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Simple. Workplace complaints and management priorities have changed, and Dilbert followed. When Dilbert started, the government wasn't yet training employees h

Simple. 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...

kayodelycaon 4y ago
I 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.
- listless 4y ago
  I would say the fact that companies have so over-rotated on this stuff means he is still punching up. It’s no longer a marginalized position when corporations are now codifying culture war issues as part of their ideology.
  - deleted 4y ago
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  - kayodelycaon 4y ago
    I said he is trying to punch up, but he's missing the mark and coming off as punching down. :)
- CoastalCoder 4y ago
  There's definitely a perception that people forcing diversity training, pronoun protocols, etc. are in positions of power over regular employees. Perhaps attacking people in previously marginalized groups is punching down, but attacking HR DEI enforcers is definitely punching up.
  - horsawlarway 4y ago
    This is my take. Personally - I think Scott Adams is more than a little bit batshit insane, but I certainly don't think he's punching down in the strips presented here.
    - kelseyfrog 4y ago
      In the strips shown in the article it's easy to see who he's punching at. If it was up at corporate HR policy, we would see Catbert. Instead we see Dilbert's peers. Dilbert works by personifying roles. It doesn't do much in the way of role subtext.
      - horsawlarway 4y ago
        I disagree - it's very clearly trying to mock the policies that allow this kind of behavior. Those policies aren't coming from the peers.
        kelseyfrog 4y ago
        Dilbert's very clear on its role personification. That's what makes the comic work. It's how Dilbert is every engineer, PHB is every clueless boss, and Wally is every elder peer, Asok is every junior peer. That's what makes the comic relatable. It also, as the article points out, what provides constraints to these characters as well. If it was mocking HR policy, then it would be signified with Catbert. It's not. It's very simple.
    - sterlind 4y ago
      The issues themselves aren't punching down, but the way he's using the characters is. Imagine Alice deciding to falsely accuse the PHB of sexual harassment to get rid of him. Or Asok becoming a manager and only promoting members of his caste. I feel like this is like that. I transitioned at work, and I've tried really hard not to be this character. I asked people to use my new name and pronouns but never complained to HR if they didn't. I made an effort to be as friendly and hardworking as possible, so that my conservative coworkers wouldn't see me through the lens of the "culture wars" like this that they're fed. This kind of comic was the stereotype I faced. It worked for me. I changed peoples' minds, got respect for being reliable no matter my looks, and eventually started passing so nobody remembers I'm trans anymore.
- kforo9n 4y ago
- yonaguska 4y ago
  How do you target harmful and ineffective policies without hitting a lot of innocent people though? Affirmative action is a harmful and ineffective policy, but if you speak out against it, you are racist. I'm not here to argue whether you agree with that or not, just using it as an example of something you simply can't criticize without offending innocent people. More to the task at hand though- I question if he's even really punching down anymore(or even if this is possible- societal status shouldn't shield you from criticism, and there is a difference between critique and baseless insults). Anecdotally, one of my friends was interviewing a candidate- and the other person conducting the interview asked a thinly veiled political question. The candidate was rejected because of their stance, or lack thereof on this question. This was acknowledged internally, and embraced, and several meetings ensued until HR got involved and had to tell engineers that no- they couldn't discriminate on the basis of political beliefs. And that being sneaky about it by bringing up controversial tech figures in the community and gauging reactions was not actually legal.
  - hirundo 4y ago
    In the U.S. it is not generally illegal to discriminate on the basis of political beliefs.
- cm2187 4y ago
  HR policies and management jargon are up, not down from the average employee.
- edflsafoiewq 4y ago
  The entire punching up/punching down dichotomy is just a theoretical justification for "rules for thee but not for me". It's all well and good when the PHB is at the other end of the cartoonist's pen, but when they come for my sacred cows, well that's different.
- selfmodruntime 4y ago
  > Now, he appears to be punching down at people less powerful than him (individually) who have been fighting to get recognized. I don't feel like this is true. The comic where one character identified as "white" isn't punching down at black people. There are no people of color who identify as white. He is punching up at insane corporate rules that make the color of a person's skin important when it comes to hiring: an inherently racist thing. The comic where a character identifies as a "birthing human" isn't punching down at trans people. It's punching up at corporation rules which need a specific reason on why an employee can go home or not. It shouldn't matter why you're feeling unwell, go home if you're sick. Corporate policies on its employees should be as broad as possible and not target individual minorities and their intricacies.
