baldness

racism?
starvation?
running out of gas?
styrofoam?
i am actually having trouble thinking of a problem that america saw coming from far away that we HAVE solved

the Dilbert TV show?

uh he saw in advance the problem of possibly not having a ready supply of fresh-popped popcorn with real butter in his own house, so he bought a second microwave oven and now he microwaves two packets of microwave popcorn at once. 100% solved

he also foresaw the problem of not living in a house shaped like half the face of a smug ineffectual asshole cartoon character who thinks he knows better than everyone but can’t actually influence anyone, and had his house built in the shape of half of Dilbert’s face. SOLVED.

https://i.imgur.com/TJFIdI9.jpg

what the hell is this

When you’re invited to a fashy discord, find it too hard to keep up but want to show your appreciation anyway.

No wonder your piece of shit Gawker publication got its balls cut off. My lawyers will be contacting you. https://t.co/urM0otUUsn

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) September 24, 2019

the free speech defender has logged on

beta move to call a lawyer instead of kicking john cook's ass

for some reason I always read his tweets in a south park voice "I'll sue you in England!"

incidentally CNN's Jake Tapper drew yesterday's Dilbert (from Adams' script):

Vad har hänt med Dilbert? pic.twitter.com/goBif6Ltfj

— Nikke Lindqvist 🖤 (@nikkelin) September 23, 2019

behold the master of persuasion

May I summarize your tweet as DUUUUUUHHHH I SAY OBVIOUS THINGS ON TWITTER AS IF PEOPLE DON'T UNDERSTAND THEM. DUUUUUUHHHHH!!!!!

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) September 25, 2019

lol he deleted the tweet where he was threatening John Cook with legal action

—What so you think of management?

—They are all dumb.

(Sorry for the autocorrect typo; this phone’s software must have been designed by some clueless, “NPC”-style engineers, I don’t know man...)

there’s an article about Adams trying to help manage a restaurant he co-owned and it going predictably badly

iirc he’s one of those people who thinks if you’ve proven yourself in one task, you should be able to tackle anything else with a few hours of reading. restaurant article included an employee saying they really hoped he’d never watch the food network because he’d get “ideas”

I was thinking about the incident where he showed up on metafilter in a thread about an op-ed he wrote and proceeded to trash people, generally make noise and tell everyone they were projecting, and then disappear once he got called on his sock puppetry. There’s a reason he likes Trump, they both say a bunch of bullshit, gaslight you if you try to interpret their words as intended, and then spew more gibberish

http://mefiwiki.com/wiki/Scott_Adams,_plannedchaos

yeah I think there's a ton of overlap between Trump & Adams, outside of the fact that Adams was actually funny and self-aware at one point. Adams is very much a big believer in "the secret", his go-to explanation for how he made millions as a cartoonist despite not being able to draw, and thinks that Trump, a man who is now president despite no political experience or knowledge, knows "the secret" too. its all very PUA-style "just say the words in the right order and the universe will bend to your will", which I think explains why he's so impressed with shady car lot-style salesmanship

I don’t think he was self-aware per se, he easily spoofed management junk that’s often received knowledge when there’s no understanding *why* management would do those things. It’s rife in corporate culture, same as any large bureaucracy. The thing is that he took the idea that there’s nothing to management, no learned skills. Not even the Peter Principle, but people promoted to a level where they don’t have to do actual work and can do no actual harm.

And as soon as he got to management, or the equivalent level of responsibility, he started acting like it’s all about making noise and distractions so people don’t see you’re incompetent, instead of learning actual competence.

