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.

also goes a bit into how every creative industry is packed with talented people and how there's often no logical reason why one person makes it while hundreds of more talented and tenacious people don't. and how that often causes the people who do make it to get real paranoid and weird. Scott's probably in a class of his own on this one though.

I had no idea that he had written books. My brief reading of the descriptions on Amazon makes me think I'd rather have an ice pick stabbed into my eye than read any of them.

you can order ice picks from Amazon too

LOL

n this frenetically paced sequel to Adams' best-selling "thought experiment," God's Debris, the smartest man in the world is on a mission to stop a cataclysmic war between Christian and Muslim forces and save civilization. The brilliantly crafted, thought-provoking fable raises questions about the nature of reality and just where our delusions are taking us.

I'm betting "the smartest man in the world" is named something like Scrott Babams.

you can order ice picks from Amazon too

― hardcore technician gimmicks are also another popular choice f (President Keyes), Wednesday, July 26, 2023 1:14 PM

"... These items are frequently bought together."

Behind the Bastards did a 2-parter on this guy recently. pretty fun listen. it mostly revolves around the idea that's been brought up here a bunch, that Scott Adams is basically a sociopath who can't comprehend there are people out there who know more than he does, so the bulk of his idiotic conspiracy theories are just him refusing to read or educate himself. also makes a compelling argument that his bout with spasmodic dysphonia was when his insanity really went into overdrive. it goes a bit into his fiction books, particularly "The Religion War", which the host credits for "at least finding a unique way of being racist"

― frogbs

i mean personally i'd say charles manson did that too, though i admit that i'm not completely familiar with all the different ways of being racist

I read God's Debris in high school, mostly because I just happened to spot it in the library. I remember thinking 10% of it was thought provoking and 90% of it was the dumbest shit you've ever heard. And I was like 15 at the time. If I read it now the split would probably be closer to 0/100.

Granted at the time I still kinda liked Scott Adams, but after reading that I wondered if he might actually be insane. Like it's one thing to do this sort of fun thought experiment as a lark but you can really tell that he thinks he's actually uncovered the secrets of the universe here. And in retrospect you can see exactly how these "deep thoughts" led him directly to shit like Holocaust denial. Even if he wasn't politically aligned with them back then he very much had that right-wing mentality of "I already know everything I need to know, and if I don't know something it's because they're trying to hide it from me"

Same experience with that book. Brutal.

https://pbs.twimg.com/media/F6M4px9a0AAHd1-?format=jpg&name=small

Not sure how taking this guy out would further anyone’s agenda

A younger cartoonist like Olivia Jaimes could pick up a lot of experience points by doing so.

The Derp State is after him.

Genuinely can’t figure out if this is more likely to be a sexual assault allegation or just him looking for attention

I adore that his profile pic is an anatomically inaccurate brain

He also doesn't understand the physics of neckties, so

Aw shit, is he being "gang-stalked"?

https://keithstack.neocities.org/dilbert.png

Save the brains

the Dagwood Commission concluded that it was the PHB out of the window of the schoolbook depository, but rumors persist that Dogbert was seen on the grassy knoll that day...

Laugh now, but when Adams actually gets murked make sure you have some laughs left over.

That would be another example of addition by subtraction.

wtf is taking so long

https://i.ibb.co/98q0Jg7/F6-L-Z-ZWMAAq-Moi.png

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

I found out recently that the offensive for nearly all possible ways Dilbert parody from the 90s, "The Dilbert Hole," was 1. Originally on rotten.com 2. Still up on archive.org because Scott Adams lost a legal action against it due to it being fair use

sitting here laughing about the fact that "Gamer Dilbert" has more readers than the actual Dilbert strip now

still in awe that this "master of manipulation" threw away the only thing that made him relevant just to say some incredibly racist shit as a HYPOTHETICAL, like genuinely one of history's greatest self-owns

out of curiosity I looked at some of his "Dilbert Reborn" strips and they are so bad, like Elon reply guy level humor. I swear he used to know how to write a joke

It's been discussed upthread, but he never knew how to write a joke. His early strips were things that happened in his last cubicle job, while the strips after that were things that happened to his fans (who would email him).

see I disagree with that. it's true that he's terrible at coming up with ideas and he himself admitted that most of them come from readers but if you look at some of those 90s strips you can tell he's at least familiar with the mechanics of a joke - there are actual punchlines there, sometimes they're even funny! I'd find some examples but it appears all the old Dilberts have been scrubbed from the internet, lmao

I found it occasionally funny too back in the day.