  - maxsilver 4y ago
    > The comic where a character identifies as a "birthing human" isn't punching down at trans people. Yes it is. It's literally The One Joke™, with a thin veneer of corporate policy wrapped around it as plausible deniability.
  - kayodelycaon 4y ago
    The issue isn't so much with Dilbert as the context Dilbert is in. Let me try to explain this. The sarcastic "I am X identifying as Y" joke is a good example. The structure of the joke is Y is something no one will seriously identify as. This means "X = Black, Y = White" pattern matches. For the LGBT "context", the common usage of sarcastic "I am X identifying as Y" translates to "I don't think transgender identities are valid". The Non-LGBT context doesn't assign a specific meaning to the phrase. This sets up a scenario where one group has a rule saying "X -> Y" and another has "X -> ?". And here's where the problem comes in. Comic strips have limited bandwidth and they rely on context to be understood. So when Dilbert says "I am Black identifying as White", the LGBT context immediately translates this to Y, wherewas the Non-LGBT context does a page fault and looks elsewhere for what it could mean. In isolation, this looks like LGBT people are being overly sensitive, but every human is "overly sensitive" in some way. We all operate in our own context based on what we've experienced.
- gadders 4y ago
  >>The problem I see Dilbert running into is the comic previously was aimed at corporate culture This is the corporate culture now. Or at least a caricatured view of it (as it always was).
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- radarsat1 4y ago
  Indeed, I can't help but notice that in the first 4 comics cited in the article, the pointy-haired-boss is the protagonist and the employee the antagonist. Definitely seems like a reversal from what I knew Dilbert to represent in the past.
- fgopq 4y ago
  The demographic most likely to claim to be the opposite sex, and use that to try to hold control over other people, are straight white men. I mean just look at how many there are in tech companies - and typically comfortably wealthy too. He's punching up no matter how you look at it.
giraffe_lady 4y ago
So you're saying he's taking a reasonable stance in reaction to these totally real pressures?
ravenstine 4y ago
It really makes me wonder what the common experience is for others not just in tech but Corporate America in general. I myself have run into anti-white and anti-male phenomena, unconscious bias pseudoscience training, diversity pledges, and so on, as have now others in my peer group. Dilbert's commentary has so far been entirely appropriate based on my experience, hence it's puzzling to me when people think there's something particularly conservative about being concerned or critical about these societal changes. Are said changes overblown? Do these people merely think that employees or companies taking positions on "whiteness" see it as totally normal and as something no one would have an issue with? It's just odd to me.
- deleted 4y ago
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- oneoff786 4y ago
  As a consultant who sees a lot of different big company cultures, and even done some work specifically on diversity stuff: They’re overblown. I’ve yet to see anything noteworthy. I’m convinced the stupid stuff is more or less confined to California. I’m sure people will be eager to show their anecdotes otherwise but I’m not really interested in that.
  - gruez 4y ago
    >I’ve yet to see anything noteworthy. I’m convinced the stupid stuff is more or less confined to California That's cold comfort to people living in california, like scott adams.
    - oneoff786 4y ago
      Scott Adams has lost his marbles. He’s got bigger problems. But sure, I think leaving California is a good idea for many people.
      - the_doctah 4y ago
oceanghost 4y ago
Yep. I was once advised by HR to "try not to offend anyone." I asked the HR woman, "How do I know what offends any particular person?" She looked genuinely stumped.
- giraffe_lady 4y ago
  If this is going to work you need to tell us what prompted this conversation so we can see how plausible it is to pretend you didn't know it was offensive.
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  - voakbasda 4y ago
    I have had the exact same conversation with HR. Someone takes offense at something and they use it as leverage to suppress any further potential offenses, despite the fact that trying to avoid offending others is completely futile. Because once you accept that kind of policy, you become a target of abuse from others willing to claim offense at just about anything.
    - blueflow 4y ago
      Dumb idea... what if you play the game yourself? They can't proof you are just pretending to be offended.
      - HidyBush 4y ago
        It's the first mover's advantage. When someone reports you everyone becomes suspicious and if you try to use the same tactics you get scoffed at and ignored.
    - giraffe_lady 4y ago
      So what did you say though??
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roenxi 4y ago
And doing a devastatingly good job - we see an example in the article that one of the comics was colour swapped (a black character to a white one). There are a lot of layers to that when we ask what the person who did that might have been thinking.
- bluedino 4y ago
  Perhaps it was just an honest mistake? Comic strips aren't colored the same in different newspapers (imagine this discovery as a kid on vacation), I remember reading an article about how Franklin (the black character in Peanuts) appeared white in a number of distribution channels for a while.