Wouldn’t be surprised if part of his health issues were rooted in chronic anxiety tbh

the whole idea presented in dilbert is that there are a lot of stupid people who can be easily manipulated to a ridiculous degree. i think he likes trump because trump's success could be taken as a demonstration that dilbert isn't satire.

when was adams ever "funny" is my question? Dilbert was garbage when it came out imo.
http://www.zippythepinhead.com/pages/aaarticles.html

the text at that link is illegible but early dilbert was at minimum weirder and more wide-ranging before he zeroed in on the corporate office-worker drone shit

command and the + sign (or ctrl +) increases text size.
I'll c+p here, though 23 years of tech have certainly rendered this line of thinking awfully quaint)

COMICS AT 100 by Bill Griffith
THE BOSTON SUNDAY GLOBE Magazine, 11/10/96

The daily newspaper comic strip is one hundred years old. And it looks it. Shrunken. Pale. Shaky. One foot in the grave. Diagnosis: In desperate need of new blood. Instead, it gets "Dilbert".

Dilbert is all the rage. Dilbert is on the Best Seller list. Like the Ninja Turtles of a few years ago, you cannot avoid Dilbert. But is Dilbert a comic strip? Kind of. More to the point, Dilbert is a marketing strategy. It's the most popular and successful new comic strip in America today. What does this tell us about the medium? The comic strip exists in that twilight zone where art meets commerce.

Daily comics first made their appearance toward the end of the last century primarily as a way for publishers to increase newspaper circulation. The fact that they were graphically innovative and exciting to read was a bonus. Can the same be said of today's crop of strips? Comic strips today seem more of a comfort than an artistic statement. They're there. And, with a mind-numbing regularity, they'll be there, recycling the same diet jokes and lifestyle gags again and again, day after day. They're not really meant to be read. They’re meant to be scanned, quickly absorbed and just as quickly forgotten. But this wasn’t always the case.

At one time, newspaper comic strips, along with radio, performed the function in people’s lives that television does today. They were a powerful mass entertainment medium. "Dick Tracy" (Chester Gould), for instance, not only furnished readers with a daily dose of crime drama and fast-paced action, but did so with a gripping graphic sensibility. The strip literally leapt off the newsprint. The same can be said of "Krazy Kat" (George Herriman), "Popeye" (Elzie Segar), "Little Orphan Annie" (Harold Gray) and a host of other "classic" strips from the teens to the fifties. Does a contemporary strip like "Cathy" draw our eye to its spot on the page? Do the characters come alive in the way characters from good fiction or film do? Or are they simply caricatures of life, flat, stereotyped, and two-dimensional? This kind of work is what gives rise to the pejorative term, "cartoony".

It could be said that today’s comic strip readers get what they deserve. Long since psychically kidnapped by the gaudy, mindlessly hyperactive world of TV, they no longer demand or expect comic strips to be compelling, challenging, or even interesting. Enter "Cathy". And "Dilbert". Sure, comics are still funny. It’s just that the humor has almost no "nutritional" value. In the tiny space allotted to them , daily strips have all too successfully adapted to their new environment. In this Darwinian set-up, what thrives are simply drawn panels , minimal dialogue, and a lot of head- and -shoulder shots.Anything more complicated is deemed "too hard to read". A full, rich drawing style is a drawback. Simplicity, even crudity, rules. And when the graphics have been dumbed down, the writing follows in short order.

What we’re left with is a kind of childish, depleted shell of a once-vibrant medium. Comics is a language. It’s a language most people understand intuitively. If cartoonists use a large and varied "vocabulary" to entertain their readers, those readers will usually come along for the ride. It’s not a problem of the audience’s expectations having been hopelessly lowered, it’s a problem of the cartoonists’ ambitions needing a boost. Even within the size restrictions imposed on them today, comic strips can be more than filler. Given the user-friendly, low-tech intimacy of the printed page, the newspaper comic strip still has the potential to involve and reward the reader. Unfortunately, both cartoonist and reader have gone a bit flabby over the decades.