I remember an ex-fan writing a blogpost about it, basically arguing that he'd lost his sense of irony somehow. I guess you see that in a lot of comedians who have been rich and famous for too long but what's happening with this dude seems different. it's not that they're bad jokes, it's that they don't resemble jokes at all.

I would guess his bout with spasmodic dysphonia might've had a lot to do with this. as much as I dislike him I wouldn't wish that on anyone. to a lesser extent I think getting humiliated with the whole sockpuppet thing a while ago was probably a factor. maybe the first time in his life as a famous person where his bullshit just stopped working and I don't think he knew how to handle getting made fun of. I say this because I believe Elon Musk's villain arc started the same way - he was always bad of course but I think he really started going off the rails when people started making fun of his dumb submarine

how many times has he been caught doing the sock puppet thing? I know he had a metafilter account for about five minutes before getting outed

All of these things can be true simultaneously. The early trips had some fresh stuff. The strip at its best was frequently entertaining, partly because he stole a lot of stuff from others. Then he slid downhill into Trumpy right-wing bullshit.

I don't think it's a mystery. I think it's just the journey of a man who started out with some promise, began to compromise when he ran out of easy material, then got mad and ugly when the well ran dry.

What would be more surprising is if he had been able to come up with 30+ years of fresh and interesting material. There are very few people who have been able to do that.

That said, good people whose work has run its course have the sense to bow out. He does not. Because he is not a good person. His wish to retain relevance has led him to be yet more terrible (as that gets a reaction, and any reaction is better than none).

oh there’s like 15 - 20 years of incredibly weird and questionable things before he got on the “Trump is a master persuader” wagon

the tiniest criticism, like “dilbert just normalizes unhealthy office dynamics and gives people an outlet to laugh at while accepting them” is something people brought up and a sane man would have said “well, you have a point but that’s what we’ve got” but noooooo

thats definitely true, again this is kind of like Elon Musk where he was clearly a thin-skinned weirdo all along but was a lot better at not making headlines for it

there was a good podcast on Scott Adams which pointed that out - back in 1998 the dude was on top of the world, Dilbert was the biggest comic strip in the country, he had a TV deal in the works, his books were selling a ton, he had structured his licensing deals in a way that was making him incredibly rich - and yet he couldn't get over that Norman Soloman book, one which as far as I understand isn't *really* about Dilbert anyway?

thats definitely true, again this is kind of like Elon Musk where he was clearly a thin-skinned weirdo all along but was a lot better at not making headlines for it

― frogbs

i'm pissy this morning

not making headlines for being weird when you're a cishet white man is pretty easy. you get a lot of benefit of the doubt. musk and adams had to really work to lose people's respect. if they weren't white men they never would have gotten to the levels of influence, power, authority, and respect they had

i don't think that dilbert was never _funny_. it was reasonably funny, in the early days. adams' draftsmanship was always poor. he was, you know, writing about his lived experience, and that kind of helps. i think someone upthread knocked that, that he was just telling jokes about his jobs, but i mean you gotta get your material somewhere.

That said, good people whose work has run its course have the sense to bow out. He does not. Because he is not a good person.

― CthulhuLululemon (Ye Mad Puffin)

i get lost when we start talking about whether "good people" or "bad people". that's just fundamentally not how i view the world. i don't think adams kept dilbert going because he was a "bad person". i think he kept dilbert going because he was a mediocre white man and he believed, probably correctly, that he was never going to do better than what he was doing

i mean is hank azaria a "good person"? fuck if i know. the simpsons has probably "run its course" four or five different times now. it's an easy job that he doesn't have to work very hard at and which pays reasonably well. i wouldn't say he's a "bad person" for not bowing out.

