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That would explain his rather obvious lack of energy these days. Adams has become a controversial figure in recent years. Regardless of what you think of him,
by ravenstine 1y ago
That would explain his rather obvious lack of energy these days.
Adams has become a controversial figure in recent years. Regardless of what you think of him, as someone who has worked in Corporate America for over a decade, there really isn't anything quite like Dilbert to describe the sort of white collar insanity I've had to learn to take in stride. My first workplace as a junior developer was straight out of Dilbert and Office Space. I have a gigantic collection of digitized Dilbert strips that best describe office situations I've run into in real life – many of them including the pointy haired boss.
He's expressed a lot of what I would consider... stupid opinions these days, but I would be sad to learn he's no longer with us.
- mdp2021 1y ago> collection of digitized Dilbert strips that best describe office situations I've run into in real life Probably also because, like e.g. "Yes (Prime) Minister", part of the depicted did come from anecdotes, instead of fantasy.
- jpmattia 1y ago> part of the depicted did come from anecdotes He spoke at MIT (early 90s?) and I remember him talking about making fun of PacBell colleagues in his comic: They would recognize themselves, ask him to autograph the comic for them, and then go away happy (thus making fun of them a second time.)
- jimt1234 1y ago100% agree ^^^ He went full Elon Musk, before Elon Musk. But yeah, back in the 90s/2000s, when my career in Corporate America started to settle in, his Dilbert comics brought my loads of comic relief. My favorite character was Wally; he always seemed to "fail up". I recall Wally meeting with the pointy-haired boss to tell him he'd returned from his 3-week vacation. The boss said, "You were out on a 3-week vacation?" Wally, the master, replied, "Sorry, I misspoke. I'm leaving now for my 3-week vacation." LOL
- FireBeyond 1y agoTwo of my favorites: Catbert on work life balance: "Give us some balance, you selfish hag" https://steemitimages.com/p/7258xSVeJbKnFEnBwjKLhL15SoynbgJKpQxRd1uovsgpaNPxJJJhY2hd17GVmjgRPeRhAGtKjnh23QM5qMvg8FdzwiKzrJ9xBnmc1ZBRV3PpLn3iThkm9XvdyAVHvDQg2ynCbjpYpBLEh?format=match&mode=fit https://steemitimages.com/p/7258xSVeJbKnFEnBwjKLhL15SoynbgJK... The other, I can never seem to find. They're all in a meeting, and the Pointy Haired Boss says, "This next task is critical yet thankless and urgent, and will go to whoever next makes eye contact with me". Everyone stares at the desk, and then Alice pulls out a hand mirror and angles it between the PHB and Wally.
- teddyh 1y ago> Catbert on work life balance: "Give us some balance, you selfish hag" Better link: <https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/1998-05-05 https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/1998-05-05> > The other, I can never seem to find. Here you are: <https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/1993-08-30 https://dilbert-viewer.herokuapp.com/1993-08-30>
- FireBeyond 1y agoThankyou!
- jimt1234 1y agoBack in the 90s, I worked on a "side project" that screen-scraped the daily Dilbert strip and added it to an internal "employee portal" website. A lot of people liked it, including all the pointy-haired middle managers. However, after about a week, I was told to remove it immediately, not because of the legal/ethical issues around screen-scraping (stealing) the strip, but rather because this particular day's strip was about Dilbert's company laying off a bunch of employees so the company's executives had more money to buy vacation homes (or something like that), and, by coincidence, our company announced a massive layoff on that exact same day. The timing was totally coincidental, but perfect. Executives were furious; my boss told me he got yelled at by our VP. I loved it.
- jokethrowaway 1y agoIt's not controversial to believe one lying politician over the other. Approximately 50% of your country does that. If you squint you'll see that both parties are an expression of the same statist ideology and there's very little difference between them. Now anarchists are a different breed but they're a ridiculed minority. Just because the tech scene became this lefty hell circle, we should not consider controversial a thought that is so widespread in today's culture that it puts a president in the oval office twice.
