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

those tweets about his stepson were legit disturbing. Sounds like he refused to pay for rehab or something and the kid died? And then he took this attitude of "There was no way anyone could have stopped this, in fact it's better that he died because he was dangerous to others (me)"

Sounded like he blamed society for his failures as a (step) parent.

just astonishing stuff

Another interesting take. https://t.co/VQ42nYkZL8

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) February 28, 2023

Sometimes you have so many galaxy brains they form their own mega-cluster(fuck)

The fulcrum of foolishness

I think the stepson situation was genuinely tragic and the weird gymnastics in his tweet about it boil down to his inability to accept failure, instead inventing some weird version of stoicism where the universe will do one of two things

this guy has got to be doing some mega drugs

he's a master persuader

he should shoot himself in the groin at a Dave & Buster's to similarly locate himself at the fulcrum of US gun control power

“One, Dilbert needs to be louder, angrier, and have access to a time machine. Two, whenever Scott's not onscreen during a TV debate about race, all the other guests should be asking ‘Where’s Scott?'”

the overt racism is probably gonna overshadow everything but it's truly astonishing how thoroughly weird this guy is, and maybe always has been. like even in The Dilbert Future he spent one chapter trying to disprove gravity and another crediting all his success to writing down his goals 15 times on a piece of paper. he once wrote a blog post saying he could give you the best orgasms of your life and claimed a bunch of people wrote him to say he made them jizz in their pants. he said he knew hypnotism was real because he was once "hypnotized" into spending thousands of dollars on camgirls. at one point he developed Spasmodic Dysphonia and for a year could apparently only speak in rhyme (unfortunately for his career, he did eventually regain his ability to speak). he tried opening a restaurant which failed spectacularly because, according to the people he hired, literally the only thing he cared about was the lighting. there's so much more I'm probably forgetting.

hypnotism is real

possibly not for his reason

guess that's why he's broke and they're so paid

He has a "Dilbert shaped wall" in his house and, in looking for that, I found a news article that — if I'm reading this correctly — is about some time in 2004 where he had a computer drew a dream house on the internet like Bongo or Bart Simpson and that made the news?

https://www.chicagotribune.com/news/ct-xpm-2004-11-21-0411210357-story.html

There's also a urinal in Dilbert's master bath

I would love to hear him disprove gravity in rhyme.... ysi?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i8u5913kk-w

looolll subscribed. thank you.

the overt racism is probably gonna overshadow everything but it's truly astonishing how thoroughly weird this guy is, and maybe always has been. like even in The Dilbert Future he spent one chapter trying to disprove gravity and another crediting all his success to writing down his goals 15 times on a piece of paper. he once wrote a blog post saying he could give you the best orgasms of your life and claimed a bunch of people wrote him to say he made them jizz in their pants. he said he knew hypnotism was real because he was once "hypnotized" into spending thousands of dollars on camgirls. at one point he developed Spasmodic Dysphonia and for a year could apparently only speak in rhyme (unfortunately for his career, he did eventually regain his ability to speak). he tried opening a restaurant which failed spectacularly because, according to the people he hired, literally the only thing he cared about was the lighting. there's so much more I'm probably forgetting.

― frogbs, Tuesday, February 28, 2023 3:17 PM (five hours ago) bookmarkflaglink

frogbs, I love you, truly you're a great poster, but if I had this much knowledge of Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, I'd expect an intervention.

That… wait… those things are real?! They’re really things he said?!

I'm ILX's resident Dilbert expert, everything I say is good as goldbert

i totally remember reading the restaurant thing and the thing where he claimed he couldn't speak normally

the overt racism is probably gonna overshadow everything but it's truly astonishing how thoroughly weird this guy is, and maybe always has been. like even in The Dilbert Future he spent one chapter trying to disprove gravity and another crediting all his success to writing down his goals 15 times on a piece of paper. he once wrote a blog post saying he could give you the best orgasms of your life and claimed a bunch of people wrote him to say he made them jizz in their pants. he said he knew hypnotism was real because he was once "hypnotized" into spending thousands of dollars on camgirls. at one point he developed Spasmodic Dysphonia and for a year could apparently only speak in rhyme (unfortunately for his career, he did eventually regain his ability to speak). he tried opening a restaurant which failed spectacularly because, according to the people he hired, literally the only thing he cared about was the lighting.

Finally, as if he intended to bring the war to an end, he drew up a line of battle on the shore of the Ocean, arranging his ballistas and other artillery; and when no one knew or could imagine what he was going to do, he suddenly bade them gather shells and fill their helmets and the folds of their gowns, calling them "spoils from the Ocean, due to the Capitol and Palatine." As a monument p477 of his victory he erected a lofty tower, from which lights were to shine at night to guide the course of ships, as from the Pharos.​81 Then promising the soldiers a gratuity of a hundred denarii each, as if he had shown unprecedented liberality, he said, "Go your way happy; go your way rich."