- kemayo 4y ago
  I mean, assuming that Adams doesn't do his own coloring, I bet it's just that whoever colors the comics forgot the character was Black. As the article notes, it's literally the first Black character in the strip, and they had been absent for a bit, so it's likely an easy thing to forget.
bjt2n3904 4y ago
I think, as an extension of what you pointed out... The problem I have discussing your linked articles with friends is that they don't believe it, and end up thinking I'm the crazy one. That Coca-cola would tell employees to "be less white" is so ridiculous and far fetched, that it simply can't be happening. Or, if it is happening, it's just some overzealous person whose hot take about "whiteness" just got bad press -- it's isolated to that one event, and certainly not happening across the country. The effect is that you (and I) begin to look like the crazy ones. And the more we see it happening, the more frenzied we become in trying to warn people, the less they believe us, and the crazier we look.
- oneoff786 4y ago
  I tend to agree. It sounds likely to be out of context. The only thing that comes to mind for me was we got some marketing material that featured only white people, n every image. That was genuinely “too white”. It is bad to suggest that normal business culture is just white people. I assume the context of these quotes was similar.
romwell 4y ago
Ah yes, diversity statments are the real problem in academia. Not, say, 10:1 PhD student to position ratio. Or exploitation. Or the visa slavery (accept all the crap, or get kicked out of the country you've been toiling for over the course of 10 years). Or $50K/yr being acceptable research professor's salary. Or the disgusting proportion of adjunct positions used as full-time. Or (gasp) actual lack of diversity. Nooo, it's the statements, which were invented as a non-solution that requires nobody to sacrifice anything, changes nothing, but can be a great taking point. Same with the industry. Wage stagnation, treating workers as disposable, job conditions — no, it's the diversity efforts that are the problem. Never mind that diversity is profitable [1], and is pushed by managements for that reason if they have the brains to understand it. Which Scott Addams, sadly, does not. If Dilbert is a mirror, it's one that's been covered with poop its maker piled up on it. No, I don't like what I see. Or smell. [1]https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/diversity-wins-how-inclusion-matters https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inc...
- AinderS 4y ago
  > Nooo, it's the statements, which were invented as a non-solution that requires nobody to sacrifice anything, changes nothing, but can be a great taking point. They require candidates to show a track record promoting diversity. Merely saying it is not enough, so they do in fact require sacrifices - even if you don't count being forced to profess beliefs you don't hold as a sacrifice. But then forced conversion is also no big deal. This is required by one fifth of academic jobs, as of 2021: https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/2021/11/11/study-diversity-statements-required-for-one-fifth-of-academic-jobs/ https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/2021/11/11/study-diversity-...
  - namdnay 4y ago
    > being forced to profess beliefs you don't hold I don't understand what beliefs you're referring to? I thought they were asking people to promote diversity, what "belief" is there in that?
    - romwell 4y ago
PragmaticPulp 4y ago
I've run into some real-world examples of this workplace weirdness, including a clumsily architected hiring plan that required certain roles to be filled by people meeting certain demographics (quickly shut down by legal once they caught on). But at the same time, I don't find Dilbert's take on these issues to be funny, nor do I really think that it's an appropriate place to combat these nuanced issues. 3-panel comic strips are too small to address these topics even in a properly satiric manner. I wish the comic strip had stuck to its original formula that thrived on simple workplace dysfunctions. Trying to stretch the formula to cover complex political issues feels like it's just attacking strawmen and dismissing actual issues that can (and do) exist in workplaces.
- retzkek 4y ago
  > 3-panel comic strips are too small to address these topics even in a properly satiric manner. And yet single-panel political cartoons have been doing it well for centuries. Of course they can't encompass all the nuance, 1000-word essays can't either. Cartoons (and essays) provoke discourse and critical thinking. Or they used to, anyways.
- daltont 4y ago
  I worked at a place in the '90s with a call center where legal caught wind of the desired demographic being young attractive females. It was said people got fired over it. Also, I like "Trying to stretch the formula to cover complex political issues feels like it's just attacking strawmen". So many discussions and debates involve building strawmen and "destroying" them to make one think that "owned" the other.
- juve1996 4y ago
  The demographic simply changed. I could see these comic strips doing quite well on Facebook for the 50 and up crowd in many areas of the country. I don't agree with the point. But a lot of people do - and it's created a sort of conservative counter-culture that is irresistible to many people.
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.
CabSauce 4y ago
