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What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?
- dennisgorelik 4y agoThis article looks like a covert advertising of Dilbert.
- bediger4000 4y agoThe easy answer to the title question is that Scott Adams gained enough wealth that he lost touch. That seems to be a common experience of commercially successful artists. The author never explores this explanation.
- logicalmonster 4y agoThat's not a good explanation to me. Think of Hollywood: dominated by wealthy and out of touch artists. With very few exceptions, they all publicly express politically correct and safe ideas that ensures they keep making money comfortably. That's the total opposite of the direction Scott Adams has been going.
- bediger4000 4y agoEven before 2016, Adams treated the Pointy Haired Boss more sympathetically. I used to buy and enjoy the desk calendars, but Adams' humor had already lost its edge and relevance before he found Trump.
- muglug 4y agoEh I think you’re wrong about Hollywood: the big-name actors generally don’t spend their time talking politics. Most big actors understand that the more they talk politics, the less bankable they are, and the dollar wins out most of the time.
- the_doctah 4y agoAre we talking about the same Hollywood? This is sheer denial.
- objectivetruth 4y ago
- logicalmonster 4y agoI feel that you're answering a bit of a straw man argument. The topic wasn't how much of their time they spend talking about politics, it's what kind of opinions they express when they do choose to make some public statement related to politics. And the answer to that is that they know who butters their bread (Hollywood Producers) and whenever they say something political, more often than not it's not going to be something that causes them problem for their employment.
- nonameiguess 4y agoThey have to work with a lot of other people. A comic strip writer doesn't. It's a different level. Wealthy celebrities can become out of touch with the working class or rural Americans or whatever, but a solo creator can become out of touch with everybody.
- kmeisthax 4y agoThe greatest threat to most rich people is not war, starvation, poverty, or even revolution. It's getting cancelled on Twitter. The reason why Hollywood talks a lot about diversity, inclusion, feminism, gay rights, human rights, etc, is not because everyone in Hollywood independently decided those things were good. Far from it: this is the same town that circled the wagons around Roman Polanski, after all. And their institutions were built on the backs of bright-eyed female actors being drugged up and sexually harassed. They are genetically tainted[0] against social justice. What happened to make Hollywood care about this is very simple: the people who fought for the rights of the oppressed figured out how to weaponize social ostracism and public shame as a political tool. And this is not the first time this has happened, of course. The 50s saw Congress blatantly purge Hollywood of leftists through ostracism; and there's a whole right-wing strain of cancel culture[1] that rarely gets mentioned. Even deep-rooted tendencies have to bend in the face of external pressure. Ostracism isn't unique to rich people, of course. It can happen within any social structure[2]. The difference is where people get cancelled. If you've been fired from your job for going on right-wing rants all the time, you go and get another job. If you've been given the national spotlight by becoming Twitter's Villain of the Day, that reputation will stick to you forever. And that latter scenario is way more likely to occur to people who are already well-connected, well-known, and have something to lose. In other words, famous people tend to seem detached from the rest of us because they are looking down at us from space. In the same way that any one of us might be a little detached from, say, someone growing up in the 1950s. [0] As in, I am deliberately tarring Hollywood with the genetic fallacy. #NotAllMovieMoguls [1] Remember when they cancelled the Dixie Chicks for hating the Iraq War? [2] Which, inevitably, will form into a nested hierarchy of cliques.
- pydry 4y agoThat and he became a dedicated troll - something else the author probably could have mentioned.
- gadders 4y agoIf people with Fuck you money don't start saying "Fuck you!" then what's the point?
- bediger4000 4y agoYou've got a point, this is like the buddhist idea that without suffering, there's also no joy. However, the "fuck you" in that context is said to managers, bosses, employers and overseers. Adams, as a mass-market artist, will have trouble if he says "fuck you" to his audience. They're only indirectly his employers. As the audience notes, email feedback was key in "Dilbert's" early evolution and success. If Adams says "fuck you" to his audience, they have a means to say "fuck you" to him in return.
- gadders 4y agoIndeed but the point is as an "artist", once you reach a certain point of financial independence, you can afford to take that risk by saying things you believe to be true but that might alienate your audience. It's a lot harder with only $50 in the bank.