comic strip writers are weird. i mean. there's a long history of it. they do a lot of questionable shit. a lot of it finds its way into the comics. johnny hart, the last 20 years of bc, half the strips were just him evangelizing. i always found that super weird because "bc" literally stands for "before christ", as far as i know, and here are these cavemen talking about how amazing jesus is. i guess there's weirder things out there. but he was obviously a weirdo.

al capp, my god, al capp was this fucked up dude, like... just kind of monstrously bad. y'all wanna read that story sometime. after charles schulz introduced a minor black character into peanuts in the late '60s, hank ketcham decided to introduce a grossly offensive racial stereotype into "dennis the menace" and just went "What? What's the problem? I don't see the problem here", and it was apparently fine, as soon as he stopped drawing the grossly offensive racial caricature everybody acted like it'd never happened.

percy crosby, god, nobody today remembers percy crosby but his strip "skippy" was like peanuts before peanuts. just insanely popular. this cute little kid with wry philosophical observations about the world around him. there was a motion picture series based on it. some of the films in it won oscars. some company stole his comic strip's name and logo for their peanut butter. he sued them but lost.

anyway he started drinking more and more and the little kid started ranting about communism and how fdr was in league with stalin. they started becoming these huge walls of completely unhinged right-wing conspiracy rants. the strip went on for a surprisingly long time like that, people just pretending crosby wasn't a complete nutjob and hoping, i don't know, that he'd stop being a right-wing nutjob? this went on until december 1941, at which point fdr and the united states really _were_ in league with stalin and this guy going out here saying we'd made a terrible mistake and the person we really _should_ be in league with was hitler, well

whether any given person is a "good person" or a "bad person", i don't know, i don't care. what i do know is that it takes a _lot_ for a cishet white dude to face anything in the way of consequences for their behavior. a real, real lot.

Schulz would normally mention Crosby as a source of inspiration whenever he was interviewed.

The founding, popular American newspaper for this kind of right-wing editorialising is Little Orphan Annie of course, but it's part of a larger pattern of comics accommodating the (invariably reactionary) politics of the newspaper owners. Another means of persuasion.

The best ones were subversive, though.

musk and adams had to really work to lose people's respect

well yeah they earned every bit of the scorn they're getting but it's way funnier in Adams' case because, unlike Musk, nothing he does really matters, he was a newspaper comic dude who got real famous 25 years ago and has ridden that goodwill ever since. so like to rebrand your image as some kind of master manipulator who sees 3 moves ahead and then torpedo your career with some idiotic hypothetical that he somehow didn't anticipate getting taken out of context (dude is definitely racist but the thing that got him cancelled was more just him completely misreading a situation as he always said) is just really really funny to me

a few years back, I donated $1 to doctors without borders for every person who asked Scott to draw Dilbert as the joker. he had a huge meltdown and claimed he was being targeted by George Soros. he is an unserious, clueless dumbass who has no idea how the world works pic.twitter.com/U1tIWiVLt1

— the information pimp (@BirdRespecter) January 26, 2024

hopped on Twitter for some more context and uhh it's even weirder than you think

Laura Loomer and Scott Adams are convinced a stock image taken in the 1950s of a hand holding dollar notes, featured in an article about crime and inflation by the Atlantic that's also been tweeted by Alexander Soros, is in fact a coded call to assassinate Donald Trump. pic.twitter.com/5SBt2ZvNXq

— Shayan Sardarizadeh (@Shayan86) January 22, 2024

Never noticed that "STATES OF AMERICA" was printed on the $5 bill until Laura Loomer circled it in red.

This does play into that piece someone posted yesterday about how Meth heads always think something big is about to go down

https://i.imgur.com/dNtdf6c_d.webp?maxwidth=500&fidelity=grand

It would appear that his only option is to go fuck himself.

dave sim is not only a better artist than scott adams, he's far better at being a batshit insane misogynist than adams is

like scott i'm an asexual pan lesbian with a breeding kink who loves girldick, what are you even talking about?

a few weeks ago there was some article making the rounds about how Republican men were basically undateable, guess that one rang true with a lot of these guys lol

Step 1: DEI
Step 2: Open Borders
Step 3: ???
Step 4: More Sperm!

Dilead

Legit lol, nashwan. Perfect.

(I had been thinking of working up something like HornDogbert, but your riff is so much better. Thank you for your service.)