You can cherry-pick examples of bad communication and bad policies all you want. But the fact remains that women and minorities are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to just about all aspects of life. The 'woke' problem pales in comparison to the actual problem. Complaining about things going too far isn't a good look when there are real, systemic issues remaining.
- selfmodruntime 4y ago
  > But the fact remains that women and minorities are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to just about all aspects of life Yes, but overcorrecting but trying to implement equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity is bad as well. Both can be true.
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- languageserver 4y ago
  > But the fact remains that women and minorities are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to just about all aspects of life Erasing women increases this
- scifibestfi 4y ago
  > But the fact remains that women and minorities are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to just about all aspects of life How does that square with the fact that the homeless and prison populations are mostly men? And men do the most dangerous jobs? And most social programs are aimed at women? And divorce favors women? And men die younger? And women outnumber men in college?
  - ZeroGravitas 4y ago
    Nice dodge of 'minorities', some of whom are men, and are incarcerated at a higher rate (as much as 5x higher).
dghlsakjg 4y ago
I want to call out your sources. City Journal is a propaganda outlet (George Soros conspiracy takes should not lead your top stories if you want credibility), The Washington Examiner is also openly biased and prints bullshit, and the story you mentioned has two unproven, unattributed, anecdotes. Newsweek... is Newsweek. The WSJ opinion section is a bad place to look for unbiased facts, as would be the NYT opinion section. Opinion sections aren't reporting, they are explicitly trying to prove something. Dilbert became famous for holding a mirror to corporate culture, and ringing true. Now it is holding a mirror to how the right perceives culture to be. My complaint is that it is 1. Overly concentrating on issues that aren't issues for a large part of the population (I don't list my pronouns, but I don't care a single bit if someone else does, and I will respect their preferences in the same way I will respect that Margaret goes by Lisa since she doesn't like the name she was given). 2. Highlighting issues that just aren't real, i.e. diversity hiring (I have done plenty of hiring at multiple companies in multiple countries, we actively try to get expand the diversity of our APPLICANT pool. Evaluation and job offers are done on the merits. Never seen a diversity quota) What I haven't seen is people being passed over for not being diverse enough on a first hand basis. The people that claim it happened to them, are generally better at complaining than they are at their job. To put it simply, people think Dilbert has gone off the rails, because they don't recognize the situations being represented as anything close to realistic.
- cholantesh 4y ago
  Adams has been off the rails for a long time now, and it has made its way into his comics before. The Dunning-Kruger on him is palpable.
- AinderS 4y ago
  Here is more information on the City Journal story, which is attributed to public record requests: https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/07/seattle-trains-white-employees-to-recognize-their-complicity-in-the-system-of-white-supremacy/ https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/07/seattle-trains-white-e... They shared these public record documents with Fox News, which I'm sure you dislike, but they nonetheless count as independent confirmation: https://www.foxnews.com/us/seattle-chop-segregated-training-session-white-supremacy-physical-safety https://www.foxnews.com/us/seattle-chop-segregated-training-... News sources you like seem simply unmotivated to check this story. The Coca-Cola story was confirmed by Snopes (read Coca-Cola's statements carefully - they never claim the slides were not shown as part of training, though they make every effort to imply it): https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/coca-cola-training-less-white/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/coca-cola-training-less-wh... I cannot find a good secondary source on the Cigna story, though the alleged facts are an entirely predictable result of diversity hiring goals. The WSJ Opinion story is confirmed by Berkeley's own report (https://ofew.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/life_sciences_inititatve.year_end_report_summary.pdf https://ofew.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/life_sciences_...). The opinion story itself was written by Professor Abigail Thompson, an American Mathematical Society vice-president, and in her open letter (https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/201911/rnoti-p1778.pdf https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/201911/rnoti-p1778.pdf) she links directly to the requirements on Berkeley's own website: https://ofew.berkeley.edu/recruitment/contributions-diversity/rubric-assessing-candidate-contributions-diversity-equity https://ofew.berkeley.edu/recruitment/contributions-diversit... But isn't it convenient how no "trustworthy" media bothered to report any of these stories, or even any similar stories? Shall we also call them out for giving us such a slanted view of the world?
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kayodelycaon 4y ago