- ryandrake 4y agoI always thought “fuck you” money specifically meant the ability to say F-U to a job or boss you don’t like. It’s not some general license to be unpleasant or anti-social because you don’t have to care anymore.
- gadders 4y agoWell, for a cartoonist the boss is the newspapers or the audience.
- sershe 4y agoCould it be that he gained enough wealth that he can speak his mind? Reminds me of http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html http://www.paulgraham.com/say.html. Well, he can say whatever he wants! :)
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 4y agoWhat's up with it? Still looks hilarious. If it ran totally counter to experience nobody would care and it wouldn't be funny.
- somehnacct3757 4y agoAdams would like to pivot his career from cartoonist to political pundit. He's okay with burning bridges to do it because just about everything involving newspaper comics is bygone. He will be successful because the Incredibly Online people haven't yet learned the golden rule: don't feed the trolls. With this article, and these comments, consider him fed.
- bonestamp2 4y ago> So aggravated with being stifled by the “woke” masses is Adams that he recently shared a poll on Twitter to ask followers whether or not he should force himself into retirement by “getting cancelled”. He's playing himself. You can't get canceled as a political cartoonist -- it's normal for them to make a point through extreme, and often very "offensive", situations. That's their job.
- thefz 4y agoI do not appreciate the forced parallelism at the end. Dilbert is a social inept, the author said that strips are 30% based on his life, so the author is indeed a suffering social inept and so he is turning acid and angry at the world. I enjoy his strips and this post made me discover the more controversial ones, which I had missed. Thank you to the author.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- h2odragon 4y agoRemember "Doonesbury." Might've been funny once but degraded into political polemics for the last decade or more. Once you've got an audience the temptation to use their trust to persuade them of, well, anything; seems to be hard to resist. Moreso when you have opinions that others emphatically do not share. I can think of dozens of "liberal comics" that never tried to be funny, that were merely political propaganda in comic form. Most of Ted Rall's work, for example.
- SeanLuke 4y ago> Might've been funny once but degraded into political polemics for the last decade or more. What are you talking about? Doonesbury has been a proudly, and heavily, political comic since the 1960s.
- parrellel 4y agoHe's confusing it with Bloom County, prolly.
- danaris 4y agoBloom County? The comic that was pretty openly political back in 1983? Sure, there were stretches of time where it didn't address anything particularly politics-related, but to suggest that it was not political seems to quite spectacularly miss the point.
- parrellel 4y agoAh, but it was funny!
- bena 4y agoThis is akin to complaining about Rage Against the Machine getting political
- mmmpop 4y ago> What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert? What are you talking about? The OP made it clear that it was once funny and then it devolved into partisan preaching that lacked humor entirely. Never once did OP claim it wasn't political in the first place, why would you assume that?
- AinderS 4y agoSimple. Workplace complaints and management priorities have changed, and Dilbert followed. When Dilbert started, the government wasn't yet training employees how to "interrupt whiteness" [1], or Coca-Cola how to "be less white" [2], or Cigna simply forbidding hiring whites [3], nor did academia require mandatory diversity pledges for new hires and promotions [4]. Dilbert is doing what we are told art is supposed to do - hold a mirror to society. Do you like what you see? [1] https://www.city-journal.org/seattle-interrupting-whiteness-training https://www.city-journal.org/seattle-interrupting-whiteness-... [2] https://www.newsweek.com/coca-cola-facing-backlash-says-less-white-learning-plan-was-about-workplace-inclusion-1570875 https://www.newsweek.com/coca-cola-facing-backlash-says-less... (Note that in all the "debunkings" of this story, Coca-Cola never claims the presentation wasn't shown by their hired diversity experts as part of its diversity training. Merely that Coca-Cola the company didn't require those specific slides. But the slides are completely in-line with rhetoric championed by diversity experts routinely hired to train employees.) [3] https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/cigna-critical-race-theory-training-dont-say-brown-bag-lunch-mindful-religious-privilege https://www.washingtonexaminer.com/news/cigna-critical-race-... [4] https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-universitys-new-loyalty-oath-11576799749 https://www.wsj.com/articles/the-universitys-new-loyalty-oat...