Does it have to be that way? Perhaps, with competition from video games, CD-ROMS, special effects movies and plain, old TV, comic strips are fighting an uphill battle for attention. And, on top of that, they play out their role in the archaic print medium, soon to be relegated to the communications boneyard , according to common wisdom. Not necessarily. There may be hope yet. Just as the automobile did not replace the bicycle, the over-hyped Internet will not replace newspapers. Newspapers will simply adapt to a different purpose. "Slate", the on-line electronic magazine , recently came out with "Slate on Paper", a real newsstand magazine. Why? Because people like print. Not to mention the fact that Slate cartoonist Mark Alan Stamaty’s strip looks a lot better on paper than it does flickering on a computer screen.

Another factor contributing to the anemic state of contemporary daily comics is the propensity of newspapers to target their "product" at readers much in the way that politicians use focus groups to pander to constituents’ "needs". Daily comic strips are regularly subjected to popularity polls to determine who reads what. Too often, as a result of low numbers, an interesting or controversial strip will be dropped. Editors and publishers who lament their narrowing readership are only contributing to this trend by opting for the lowest common denominator. Not everybody has to like "Doonesbury" for it to have a valid spot on the comics (or, in many cases, the editorial) page. Is the idea of diversity only to be encouraged in other areas? Recognizing that one person’s " "Beetle Bailey " is another’s "Bizarro", can only be healthy for the survival of the species.

Non-mainstream comics could actually help to bring back those demographically treasured under forty-somethings, who now flip channels the way they used to flip newspaper pages. Of course, compelling, regularly published comics on newsprint do exist. For the most part, though, they’re found in the pages of weekly, not daily newspapers. Strips like "Julius Knipl, Real Estate Photographer" (Ben Katchor), "Troubletown" (Lloyd Dangle), "Story Minute" (Carol Lay),"Life in Hell" (Matt Groening) and "Red Meat" (Max Cannon) are all noteworthy examples.There was a time about ten years ago when it seemed possible strips like these could find their way into daily syndication. But, through a combination of syndicate timidity and cartoonists’ lack of faith in the flexibility of the daily strip world, not much happened.

There are a few lively, well-crafted dailies bobbing bravely in a sea of blandness. "Mutts" (Patrick McDonnell) stands out, as does the venerable "Doonesbury’ (Garry Trudeau) and the occasionally adventurous "Bizarro" (Dan Piraro).These few, and a few others, are, however , exceptions to the rule.Can readers drifting toward brain-death from one too many "Garfields" ever be expected to enjoy the charms and subtleties of the quirky Ben Katchor? "Odie" can rest easy on the daily comics page. He won’t be seeing competition from the likes of Julius Knipl for a long, long time.

What does the future look like for the daily strip? Some, among them many comics syndicate executives, believe the brave new world of comics will have an exclusive on-line address. Forget about the chore of having to scan the comics line-up for your favorite strip (and, perhaps, not finding it there). Just click on "Peanuts" with your trusty mouse and catch up on Charlie Brown’s latest trials and tribulations. But what will be lost in that rosy scenario is what’s already disappearing as digital supplants analog; namely, the gestalt of the comics pages, the fun of thirty or so different (one would hope) art styles vying for the viewer’s attention.In the best of all possible daily strip worlds, it would be a genuine kick to see "Life in Hell"s Akhbar and Jeff give Spiderman a run for his money.

This is kind of off-topic — but I remember when Mike Judge (who, unlike Adams, seems like an OK guy and who has done stuff I really like) made that movie Extract, he talked a lot in interviews (like this one) about how that movie was kind of a “bookend” to Office Space, sympathetic to “management’s” p.o.v. this time, as he’s been on both sides:

...suddenly, with Beavis and Butt-Head, I had thirty to as many as ninety people, at one point, working for me. And you know, seeing it from the other side, I suddenly became really sympathetic to the bosses. But to me, I don’t get any pleasure out of telling people what to do. But what I do like is seeing a big project through, and steering the ship and all that. And being the boss just kind of goes with the territory: that you sometimes have to tell people to do what they don’t want to do. But, you know, the bosses in Office Space are the types, the mid-management-types, that actually get off on the power of having people underneath them. [quiet laugh] They’re not really about the satisfaction of creating something, or manufacturing something.