I 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.

listless 4y ago
I would say the fact that companies have so over-rotated on this stuff means he is still punching up. It’s no longer a marginalized position when corporations are now codifying culture war issues as part of their ideology.
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- kayodelycaon 4y ago
  I said he is trying to punch up, but he's missing the mark and coming off as punching down. :)
CoastalCoder 4y ago
There's definitely a perception that people forcing diversity training, pronoun protocols, etc. are in positions of power over regular employees. Perhaps attacking people in previously marginalized groups is punching down, but attacking HR DEI enforcers is definitely punching up.
- horsawlarway 4y ago
  This is my take. Personally - I think Scott Adams is more than a little bit batshit insane, but I certainly don't think he's punching down in the strips presented here.
  - kelseyfrog 4y ago
    In the strips shown in the article it's easy to see who he's punching at. If it was up at corporate HR policy, we would see Catbert. Instead we see Dilbert's peers. Dilbert works by personifying roles. It doesn't do much in the way of role subtext.
    - horsawlarway 4y ago
      I disagree - it's very clearly trying to mock the policies that allow this kind of behavior. Those policies aren't coming from the peers.
      - kelseyfrog 4y ago
        Dilbert's very clear on its role personification. That's what makes the comic work. It's how Dilbert is every engineer, PHB is every clueless boss, and Wally is every elder peer, Asok is every junior peer. That's what makes the comic relatable. It also, as the article points out, what provides constraints to these characters as well. If it was mocking HR policy, then it would be signified with Catbert. It's not. It's very simple.
  - sterlind 4y ago
    The issues themselves aren't punching down, but the way he's using the characters is. Imagine Alice deciding to falsely accuse the PHB of sexual harassment to get rid of him. Or Asok becoming a manager and only promoting members of his caste. I feel like this is like that. I transitioned at work, and I've tried really hard not to be this character. I asked people to use my new name and pronouns but never complained to HR if they didn't. I made an effort to be as friendly and hardworking as possible, so that my conservative coworkers wouldn't see me through the lens of the "culture wars" like this that they're fed. This kind of comic was the stereotype I faced. It worked for me. I changed peoples' minds, got respect for being reliable no matter my looks, and eventually started passing so nobody remembers I'm trans anymore.
kforo9n 4y ago
yonaguska 4y ago
How do you target harmful and ineffective policies without hitting a lot of innocent people though? Affirmative action is a harmful and ineffective policy, but if you speak out against it, you are racist. I'm not here to argue whether you agree with that or not, just using it as an example of something you simply can't criticize without offending innocent people. More to the task at hand though- I question if he's even really punching down anymore(or even if this is possible- societal status shouldn't shield you from criticism, and there is a difference between critique and baseless insults). Anecdotally, one of my friends was interviewing a candidate- and the other person conducting the interview asked a thinly veiled political question. The candidate was rejected because of their stance, or lack thereof on this question. This was acknowledged internally, and embraced, and several meetings ensued until HR got involved and had to tell engineers that no- they couldn't discriminate on the basis of political beliefs. And that being sneaky about it by bringing up controversial tech figures in the community and gauging reactions was not actually legal.
- hirundo 4y ago
  In the U.S. it is not generally illegal to discriminate on the basis of political beliefs.
cm2187 4y ago
HR policies and management jargon are up, not down from the average employee.
edflsafoiewq 4y ago
The entire punching up/punching down dichotomy is just a theoretical justification for "rules for thee but not for me". It's all well and good when the PHB is at the other end of the cartoonist's pen, but when they come for my sacred cows, well that's different.
selfmodruntime 4y ago
> Now, he appears to be punching down at people less powerful than him (individually) who have been fighting to get recognized. I don't feel like this is true. The comic where one character identified as "white" isn't punching down at black people. There are no people of color who identify as white. He is punching up at insane corporate rules that make the color of a person's skin important when it comes to hiring: an inherently racist thing. The comic where a character identifies as a "birthing human" isn't punching down at trans people. It's punching up at corporation rules which need a specific reason on why an employee can go home or not. It shouldn't matter why you're feeling unwell, go home if you're sick. Corporate policies on its employees should be as broad as possible and not target individual minorities and their intricacies.
- maxsilver 4y ago
  > The comic where a character identifies as a "birthing human" isn't punching down at trans people. Yes it is. It's literally The One Joke™, with a thin veneer of corporate policy wrapped around it as plausible deniability.
- kayodelycaon 4y ago
  The issue isn't so much with Dilbert as the context Dilbert is in. Let me try to explain this. The sarcastic "I am X identifying as Y" joke is a good example. The structure of the joke is Y is something no one will seriously identify as. This means "X = Black, Y = White" pattern matches. For the LGBT "context", the common usage of sarcastic "I am X identifying as Y" translates to "I don't think transgender identities are valid". The Non-LGBT context doesn't assign a specific meaning to the phrase. This sets up a scenario where one group has a rule saying "X -> Y" and another has "X -> ?". And here's where the problem comes in. Comic strips have limited bandwidth and they rely on context to be understood. So when Dilbert says "I am Black identifying as White", the LGBT context immediately translates this to Y, wherewas the Non-LGBT context does a page fault and looks elsewhere for what it could mean. In isolation, this looks like LGBT people are being overly sensitive, but every human is "overly sensitive" in some way. We all operate in our own context based on what we've experienced.
gadders 4y ago
>>The problem I see Dilbert running into is the comic previously was aimed at corporate culture This is the corporate culture now. Or at least a caricatured view of it (as it always was).
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radarsat1 4y ago
Indeed, I can't help but notice that in the first 4 comics cited in the article, the pointy-haired-boss is the protagonist and the employee the antagonist. Definitely seems like a reversal from what I knew Dilbert to represent in the past.
fgopq 4y ago
The demographic most likely to claim to be the opposite sex, and use that to try to hold control over other people, are straight white men. I mean just look at how many there are in tech companies - and typically comfortably wealthy too. He's punching up no matter how you look at it.