- woodruffw 4y ago> Do you like what you see? I see a bunch of material misrepresentations, relying on people to react emotionally to phrases like "anti-white" instead of actually peeking under the covers. I do not see a reflection of society, except one that's been badly warped by individual and petty grievances.
- kayodelycaon 4y agoI kind of agree with this view. The problem I see Dilbert running into is the comic previously was aimed at corporate culture and specific jobs and stereotypes. In a way, it was punching up at more powerful, impersonal forces. Now, he appears to be punching down at people less powerful than him (individually) who have been fighting to get recognized. Despite these rather nasty policies governments and companies have implemented, it hasn't fixed much and just polarized the issue. And now Dilbert come in targeting harmful and ineffective policies and hitting a lot of innocent people in the crossfire.
- runesofdoom 4y ago
- helf 4y ago[flagged]
- rootbear 4y agoI am a boomer. My brain is fine. Please do not make unsubstantiated generalizations about an entire, highly diverse cohort.
- helf 4y agoI’m sure the other 60 million of you feel the same way. Sarcasm aside, I take your point on gross generalizations and I’ll refrain from it in the future in my comments ;)
- romwell 4y agoDilbert, sadly, has gone full cuckoo. (That's to say, Scott Addams, the comic's author, went deep into la-la-land, and never came back).
- rcarmo 4y agoI used to love Dilbert because it echoed (down to every single minute detail) my work environment (which, like Adams', was a telco). Then it became creepy because it anticipated everything that was coming to pass (sometimes the very day, sometimes within a week, we'd have reorgs, discussions with Marketing, trips to our equivalent of Elbonia). The peak, for me, was when Dogbert was hailed as a cloud guru the week I started leading a cloud transformation project... Now it's just borderline insane, but still eerily realistic, despite what one might think of Adams himself (I don't think they should be directly associated in some contexts, and it is just a cartoon, not a political essay).
- jacquesm 4y ago> it is just a cartoon, not a political essay It wouldn't be the first time that 'it's just a joke' got used to be able to get away with some very distasteful politics. I don't think Adams sees it as 'just a cartoon', when placed in context of his other writings (for instance: on twitter) it is clear that he's using Dilbert as a platform for politics.
- thereddaikon 4y agoAh Elbonia, the nation where every member of the government is secretly a traitor trying to sabotage them.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- froggertoaster 4y agoThis article is way too long for its message.
- sgt 4y agoDilbert is still funny. We have an old archive. Just ignore new stuff.
- drcongo 4y agoThat's an awful lot of words just to say Adams is unhinged.
- npteljes 4y agoThat's how why it's not an ad hominem, but a more substantial argument.
- clutchdude 4y agoI find it humorous that the usual tone deaf HR stuff suddenly becomes a lightning rod of "wokeness" for certain folks because it personally offends them. But with Scott Adams, you can see that this sort of stuff always irked him - look back at Dilbert poking fun at sensitivity training in the 90's - he did have the progressive take of making Asok and Alice as the equally, if not more, competent than their peers(ed: though fraught with presentation errors itself) Now however, he has taken an approach that is as subtle as a Ben Garrison "comic."
- tenpies 4y agoIs it now well known that Dilbert exists solely because Scott Adams was told - as a young executive - that he would not be promoted further because he is a white male? [1] --- [1] https://twitter.com/scottadamssays/status/1277667276573954049 https://twitter.com/scottadamssays/status/127766727657395404...
- dragonwriter 4y agoIt is well-known that Adams claimed that long after the fact, which is somewhat different from it being known to be true.
- leereeves 4y agoAre you accusing him of lying? And if you are, do you have any evidence? Evidence would be interesting, but unsupported accusations don't add anything to the conversation. Anyone could respond "he claimed that...which is somewhat different from it being known to be true" after any claim. It's just a way of derailing discussion and reducing the cognitive dissonance of a statement you'd rather not believe.