Deeply cursed “NewsRadio” image from s03e02. pic.twitter.com/KqwXi1J8Lb

— Todd Vaziri (@tvaziri) March 1, 2023

http://https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/0275/7607/4293/products/s5837-2_1200x1200.jpg?v=1627863449

http://i.etsystatic.com/13373834/r/il/30d198/4335978927/il_fullxfull.4335978927_6m6c.jpg

frobs were you also a member of (free email newsletter) Dogbert's New Ruling Class?

quoting this from the Dilbert book title poll for its powerful otmness:

"office culture" angle largely superficial even in its heyday tbh; this line from the article neil s posted in the other thread is starkly otm about its real premise:

The central message of Dilbert is that everybody is stupid except you, if I’m remembering correctly. It’s a popular message, which I presume helped make it a popular strip.

― difficult listening hour, Tuesday, 28 February 2023 18:50 (yesterday) link

lol I watched that NewsRadio ep a couple of nights ago without realizing it was that episode, very weird timing

lol he was in Babylon 5 as well

https://www.tcdb.com/Images/Cards/Non-Sport/81113/81113-5764148Fr.jpg

I think I did sign up for it with my first email account, iirc it was mostly him talking about "Dilbert's Desktop Games" but I do remember at one point he'd emailed out this story about the time where he sat on a plane in the middle seat and the people on both sides of him were reading "The Dilbert Principle" and convulsing with laughter, even telling him "I'm sorry this book is just so funny!" not realizing they were sitting next to him, after which he pulled out his pen and drew a picture of Dogbert, then the whole plane stood up and clapped. And that passengers name? Jerry Seinfeld. Anyway I was in high school then and I remember seeing that and going "oh no...this guy is totally full of it"

your principal was jerry seinfeld and the whole school stood up and clapped?

I, too, was the kind of sicko child who read Dilbert crap in the 90s. I think it was somehow relatable because it had computers and authority figures that seemed bad, but I was supposed to tolerate their presence for some reason. And Dilbert's office seemed to create products of some sort, although not very well.

The books were just weird. I don't think any Dilbert strip ever resulted in more than a soft chuckle, and the book material was just completely divorced from reality. At least if you read Dilbert as a kid at that point, you could one day walk into an office, look around at the cubicles and photocopier, and think "hmm, just like Dilbert"

I'm also not letting this slide by without calling it out as being hilarious: he said he knew hypnotism was real because he was once "hypnotized" into spending thousands of dollars on camgirls

That literally sounds like a stand-up's joke

this is a legit funny joke imo, worth more than a soft chuckle

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/Bur2WghCYAAz28x.png

lol obv I like that one

oh yeah another thing I remembered was while he was getting famous blogging about Trump he also kept talking up this app called Whenhub that he was the CSO and the primary investor of. thing is it was totally unclear what this app was supposed to do, apparently it was a way for divorced parents to coordinate drop off times for their kids, then it became sort of a social media thing, then it wound up using cryptocurrency somehow. the only time people talked about it was when Adams said that those present at the Gilroy shooting could make a lot of money (or WhenHub tokens?) by live broadcasting themselves on his app.

https://www.mediaite.com/online/dilbert-guy-scott-adams-condemned-for-exploiting-mass-shooting-to-promote-his-app/

in other words it was basically the software product that Dilbert's company made, this nebulous thing with a million features and no actual use case. he actually made it.

So not only does the Dilberito flash game absolutely exist, you can still play it over at https://t.co/B19ZhXD7w2. Highlights include: Dilberito, the Dilbert branded frozen microwavable burrito, is considered the most nutritious food. Game ends with dancing on your nemesis' grave pic.twitter.com/LE4LlJJDit

— Tarnished Holly Green (@winnersusedrugs) March 9, 2020

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/FqD1an2aAAAUUKP?format=jpg&name=medium

Perfect.

yikes

Summary https://t.co/KYISqScgsw

— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) March 1, 2023

I don't think we're going to get a redemption narrative

he has never admitted being wrong or even ignorant before and he's not about to start now

lol, local paper replaced it with "Curtis"

even worse it's the strip where he's spraypainting "down with white people" on the sidewalk

It's too bad "The Boondocks" isn't around anymore.

https://bleedingcool.com/comics/scott-adams-returns-with-new-strip-dilbert-reborn-now-with-f-words/

baby wake up. Dilbert can now say the F word

Which one?

lol, local paper replaced it with "Curtis"

― pplains, Monday, March 6, 2023 1:46 PM (yesterday) bookmarkflaglink

turn that "rap" junk down!!

the Curtis Kwanzaa strips rule