giraffe_lady 4y ago

So you're saying he's taking a reasonable stance in reaction to these totally real pressures?

ravenstine 4y ago

It really makes me wonder what the common experience is for others not just in tech but Corporate America in general. I myself have run into anti-white and anti-male phenomena, unconscious bias pseudoscience training, diversity pledges, and so on, as have now others in my peer group. Dilbert's commentary has so far been entirely appropriate based on my experience, hence it's puzzling to me when people think there's something particularly conservative about being concerned or critical about these societal changes. Are said changes overblown? Do these people merely think that employees or companies taking positions on "whiteness" see it as totally normal and as something no one would have an issue with? It's just odd to me.

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oneoff786 4y ago
As a consultant who sees a lot of different big company cultures, and even done some work specifically on diversity stuff: They’re overblown. I’ve yet to see anything noteworthy. I’m convinced the stupid stuff is more or less confined to California. I’m sure people will be eager to show their anecdotes otherwise but I’m not really interested in that.
- gruez 4y ago
  >I’ve yet to see anything noteworthy. I’m convinced the stupid stuff is more or less confined to California That's cold comfort to people living in california, like scott adams.
  - oneoff786 4y ago
    Scott Adams has lost his marbles. He’s got bigger problems. But sure, I think leaving California is a good idea for many people.
    - the_doctah 4y ago

oceanghost 4y ago

Yep. I was once advised by HR to "try not to offend anyone." I asked the HR woman, "How do I know what offends any particular person?" She looked genuinely stumped.

giraffe_lady 4y ago
If this is going to work you need to tell us what prompted this conversation so we can see how plausible it is to pretend you didn't know it was offensive.
- deleted 4y ago
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- voakbasda 4y ago
  I have had the exact same conversation with HR. Someone takes offense at something and they use it as leverage to suppress any further potential offenses, despite the fact that trying to avoid offending others is completely futile. Because once you accept that kind of policy, you become a target of abuse from others willing to claim offense at just about anything.
  - blueflow 4y ago
    Dumb idea... what if you play the game yourself? They can't proof you are just pretending to be offended.
    - HidyBush 4y ago
      It's the first mover's advantage. When someone reports you everyone becomes suspicious and if you try to use the same tactics you get scoffed at and ignored.
  - giraffe_lady 4y ago
    So what did you say though??