- evgen 4y ago> Evidence would be interesting, but unsupported accusations don't add anything to the conversation. Seeing as how Adams has no evidence whatsoever that a large corporation whose HR department would be well-versed in what they can and cannot say (as well as what they should and should not say) to employees I think the burden of proof rests on Adams.
- jacquesm 4y agoHe's gone off the deep end. I've seen the same happen with some friends and wrote about it, it's a sad thing when formerly intelligent human beings start losing it and fail to recover only to sink further and further into their own version of reality.
- Kiro 4y agoThis is a perfect example: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31239403 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=31239403 A highly respected and intelligent individual being delusional and refusing to acknowledge it.
- NeonVice 4y agoFunny how you criticize someone who pokes fun of people who fall into their own version of reality (and a giant corporate structure who encourages everyone to fall in line) as the one who is sinking into his own version of reality.
- cosmiccatnap 4y agoThe wild part is that you just pulled a Dilbert with this comment...
- swalls 4y agoHis actions are definitely of someone who is strongly connected to reality. https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Scott_Adams https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Scott_Adams (Of particular note: the "Predictions from a stable genius" where he goes truly off the deep end.)
- jacquesm 4y agoSome of those quotes... "But if you take away my access to hugging, I will probably start killing, just to feel something"
- aldebran 4y agoIt feels like that started happening around 2014-2015. I genuinely wonder if he is afflicted with some mental issue. I stopped following him and the comics when he started blogging about how great trump was.
- bluedino 4y agoI work at a Fortune 100 and we used to have Dilbert comics plastered up all over the place. Breakroom, cubicles, randomly around the copier, etc. A lot of them might not have been the best thing to have up at work as they talked about 'evil corporations', slacking off at work, making fun of inept management... but they stayed up. A short while back, someone complained that the Elbonian strips were a 'racist trope', and down they all went. It happened right about the time when we 'formed a global alliance' with an off-shore consulting firm and displaced over half of our in-house IT staff. I can't imagine what would happen if the strips in the OP were stuck on the lounge fridge.
- jmyeet 4y ago
- ajot 4y ago> It's just conservative talking points because in the real world, nobody actually does that. I present you Sergia, our (in)famous 60 years old trans. https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5544173/Argentinian-man-legally-changes-gender-retire-earlier.html https://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-5544173/Argentinian...
- cholantesh 4y agoAnd as we know, a rare anecdote reported on in a sensationalist rag is credible evidence of a widespread phenomenon.
- dahart 4y agoHearsay from an unnamed relative printed in a tabloid is evidence? Even if it were true, what does a single case prove?
- ajot 4y agoWell, sure it is a tabloid, but it's a real news from here. And I'm pretty sure it started a trend, even if it's not big enough to be reported yet.
- dahart 4y agoWhy is it real news? Why are you certain of this person’s story and motivation? What makes you sure it started a trend? Where are the other reports?
- fluoridation 4y agoIt's unclear to me what kind of answer you expect. It seems like you're being skeptical of the concept of news itself, except that which one has personally verified.
- danschumann 4y ago"But underneath that is profound loneliness – the kind only a genius in a world full of idiots could possibly understand." Are you mind-reading loneliness into Scott(he has never said he's lonely)? Btw the edgy cartoons are the funny ones. Are we not allowed to talk about the new vectors people take advantage of in the new system? That in and of itself seems like a vector(create a problem people aren't allowed to talk about).
- rayiner 4y ago> Dave is hired merely as an act of workplace tokenism before wrapping up with what appears to be an attempt at a thinly-veiled transphobic joke. That particular strip is actually a hilarious joke that is probably lost on people who have never been in the position of being the minority who isn’t meeting expectations for “adding diversity.” It’s not directed to trans people at all, but rather pokes fun at some people’s rigid notions of race (it’s defined by how other people perceive you) in contrast with their fluid notions of gender (it’s defined by how you perceive yourself).
