You didn’t sit uncorrected for long. I hate it when I debunk myself, I feel so proud and cheap at the same time.
This is a good joke that resonates, but just in case anyone is interested in the origins of Black History Month…
Also, Adams is a racist nutjob who nobody should have to hear from ever again.
We aim to please, or barring that, at least to tickle.
Stranger
Right. YouTube algorithms send most people watching too many cat videos, or something equally banal. But if you have tendencies towards racism, YouTube, etc., can fan that flame.
He’s only 65? Most 65 year olds still have some mental and social competency. But it could be early-onset dementia. (I’m not claiming that all racists have dementia, but most racists are a little careful about where they post stuff like that. Senile people aren’t.)
I don’t think that’s it. Adams has been… eccentric for decades now. I think if anything, as he gets older he’s giving fewer fucks and isn’t bothering to filter himself as much as he used to.
Yes, I think that’s true, though I also think his divorce accelerated some of that as well.
Back around the turn of the century there was a short-lived Dilbert animated series. As it became apparent that renewal for a third season was unlikely, Adams reached out to his fans, urging them to… Watch the show? Recommend the show to their friends? Support the show’s advertisers?
Nope, nothing sensible like that. He urged them to make “affirmations” declaring that the show would be renewed and thereby getting it renewed through The Power Of Positive Thinking.
Didn’t work out for some reason…
I haven’t read Dilbert since learning Adams was an MRA. That was … a long time ago, and Dilbert was still amusing though rarely laugh-out-loud funny.
I miss the strip as I remember it, but not enough to restart reading it.
I thought we were living in a “cancel culture.” If anyone deserves to be cancelled, it’s a person saying white people shouldn’t interact with Black people. I guess we’re not in a cancel culture. We can still point out how reprehensible he is, though.
Or vice versa.
In one of his books (it may be The Dilbert Principle but there are so many now I’m going to going to bother trying to figure out which one), Adams relays an anecdote where he decided to get an MBA at some top flight business school and needed to take the GMAT but he kept getting a subpar score on practice tests. So he did a bunch of affirmations based upon some obscure book he read (not Peale or Napoleon Hill, someone earlier I think…maybe Prentice Mulford) and passed the actual GMAT with a stellar score. So, you can see where he gets the idea that having his fans do some kind of affirmation ritual was going to save his shitty show.
He’s been a weird guy for a long time, and he’s basically coasted on a marginal ability to draw barely recognizable human-shaped figures buoyed by pithy observations of the clockwork inanity in corporate culture, which has apparently given him a sense of entitlement about the depth of his social and political views. I honestly can’t remember the last time I even saw a Dilbert cartoon posted in someone’s office, although to be fair we’re more of a Randall Munroe kind of shop.
Stranger
Maybe it’s the “boiled frog” idea. Adams has been nutty and somewhat nasty for a long time, I doubt any of this is shocking to many people. It’s sort of like what Trump did; he’s been so vocally bad for so long that it’s hard to get too worked up over one specific thing.
Canceling usually happens when someone that you like suddenly does something you see as awful. Kevin Spacey was extremely popular and successful, then allegations of sexual assault come out and he’s a pariah. Roseanne Barr was pretty successful and while she always had her detractors she still had an overall favorable public image, despite the occasional controversy (like her awful, awful National Anthem performance). So when she made that infamous racist tweet, it almost instantly sabotaged her resurgence she was enjoying with the revival of her original Roseanne sitcom (where her character was killed off, and the show continues with a rename).
When someone is just always like that, though, they just don’t get canceled. Maybe the lesson is that it doesn’t really matter if you’re bad or good in the public eye, as long as you’re consistent and you know what your audience wants.
Thanks. That explains a lot.
There’s also the fact that, as you get crazier, you gradually lose customers/readers/supporters, who then have no reason to follow you, and see how much more crazy you’ve become. I stopped reading Dilbert, and paying attention to Scott Adams, quite some time before he went MAGA. The only way I’ve heard about his nonsense is in threads like this one. The people who are still regularly reading Dilbert are the ones who’ve been okay with his slide into insanity so far.
I quit reading his strip years ago, when it was merely unfunny and boring.
I stopped reading Dilbert when it stopped being funny. I guess that was in the vicinity of a decade ago.
This could be good news … i was thinking of posting my old collection of Dilbert
books from ~20 years ago on Freecycle. Maybe i could get $$$ from some
right wing nutjob.
I can attest that YouTube’s algorithms can send you down some pretty weird rabbit holes.
I heard a group on the radio (OK, actually my public radio livestream) and looked them up on YouTube. That led me from North Carolina country music to Appalachian music to Irish Music. Now whenever I go to YouTube to listen to music, it insists on serving me up Irish rebel songs that are all about doing unspeakable things to the British Army and the fun you can have with a pound of C4 and some nails.
I’m in no danger of being radicalized that way, my ancestors are mostly British, and the ones that aren’t are Ulster Scots. But if I had any sympathy for the IRA, Youtube would be encouraging it.
I can see how YouTube could encourage someone who is already inclined that way in a radical direction.
Scott Adams is a guy whose only contribution to society is a comic strip that pointed out how white collar labor can be dehumanizing. For some reason this means we are all cursed to hear every stupid word that comes out of his mouth.
Newspapers are dropping Dilbert as a result of Adams’ latest rant:
I’m sure he’ll more than make up that money with his next grift of conservatives. One can make a very very comfortable living in the US that way.