In other words, I do think it’s possible for a single artiste to work both sides of the fence satirically — but it’s gotta be better than “They are all dumb.”

(Now, Extract isn’t necessarily as good a movie as Office Space, but I don’t think that’s a factor of its specific workplace pov.)

xxp it's kind of wild that in 1996, Berkeley Breathed had recently quit (now back, regardless of whether the return is as good), Nancy wasn't even mentioned because the long-running franchise was in a rut, and web comics were yet to really become a thing

The comparison with Cathy is interesting, in that Guisewite's strip never made sense to me until later in life when I realized that for its target audience, Cathy is real. There's a long-running anxiety under the humor that makes it relatable. The long-running undercurrent under Dilbert, once you get past the topical cubicle jokes and riffing on dumb managers, is loathing, imo.

the whole idea presented in dilbert is that there are a lot of stupid people who can be easily manipulated to a ridiculous degree. i think he likes trump because trump's success could be taken as a demonstration that dilbert isn't satire.

One of the things that bothered me about his early books was that he seemed to think that manipulating dumb people was something to be proud of. I think that's what surprises so many people about his (in retrospect, not so sudden) turn; they didn't get that Dilbert wasn't really supposed to be a satire. He gets *some* stuff right about Trump - he knows that emotions carry more weight than facts, he's good at sloganeering and name-calling, and he's really good at drawing attention to himself. The part where he breaks from everyone else is the idea that these are actually *virtuous* qualities because they fall into this weird umbrella of "persuasion" which means he can actually accomplish more than a mere mortal. And this is where the massive cognitive dissonance sets in - Trump hasn't really accomplished anything you could point to as "good for America" - his legacy will be the kiddie concentration camps, the refusal to act on climate science, the tax cuts for the rich, the rapist Supreme Court judge, and the many, many crimes committed. He's not popular, and he couldn't get more votes than Hillary Clinton, the least popular Democratic nominee ever. So Adams spends his days spinning his wheels, championing non-existent accomplishments, explaining how his many many many missteps are all part of some brilliant long game, coming up with theories as to why his approval numbers are misleading, and basically blaming everything on the media for telling it like it is.

I don’t think he was self-aware per se, he easily spoofed management junk that’s often received knowledge when there’s no understanding *why* management would do those things.

True, but something definitely happened to him between Dilbert's 90s heyday and now. Every month or so he says something incredibly dumb on Twitter and spends days defending himself, and inevitably someone will post an old Dilbert strip mocking the very concept that Adams is proposing. I still think some of the 90s strips are very well-written; that doesn't mean much in the world of newspaper comics and his sense of humor doesn't really translate well to anything else but he at least understood the mechanics of a joke back then. When I see recent Dilberts I see someone pointing in the general direction of a joke but doesn't have the cleverness to pull it off. He doesn't get irony anymore. He doesn't understand why using the Pointy-Haired Boss as the "voice of reason" defeats what many thought was the point of the whole strip.

xp I'm also cackling at the idea that Red Meat would ever become a newspaper daily. Maybe in the world where OK Soda is still available?

frogbs, I'd agree that he doesn't get what made earlier strips funny. Dilbert's point seemed to be that a lot of work is worthless, and the only useful things are accomplished when workers subvert or work around management in pursuit of goals. The lesson he's picked up in the long term seems to be that management's role is to cause chaos and ensure this unstable environment because workers are only useful when their employment and goals are in a constant state of managerial chaos and uncertainty.

by that metric, Trump is the best president for sure. it's uncertainty and rousing the chaos all day

also worth noting that he flirts a lot with philosophical theories like "what if YOU are the only person in this universe and the secret to life is bending it to your will?" which may explain why he seems to champion hedonism at the expense of others

constantly on the verge of a nervous breakdown because he thinks problems in reality are because time isn't linear and he's personally responsible for bending the universe

I'm also cackling at the idea that Red Meat would ever become a newspaper daily. Maybe in the world where OK Soda is still available?