- fknorangesite 4y ago
- beckingz 4y ago
- fknorangesite 4y ago
- rayiner 4y agoThe helicopter joke cruelly and flippantly dismisses the feelings and distress felt by trans people. That’s not what’s going on in the Dilbert strip. The punchline isn’t “it’s ridiculous for a minority to identify as white.” The butt of the joke is instead the white boss, who wants the minority employee to fit into a socially constructed identity for “diverse” people. And mocking the Judith Butler theories embraced by mostly white progressives isn’t the same as attacking the disadvantaged groups that white progressives like to use as shields.
- tim333 4y agoMaybe but identifying as a different race is a thing https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transracial_(identity) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transracial_(identity)
- ChildOfChaos 4y agoI don't see any issues with the Dilbert strips highlighted. I've learned just to enjoy things that I find entertainment from and not follow there creators on twitter because that is usually just a recipe for disappointment. I'd rather avoid drama and division, i'd rather just brush my teeth than worry about what the CEO of my toothpaste brand thinks about politics, yes i'm all for fighting for justice and rights, but i'd rather stick to the issues in front of me.
- a_shovel 4y agoFrom the description of the second comic shown in the article: > ... Dave threatens to report PHB (Pointy-Haired Boss) to the company’s HR department should he misgender the new engineer. It is then implied that Dave has switched preferred pronouns with the intent of catching cohorts in a trap rather than out of any true reflection of self. There are at least a couple of things wrong with this, in my view. Do you interpret it differently?
- throwaway4aday 4y agoI think they'll have a hard time telling you if they interpret it differently since you haven't given any indication of which things you believe are wrong and the reasons you believe them to be so.
- mmmpop 4y ago
- kemayo 4y agoI used to read Dilbert when I was a kid in the 90s, which perhaps made me a weird kid. With that background, it's actually quite strange to see the examples of recent strips this article presents -- because they show the pointy-haired boss as the "reasonable" character. His role earlier on was almost-always as the deranged influence of management, causing problems for others. (I feel that a similar joke ~20 years ago would probably have used Dilbert as the viewpoint character, frustrated at his coworkers' abuses of the system.) Seeing him framed as the audience-identification character suggests things about Adams' shifting viewpoint, I guess?
- NeonVice 4y agoThe pointy-haired boss is still clueless. Now, the world around him is just nonsensically shifting in a way that also makes most of us feel clueless, so we can empathize.
- helf 4y agoWhat is Up With Dilbert is Scott Adams is a Boomer and the older he gets the more obvious it becomes. I used to love a lot of the older Dilbert but lately it's just ... irritating.
- PopAlongKid 4y agoI have long viewed Mike Judge[0] as the anti-Scott Adams. He works with many of the same topics but the result is far, far funnier. And he does not try to shove any particular political point of view at the expense of basic humor. In reviewing Idiocracy, Salon stated, "Judge's gimlet eye is so ruthless that at times his politics seem to border on South Park libertarianism".[73] A writer for the libertarian magazine Reason seems to agree, comparing King of the Hill to the anti-authoritarian point of view of South Park and The Simpsons, though he calls the show more populist, noting the disdain King of the Hill seems to have for bureaucrats, professionals, and big-box chains.[74] Still, Judge denies having political messages in his shows, saying in an IGN interview about King of the Hill:[72] "I try to not let the show get too political. To me, it's more social than political I guess you'd say, because that's funnier. I don't really like political reference humor that much. Although I liked the episode "Hank's Bully" where Hank's talking to the mailman and he says, 'Why would anyone want to lick a stamp that has Bill Clinton on it?' To me that's just like more of a character thing about Hank than it is a political joke or anything. I don't want to do a bunch of stuff about the war, particularly." [Wikipedia] [0]King of the Hill, Office Space, Beavis and Butthead, Idiocracy, Silicon Valley
- the_only_law 4y ago> And he does not try to shove any particular political point of view at the expense of basic humor Have you seen the new Beavis and Butt-Head movie, it was very much more explicit in making lazy political jokes, albeit mostly for one filler scene.