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roenxi 4y ago

And doing a devastatingly good job - we see an example in the article that one of the comics was colour swapped (a black character to a white one). There are a lot of layers to that when we ask what the person who did that might have been thinking.

bluedino 4y ago
Perhaps it was just an honest mistake? Comic strips aren't colored the same in different newspapers (imagine this discovery as a kid on vacation), I remember reading an article about how Franklin (the black character in Peanuts) appeared white in a number of distribution channels for a while.
kemayo 4y ago
I mean, assuming that Adams doesn't do his own coloring, I bet it's just that whoever colors the comics forgot the character was Black. As the article notes, it's literally the first Black character in the strip, and they had been absent for a bit, so it's likely an easy thing to forget.

bjt2n3904 4y ago

I think, as an extension of what you pointed out... The problem I have discussing your linked articles with friends is that they don't believe it, and end up thinking I'm the crazy one. That Coca-cola would tell employees to "be less white" is so ridiculous and far fetched, that it simply can't be happening. Or, if it is happening, it's just some overzealous person whose hot take about "whiteness" just got bad press -- it's isolated to that one event, and certainly not happening across the country. The effect is that you (and I) begin to look like the crazy ones. And the more we see it happening, the more frenzied we become in trying to warn people, the less they believe us, and the crazier we look.

oneoff786 4y ago
I tend to agree. It sounds likely to be out of context. The only thing that comes to mind for me was we got some marketing material that featured only white people, n every image. That was genuinely “too white”. It is bad to suggest that normal business culture is just white people. I assume the context of these quotes was similar.

romwell 4y ago

Ah yes, diversity statments are the real problem in academia. Not, say, 10:1 PhD student to position ratio. Or exploitation. Or the visa slavery (accept all the crap, or get kicked out of the country you've been toiling for over the course of 10 years). Or $50K/yr being acceptable research professor's salary. Or the disgusting proportion of adjunct positions used as full-time. Or (gasp) actual lack of diversity. Nooo, it's the statements, which were invented as a non-solution that requires nobody to sacrifice anything, changes nothing, but can be a great taking point. Same with the industry. Wage stagnation, treating workers as disposable, job conditions — no, it's the diversity efforts that are the problem. Never mind that diversity is profitable [1], and is pushed by managements for that reason if they have the brains to understand it. Which Scott Addams, sadly, does not. If Dilbert is a mirror, it's one that's been covered with poop its maker piled up on it. No, I don't like what I see. Or smell. [1]https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inclusion/diversity-wins-how-inclusion-matters https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inc...

AinderS 4y ago
> Nooo, it's the statements, which were invented as a non-solution that requires nobody to sacrifice anything, changes nothing, but can be a great taking point. They require candidates to show a track record promoting diversity. Merely saying it is not enough, so they do in fact require sacrifices - even if you don't count being forced to profess beliefs you don't hold as a sacrifice. But then forced conversion is also no big deal. This is required by one fifth of academic jobs, as of 2021: https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/2021/11/11/study-diversity-statements-required-for-one-fifth-of-academic-jobs/ https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/2021/11/11/study-diversity-...
- namdnay 4y ago
  > being forced to profess beliefs you don't hold I don't understand what beliefs you're referring to? I thought they were asking people to promote diversity, what "belief" is there in that?
  - romwell 4y ago

PragmaticPulp 4y ago

I've run into some real-world examples of this workplace weirdness, including a clumsily architected hiring plan that required certain roles to be filled by people meeting certain demographics (quickly shut down by legal once they caught on). But at the same time, I don't find Dilbert's take on these issues to be funny, nor do I really think that it's an appropriate place to combat these nuanced issues. 3-panel comic strips are too small to address these topics even in a properly satiric manner. I wish the comic strip had stuck to its original formula that thrived on simple workplace dysfunctions. Trying to stretch the formula to cover complex political issues feels like it's just attacking strawmen and dismissing actual issues that can (and do) exist in workplaces.

retzkek 4y ago
> 3-panel comic strips are too small to address these topics even in a properly satiric manner. And yet single-panel political cartoons have been doing it well for centuries. Of course they can't encompass all the nuance, 1000-word essays can't either. Cartoons (and essays) provoke discourse and critical thinking. Or they used to, anyways.
daltont 4y ago
I worked at a place in the '90s with a call center where legal caught wind of the desired demographic being young attractive females. It was said people got fired over it. Also, I like "Trying to stretch the formula to cover complex political issues feels like it's just attacking strawmen". So many discussions and debates involve building strawmen and "destroying" them to make one think that "owned" the other.
juve1996 4y ago
The demographic simply changed. I could see these comic strips doing quite well on Facebook for the 50 and up crowd in many areas of the country. I don't agree with the point. But a lot of people do - and it's created a sort of conservative counter-culture that is irresistible to many people.