"Ten years ago" seems exactly right though - Blue Velvet meant Angriest Dog got picked up across the country, the first two Life In Hell collections came out, and Zippy itself became a mainstream daily. Plus the first giant Bloom County treasury was blowing through print runs, and Bill The Cat dolls were in chain stores and tat shops alike. The culture was absolutely ready for more weirdo strips in regular newspapers, and if they'd been given it then, Red Meat might have found a broad home by 1995, when OK Soda was still available.

We got Foxtrot

In other news, for several years I have been tracking a Master Wizard that I believe lives in Southern California. It seems he has trained a small army of attractive women in his method. The women create a specialized style of porn video clips that literally hypnotize the viewer to magnify the orgasm experience beyond anything you probably imagine is possible. Hypnosis has a super-strong impact on about 20% of people. And a lesser-but-strong impact on most of the rest.

Once a customer is hooked, the girls use powerful (and real) hypnosis tools to connect the viewer’s enjoyable experience (a super-orgasm, or several) to the viewer’s act of giving them money, either directly or by buying more clips. Eventually the regular viewers are reprogrammed to get their sexual thrill by the act of donating money to the girls in the videos. There are lots of variations tied to each type of sexual kink, but that’s the general idea.

My best guess is that 10% of the traffic that flows through their business model literally cannot leave until they have no money left. The Master Wizard is that good. The women are well-coached in his methods.

The fascinating thing is that the videos fully-disclose what they are doing, in clear language that is often repeated. The women explain the hypnosis methods they are using much the way I have been dissecting Trump’s technique. Nothing is hidden, at least with this one set of practitioners.

That makes customers feel safe that the hypnosis is just for fun and not actually rewiring them. But it doesn’t work that way. Explaining the technique as you do it actually deepens the effect. Hypnotists learn to do that.

The Master Hypnotist behind all of this found a great loophole in the law. If humans understood how effective these videos are, they would be illegal in the same way gambling is illegal in most places. And the Master Wizard hides in plain site because the Internet is so littered with fake porn hypnosis (women waving watches and saying YOU ARE SLEEPY) that no one expects a real one to sneak into the mix. And this Master Wizard is a polymath of some sort. He also knows how to do high quality video production, data analytics, and A-B testing.

When you combine hypnosis, sex, and A-B testing on a large population, the results are unimaginably powerful. The customers in this situation are getting an insanely good product. The only issue is the price.

If a court ever tries to make this business illegal, the star witness will be the Master Wizard himself.

No jury will ever convict him.

Now THAT’S a business model.

Maaaaaaster Hypnotist
Hypnotist with la-dies

what in the hell

ok but where's the link to the operation

https://66.media.tumblr.com/7cf42e6fa14c0712165287419d15b6ea/tumblr_n3ourkMWP21twyuqxo1_400.png

just another case of fake porn hypnosis

i've heard you can only be hypnotized if you want to be hypnotized but i want to be hypnotized but it has never worked i think bc i want to be hypnotized against my will that would be very interesting.

I need to know how much money this dude spent on the camgirl website

In the old days, movies were mostly entertainment with a bit of social mind control sprinkled in. But our skills at movie-making kept improving along with our mind control skills. In 2020, a movie like Joker can rewire an entire nation into seeing things in its frame.

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) June 3, 2020

I'm willing to bet 90% of the protestors have seen Joker. It is so powerful and well-made that it bounces around in your brain and burrows in, forming a dominant go-to pattern for your thinking.

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) June 3, 2020

Can one movie nudge a young person into violence and anarchy? A bad movie can't. Even a good movie can't do that. But Joker can. That movie is next level, persuasion-wise.