- bena 4y agoAre we talking about the scene where they discover white privilege? I think that scene perfectly encapsulates what the poster is talking about. Beavis and Butthead are morons. We laugh at them because they are beyond stupid, they don't understand things in the most comic way possible. So they learn of the concept of white privilege and they take it at face value. They accept the premise and they go on their little rampage because that's what they think it allows them to do. Even though they are wrong. They are a caricature of the entire concept. And everyone can laugh at it. The left because, to them, it's 'lifting the veil' so to speak. They are taking white privilege to the extreme conclusion. While no one outright acts like that, they feel there's the element of truth to it. The right because, like I said, no one outright acts like that. When Beavis and Butthead get their comeuppance, they can say, "See, even though they are white males, they still can't do whatever they want. There are rules."
- biophysboy 4y agoScott Adams is yet another one of the media “renegades”, who posture themselves as a secret source of knowledge, rather than a bad actor feeding on widespread doubt and distrust. Typically, their content is misanthropic (aren’t the sheeple libs stupid?) and hyper-focused on ephemeral culture war noise (look at what libs of TikTok found!). These people fixate so much on narrow issues that they totally miss larger cultural trends that refute their apocalyptic fears: Biden won, Eric Adams won, the SF education board was recalled, wokeness/CRT bills passed in many red states, roe v wade overturned, etc etc etc. Adams is a fucking idiot. Most of the “intellectual dark web” are as well.
- allan_s 4y agoI still think it's AS funny (not necessarily funny, just not less, not more) . Dilbert has always been about making fun of thing Scott Adams may find absurd in corporate environment regardless of political correctness[0] it's just that the article author reached the point where he thinks is serious is what Scott Adams. It's the old "you can joke with anybody, you can joke about everything, you just can't joke about everything with everybody" [0] https://dilbert.com/strip/2015-07-13 https://dilbert.com/strip/2015-07-13 -> talking about owning slaves (and I didn't need to search far, just put a random year )
- andrewclunn 4y agoDilbert used to mock people I mocked and was funny. Now it's mocking me and needs to be cancelled! /s
- Gunax 4y agoWhat happened was racism became acceptable in society, so long as you were using the rural hick stereotype, aka 'deplorables'. We should be asking what the hell is up with society.
- gadders 4y agoWe have the same in the UK with the term "gammon".
- frazbin 4y agoFolks this is not a good thread for sarcasm. Anyway, good morning Dilberts!
- dariusj18 4y agoThe token hire strip would be funny if it wasn't an actual reflection of the strip and it's lack of diversity (and the obvious reticence of the creator to consider diversity as important). What would have been a smarter and less controversial move would be to subtly introduce people of color over time, then add a strip about a diversity hire, with the other characters visibly getting ticked off.
- thiht 4y agoMaybe his workplace is not diverse and he wants to reflect that. My workplace is not diverse. And I also don’t believe in the importance of diversity, there’s nothing wrong with that. That doesn’t mean I’m against diversity nor that I don’t enjoy it.
- the_doctah 4y agoThere are like 5 main (human) characters. 1 is Indian and 1 is female. Your argument is a strawman.
- dariusj18 4y agoIt is an understandable situation, but there are more people in the comic than the main characters. There are often consultants, designers, dates, and other characters introduced all the time. I'm not someone who believes you need to shoehorn in diversity, it's just something to consider in this day and age. When introducing a new primary, secondary or background character, why wouldn't they be X? If the answer is, "because they contemporaneously are more likely to be Y", sometimes that's because of systematic problems that don't self correct without active social awareness. I had forgotten about Asok, of course race and ethnicity get even more charged when you get into Indian culture and American corporate culture.
- ChrisMarshallNY 4y agoAdams has been like that for years. If anyone remembers the DNRC period[0], it was full of really nasty stuff. I do not consider him to be a nice person, but I have enjoyed Dilbert, quite a bit. These days, I don't really follow Dilbert, anymore. Adams just got so bad, that I couldn't follow Dilbert, without thinking about his creator. [0] https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/208698 https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/208698
- cholantesh 4y agoThis is definitely not the first time he's allowed his comics to be a vehicle for his bad takes, though he seems to be doing it with stunning frequency because his retirement is imminent.