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.

CabSauce 4y ago

You can cherry-pick examples of bad communication and bad policies all you want. But the fact remains that women and minorities are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to just about all aspects of life. The 'woke' problem pales in comparison to the actual problem. Complaining about things going too far isn't a good look when there are real, systemic issues remaining.

selfmodruntime 4y ago
> But the fact remains that women and minorities are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to just about all aspects of life Yes, but overcorrecting but trying to implement equality of outcome instead of equality of opportunity is bad as well. Both can be true.
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languageserver 4y ago
> But the fact remains that women and minorities are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to just about all aspects of life Erasing women increases this
scifibestfi 4y ago
> But the fact remains that women and minorities are at a significant disadvantage when it comes to just about all aspects of life How does that square with the fact that the homeless and prison populations are mostly men? And men do the most dangerous jobs? And most social programs are aimed at women? And divorce favors women? And men die younger? And women outnumber men in college?
- ZeroGravitas 4y ago
  Nice dodge of 'minorities', some of whom are men, and are incarcerated at a higher rate (as much as 5x higher).

dghlsakjg 4y ago

I want to call out your sources. City Journal is a propaganda outlet (George Soros conspiracy takes should not lead your top stories if you want credibility), The Washington Examiner is also openly biased and prints bullshit, and the story you mentioned has two unproven, unattributed, anecdotes. Newsweek... is Newsweek. The WSJ opinion section is a bad place to look for unbiased facts, as would be the NYT opinion section. Opinion sections aren't reporting, they are explicitly trying to prove something. Dilbert became famous for holding a mirror to corporate culture, and ringing true. Now it is holding a mirror to how the right perceives culture to be. My complaint is that it is 1. Overly concentrating on issues that aren't issues for a large part of the population (I don't list my pronouns, but I don't care a single bit if someone else does, and I will respect their preferences in the same way I will respect that Margaret goes by Lisa since she doesn't like the name she was given). 2. Highlighting issues that just aren't real, i.e. diversity hiring (I have done plenty of hiring at multiple companies in multiple countries, we actively try to get expand the diversity of our APPLICANT pool. Evaluation and job offers are done on the merits. Never seen a diversity quota) What I haven't seen is people being passed over for not being diverse enough on a first hand basis. The people that claim it happened to them, are generally better at complaining than they are at their job. To put it simply, people think Dilbert has gone off the rails, because they don't recognize the situations being represented as anything close to realistic.

cholantesh 4y ago
Adams has been off the rails for a long time now, and it has made its way into his comics before. The Dunning-Kruger on him is palpable.
AinderS 4y ago
Here is more information on the City Journal story, which is attributed to public record requests: https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/07/seattle-trains-white-employees-to-recognize-their-complicity-in-the-system-of-white-supremacy/ https://legalinsurrection.com/2020/07/seattle-trains-white-e... They shared these public record documents with Fox News, which I'm sure you dislike, but they nonetheless count as independent confirmation: https://www.foxnews.com/us/seattle-chop-segregated-training-session-white-supremacy-physical-safety https://www.foxnews.com/us/seattle-chop-segregated-training-... News sources you like seem simply unmotivated to check this story. The Coca-Cola story was confirmed by Snopes (read Coca-Cola's statements carefully - they never claim the slides were not shown as part of training, though they make every effort to imply it): https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/coca-cola-training-less-white/ https://www.snopes.com/fact-check/coca-cola-training-less-wh... I cannot find a good secondary source on the Cigna story, though the alleged facts are an entirely predictable result of diversity hiring goals. The WSJ Opinion story is confirmed by Berkeley's own report (https://ofew.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/life_sciences_inititatve.year_end_report_summary.pdf https://ofew.berkeley.edu/sites/default/files/life_sciences_...). The opinion story itself was written by Professor Abigail Thompson, an American Mathematical Society vice-president, and in her open letter (https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/201911/rnoti-p1778.pdf https://www.ams.org/journals/notices/201911/rnoti-p1778.pdf) she links directly to the requirements on Berkeley's own website: https://ofew.berkeley.edu/recruitment/contributions-diversity/rubric-assessing-candidate-contributions-diversity-equity https://ofew.berkeley.edu/recruitment/contributions-diversit... But isn't it convenient how no "trustworthy" media bothered to report any of these stories, or even any similar stories? Shall we also call them out for giving us such a slanted view of the world?

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