It’s funny because my ex-wife got me a small Dilbert Beanie-Baby-looking thing a few years ago. I didn’t have the heart to tell her I disliked Dilbert and Scott Adams. Just like you, she remembered that I was a fan, but that was almost 25 years ago (when my ex and I had just started dating). At least it was just the one item.
(Technically it was a gift from our daughter for Father’s Day, but my ex picked it out, so it was more-or-less from her.)
What a funny coincidence. Hey, that thing is around here, so I’ll take a photo of it and upload it.
I’m not going to get rid of it, because it was a Father’s Day gift, and it was given with good intentions. But still, ugh.
BTW, regarding the whole point of the Dilbert comic strip; that everyone else is an idiot, including management, human resources and my own co-workers. Now that maybe true but it might also mean that you don’t understand everything. That policy that sounds stupid might be necessary for reasons you don’t know. And so forth.
Dilbert in the 90s really spoke to a certain type of middle management techy corporate drone. Now that I think about it, a lot of that type has gone MAGA. There’s probably a research paper in this somewhere.
Certainly all but one of the coworkers I had in the late 1990s who were big Dilbert fans are MAGA now. We were 25-35 tech savvy folks back then, now we are late middle aged folks either approaching retirement or in early retirement.
Even back then the engineers among us (either degrees engineers or technicians who had been promoted after years in the trenches) were the most chauvinistic and egotistical folks I have worked with outside of the executive suite.
Did they pick Adams as the first celeb death of 2026? I figure putting Adams somewhere in 2026 wasn’t too hard given the diagnosis, but picking him being first of 2026 is something of an achievement.
You don’t pick the first, you pick 13 and hope to get the most points by the end of the year. If one of your picks is the first (Opening Kickoff Award), or the last (Final Hours Award), or a couple of other criteria you get an extra award. Adams was not the first 2026, he was the third. The first ones were Erich von Däniken and Bob Weir, both died three days before Adams.
Actually, I ended up not picking Adams in this year’s death pool. I was worried he was faking reports of his own ill health so I went with people who seemed more credibly ill.
Adams then demonstrated that a maga can fuck you over by telling the truth as well as by telling a lie.
We live in a time when we seem to be encouraged to treat each other harshly. Certainly Adams is an example of this in two ways. His own words were foolish and hurtful. Here and elsewhere he is paid with his own coin.
I see it differently. Adams was a smart enough fellow. He had talent. I suppose he was nice to his dog. He was much like those who now condemn him. I suppose he just got sucked into the universe of anger and hate that is the Internet.
Add to that what seems to have been his desire to take edgy, avant-garde positions and boom you got his downfall.
But unlike many others, I do not judge the misled or foolish too strictly. After all, we are all much the same. But for the Grace of God…
But please feel free to pile on me and Adams. I doubt it will do you any good or make you really feel superior.