- cat_plus_plus 4y agoDilbert was on point in the 90s and is on point today. 2022 Silicon Valley is full of activists with a chip on the shoulder who constantly vent on corporate forums, creating hostile environment for everyone else. Many of us has been working in diverse workspaces for past 30 years and no decent person mistreated a woman, a black coworker or a gay person. OF COURSE there are always jerks, but the vast majority hated them and reported them to HR even back then. I also worked as the sole non-Asian in a startup before and had no serious complaints on account of race. Maybe I had to try some new food at offsites, or ask people to switch to English from time to time, big deal.I will not tolerate group shaming and neither should Scott Adams.
- spicymaki 4y agoWhat has happened to Scott Adams is what happened to a lot of people in the last 20 years, internet radicalization. I first noticed this with Islamic extremism in the 2000s, now the same thing is happening to liberals and conservatives in 2010s. The way we engage on the internet is toxic and over time leads to radicalization and violence. We have not provided anyone with outlets to compromise or pathways to understanding. We just live in filter bubbles cursing each other every day for the most minor of offenses. Tech companies have also continually isolated people from healthy community engagement.
- josteink 4y agoAnd social media automatically putting everyone inside self re-affirming bubbles has made everything worse for everyone.
- jayd16 4y agoSome of the referenced strips from the article are just bad. Who deals with this stuff actually and not in an imagined way? No one is complaining about made up cramps and if they did you would just tell them to file the sick day. Dilbert used to be easy to identify with but these just don't seem close to reality at all.
- vehemenz 4y agoI imagined, based on the title of this article, that Dilbert had turned into something like the Babylon Bee. (If you don't know, the Babylon Bee is a deeply unfunny attempt at a right-wing Onion.) Instead, I found myself laughing at all of these comics. Yes, Adams has gone full nutjob, but the restraints of the comic strip format seem to keep his more bizarre views in check.
- gadders 4y agoFrom the article: >> This, of course, mirrors an ongoing controversy in certain conservative circles over the use of gender-neutral terms in place of the word ‘woman’ in order to include trans men and non-binary individuals in increasingly pertinent conversations about bodily autonomy. I think is a terrible strawman. >> This, of course, mirrors an ongoing controversy in certain gender critical circles over the use of gender-neutral terms in place of the word ‘woman’ in order to maintain women-only spaces. There you go.
- a_shovel 4y agoNah, it's pretty accurate from my experience.
- tasty_freeze 4y agoIt is very odd that Adams says he is an "ultra liberal" because he believes women should have a right to choose to end a pregnancy. I have a hard time thinking of any liberal who thinks that position is "ultra liberal". It seems to be only an extremely conservative person thinks that position is ultra liberal. Adams has often said nutty things then when there is blow-back falls back on "it was just a joke and some people have no sense of humor," then goes on to say things that indicate that he was serious about it all along. I try to avoid Adams, but the story I remember best is him claiming that he was voting for Hillary Clinton in 2016 because, "Clinton supporters have convinced me – and here I am being 100% serious – that my safety is at risk if I am seen as supportive of Trump" He also said in 2020, "If Biden is elected, there's a good chance you will be dead within the year." That was just a standalone tweet, not the punchline of some joke. He followed it up with, "Republicans will be hunted." Some ultra-liberal.
- Waterluvian 4y agoScott Adams is a ridiculously thin skinned MAGA-type on Twitter. If you ever want to talk to him, just disagree with one of his hot takes and he almost always engages you. I eventually had to block him.
- RajT88 4y ago> But in the process of addressing whatever the problem at hand is cold and analytically – whether it’s writing up a report or a securing a second date – he fails to consider the human elements involved. I definitely know people like this. They believe that the way people should work internally is according to hard, cold logic, and that any sort of deviation from logic is a problem to be addressed with them. The problem obviously is that people don't work that way, and never will. Not even the people trying to hold others to that standard - they just take their feelings and emotional needs and rationalize them into some logical framework without recognizing that they don't originate from that framework. ...To the extent that they acknowledge these things at all! It's a profound over-investment in classical intelligence, without any investment in emotional intelligence. > But underneath that is profound loneliness – the kind only a genius in a world full of idiots could possibly understand. Adams is lonely not because he's a genius, but because he likely drives the people in his life away. See: Above. I have certainly seen such brilliant and logical people struggle with this. Getting into shouting matches over why the most rational thing to do is to date them and not break up.
