Dilbert - C or D?

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 the common thread for a lot of the Dilbert enjoyment might stem from the fact nearly everyone who liked it in the 90s in this thread was a teenager or younger at the time, or lacked a lot of experience in offices

I barely remember the cartoon, but it's worth noting how many people worked on that thing that had actual writing experience and they had to come up with so many things in order to tell a coherent story. There's just not a lot to delve into in Dilbert, because the characterization is so shallow. And all the details that did get added were odd because they catered toward a specific man's prejudices and irregular mind

Yeah, that's me. My dad had one of the books, but I don't think it was his thing really, he must have been given it. I remember some of it being kind of funny, but I was 14 and had no reference point

the Dilbert show was pretty stacked with talent, both in writing and voice acting. I know a number of Seinfeld folks were on it. they were pretty self-aware of the fact that it was based off such a flimsy premise. kinda like the Clerks animated show, not as funny though. but yes I know exactly what you're talking about, I was 12 or 13 when it came out and even then could recognize the jokes that Scott Adams himself contributed and how they broke up the flow of the show.

despite his griping about UPN and black people the studio was clearly angling for a hit and I remember them promoting the shit outta this. there'd be previews of the next episode during every commercial break of Futurama.

those shows were probably... fine.. but if you compare them to shows that kind of fizzled out due to network disinterest at the time like Mission Hill, they're kind of a half-baked mess

I watched that Dilbert TV show, downloaded all the episodes through whatever file sharing app was popular at the time. My recollection is that it was very uneven, some very funny and creative bits (the ones I remember are a repeating gag about sniffing dry erase markers and an episode about little elves living in the walls of the office that were literally downsized employees) and also a lot of if falling very flat.

god, Mission Hill was the fucking best