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) June 3, 2020

Galaxy Brain: the George Floyd protests are actually about the 2019 hit movie, Joker

he's rich, must know what he's talking about

amazing

i mean.... imagine watching everything that's happened in the last week and that's your takeaway

Also no way 90%

blood on Todd Phillips' hands, thank goodness you have a very good and very strong president who is unafraid* to bring down military force to quell the effect of this movie

I didn't see it, I was wondering why I wasn't looting but now it's all clear to me

Maybe I haven’t been keeping up, but this seems like a new level of cluelessness from this insufferable moron.

he’s reading tea leaves but it’s really whatever dust and stem scraps he poured out of a lipton tea bag

lmao he's the least self aware person on the planet

Occupation...writer https://t.co/nDBTgWWlnc

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) June 4, 2020

pic.twitter.com/fCcVAvqaCp

— Paul F. Tompkins (@PFTompkins) June 29, 2020

Before the strip was syndicated, Dogbert's name was "Dildog".

whats funny is I used to read this guy's books as a teenager and I distinctly remember numerous passages where he brags about how good he was at avoiding work. guess it didn't go unnoticed! (also, I am pretty sure he never lost a job, just got passed over for promotion, and yes even in the 90's he blamed this on black people)

I remember the Dilbert TV show being alright but the ratings were terrible. if you wanna talk about an actually good cartoon adaptation getting cancelled too quickly how about Clerks the Animated Series, which was cancelled after 2 episodes. say what you will about Kevin Smith but he never tried the "it's cuz I'm white" defense

this man is unwell

Has anyone published tips on defending a home from a mob? For example, it would not be obvious to me when to fire in self-defense and who to target first for maximum impact.

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) June 30, 2020

If Biden is elected, there's a good chance you will be dead within the year.

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) July 1, 2020

who to target first for maximum impact

It's a little unnerving to watch the titular character's mind come unglued in his new tweet-borne iteration of Dilbert. But the absence of 'artwork' is a plus, at least.

I know people joked about how Biden would magically become a socialist in the eyes of the right the instant he got the nom but even still I did not expect this take

he for sure is going to go out from a self-inflicted firearms accident, right? he's gotta have so many dumb expensive guns

wikihow "how to defend your home from the mob"

Yeah no one is gonna be commando-crawling up your driveway and coming for your fucking Dogbert action figures, Scotty; no one is coming to rob you of your precious bodily fluids.

Though you richly deserve it.

shouldn't a certified Genius already know these things

would be pretty funny if his twitter shittery inspired some gun-toting lunatic to come after his collection of collectable mousemats or whatever

"Dilbert" creator Scott Adams uncover the hidden satanic symbolism in Joe Biden's name. https://t.co/gjyHQasTL6 pic.twitter.com/3JJt0aybSt

— Right Wing Watch (@RightWingWatch) August 26, 2020

god damn if only Dilbert was a fraction as creative as that

backward sex and upside down sex are some of my favourite types of sex, I mean B is where I hide my sex. so yeah, I'm voting Biden.

breaking down the symbolism of joe biden's name while sitting in the dilbert-shaped house he designed, just normal stuff

http://www.aaaa.org/wp-content/uploads/2017/10/4As-Subliminal-ad.jpg

well i think it's clear from the ad that the american association of advertising agencies are a bunch of tits

66 6IDEN(TITY) wow, it's been right under our noses this whole time

did you mean to say 66 6IDEN(TITTY)? because that would explain like, everything

so says poster breastcrawl

lol touché

Browsing his Twitter lately and I see he’s really gone all in on both Biden = Satan and “they’ll murder me if he wins”

Is it just a coincidence that everyone who tries to make an “intellectual” case for Trump winds up going completely fucking nuts?

“they’ll murder me if he wins”

just another campaign promise you know Biden's not gonna keep

Those who don't are the pure grifters, the coldblooded sociopaths who know exactly what it takes to finagle large segments of the population into fulfilling their nefarious ends.

xp