- _Algernon_ 4y agoLooking at the strips in the article, it looks like he is still doing what he always has: satirising work-place culture by exaggerating it. It just happens that work-place culture in many places is "woke" culture now. Perhaps it is one sighted with where his focus, though I can't judge that based on a cherry picked selection of strips such as this.
- jeanlou 4y agoThe cancel culture is strong in this one... At what point did we loose the ability to make fun of ourselves? The world used to be such a pleasant place.
- jeanlou 4y agolose*
- xbar 4y agoDilbert remains some of the most cutting, divisive and fearless American satire. I'm sure some people are deeply hurt buy it, but I would hate to shy away from conversations about this topics.
- robd003 4y agoWhat's wrong with mocking HR? It's so easy to have a meritocracy rather than measuring the immutable characteristics of your employees... I can't fathom how HR can justify selective racism without lawsuits galore.
- dragonwriter 4y ago> It's so easy to have a meritocracy Evidence for this claim would be useful.
- tpoacher 4y agoWhat the hell is up with random people trying to character assassinate Scott Adams all the time? With complete falsehoods too. It's bizzare! I listen to his podcast every now and then. The guy's funny, and has a knack for disassembling news into their dark patterns and pointing out absurdity. Definitely not the same guy portrayed in this article. > [Dramatic pause] And inevitably, this will be what leads to the downfall of Dilbert. Geez. Drama much? I can almost see the author patting herself on the back when she wrote that sentence. What a waste of a life.
- csours 4y agoPlease try to defer judgement as you read this comment, it may take some turns you don't expect. Bottom Line Up Front: Progressives should rework their messaging so that it does not highlight and reinforce differences. If you look at Conservative media criticism of Progressives, you'll see a lot of Anti-Wokeness. Progressives need to understand why this criticism is so effective. Pushing the envelope makes people uncomfortable. There is a very powerful emotional drive to return to a comfortable state, especially when we feel like we are attacked. Examining the media split of the 2010's, several things come to mind: 1. Directed and funded media pushing a conservative agenda. 2. The Tea Party Movement and Trumpism. 3. The end of shame as an effective tool. To expand on the end of shame - in the past, people were more likely to change their behavior in order to avoid being called out for prejudice or discrimination. This doesn't work anymore. Another place you can see this is in the reaction to public masking requests. Shame did not work to get people to mask. Shame is very motivating, but the motivation does not always take the direction intended. If another group is willing to offer cover for beliefs or actions, then individuals will be motivated to join that group instead of being shamed. If you can find something for "ashamed" people to be proud of, they will flock to that banner. This brings us back to messaging. "Make America Great Again" just sounds like a good message, if you can divorce it from the source. People who are tired of being attacked or shamed may find comfort in that slogan. MAGA does not say anything about race or gender, which is part of why Trump found voters (a relatively small part of his voters) from minority races and women. Trump could not say that white men should be proud of being white (just think of the implications), but he could say that Americans should be proud of being Americans. ---- Now. After all of that, you may have some opinions about me, so let me tell you a little about myself. I believe that structural inequality, including structural racism and structural sexism, is very real and very damaging. I believe that individuals should practice anti-racism. I think that anti-racism training that intentionally includes shame is NOT effective or good. I don't have a strong belief that Progressive politicians are trying to shame white men, but I do see a lot of this shaming in less formal settings, and in communications and training material. Some of it may make sense in context, but it is never good. I do think that it is natural to feel some shame when we reflect on the past. I don't think we have to live with that every day forever. There needs to be a path to resolution.
- 4y ago
- fmajid 4y agoScott Adams was always like this. I was at a book signing of his in San Francisco circa 2000 where he was ranting unironically about how straight white men are discriminated against in Fortune 500 corporations so he had no recourse but to become an independent cartoonist.
- deleted 4y ago[deleted]
- Krisjohn 4y agoI regret every cent I ever spend on Dilbert crap.