- sorcerer-mar 1y ago> If you squint you'll see that both parties are an expression of the same statist ideology and there's very little difference between them. If you squint so hard your eyes are closed, maybe
- code_for_monkey 1y ago[flagged]
- platevoltage 1y ago[flagged]
- code_for_monkey 1y agoit was some kind of roman salute, from the heart lol
- wat10000 1y agoIt is a Roman salute! It's just 1920s Rome....
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- ActorNightly 1y agoEven if what you were saying is true (and its most certainly not), its funny how everyone who makes this argument always tends to fall on the conservative side, that in fact does significantly more lying as a verifiable statistic.
- jakevoytko 1y agoIt was a little sad to watch him get radicalized in real time. I really enjoyed reading his blog before this started to happen. But then a few publications started quoting blog posts of his out of context as rage bait -- I remember he was particularly butthurt about some Jezebel posts that took things he said out of context. At this point, he basically started leaning into controversy for pageviews. He'd start linking to the controversial section of each post right at the top of the post. After a few months or so I had to unsubscribe, after years of reading his blog and Dilbert cartoons/books. He's become such a gremlin that I won't be 100% sure he's serious about this until he actually dies.
- prepend 1y agoI liked his blog at first and thought it really declined with video and short form content. It’s like his written editing slowed him down and made him less clickbaity than when he could post a video with no editing in just minutes.
- rhines 1y agoYeah I remember binging his blog while between classes in university - he wrote well and had interesting thoughts on marketability, mastery, business, etc., all things that I was interested in as someone learning to be an adult and find his place in the world. Then Trump ran for president, and honestly the blog was still good - Adams had some genuinely good insights about why Trump appealed, and suggested that he might be using the Republicans to get into power but he really doesn't share their values and will shake things up for the better. But then somehow Adams' identity got wrapped up in the idea of Trump not being as bad as people think and he just supported Trump more and more even when it became clear that Trump did not have a master plan to liberalize the Republican party.
- aredox 1y ago>[Trump] will shake things up for the better. Well, that was already the first sign of senility. Trump, at that point, was already a know quantity for decades: a crook and a con man.
- libraryatnight 1y agoI grew up dreaming of being a cartoonist, and while Gary Larson, Berkely Breathed, and Bill Watterson were my holy trinity Dilbert wasn't far off. Always admired Adams and his humor - and like you even more so once I ended up in the corporate computer world. Was sad to me to see someone so good at lampooning absurdity get sucked into such a toxic mindset, but I'll also be sad to hear he's gone and I'm sad to hear he's up against it.
- justinator 1y ago[flagged]
- lsaferite 1y ago[flagged]
- JohnFen 1y ago> by someone else using the phrase "just call a spade a spade" The phrase is referring to the tool. It is not a reference to the derogatory slang term at all. It dates back to Plutarch's Apophthegmata Laconica, and the earliest version of it that appeared in English was in 1542. All of that was centuries before "spade" also became used as derogatory slang. The phrase is no more racist than "like white on rice".
- lsaferite 1y agoOh, *I* am fully aware of the provenance of the phrase. I personally find it's push into the "best not used" category to be highly annoying.
- justinator 1y agoI'll take your suggestion to heart and look into this term myself and see if I can't learn something new to better work within the present world. I'm more than happy to admit that I could very well have a blind spot for a sensitive term which I do not currently know about. I apologize to anyone if this was used offensively and thank you for bringing this to my attention.
- SoftTalker 1y ago[flagged]
- ActorNightly 1y ago>Adams has become a controversial figure in recent years. He has had some questionable views all throughout his life. In his book "The Dilbert Future", which was from 1997, the last 2 chapters are some wacky stuff about manifesting - i.e if you write something down 100 times a day every day it will come true and other stuff like that. And while that may seem a far cry from the alt-right stuff he eschews, its really not - inability to process information clearly and think in reality in lieu of ideology is the cornerstone of conservative thinking.
- orionsbelt 1y agoManifesting is not that wacky. Of course, you are not going to write down that you will win the lottery and then win. But most people are their own worst enemy and self limiting to some extent. Focusing on what you want in life, and affirming it to yourself over and over, is effectively a way to brain wash yourself to change your own self limiting behavior and it’s not surprising that this is often successful.
- phlipski 1y agoI'm good enough, I'm smart enough, and doggone it, people like me!
- HK-NC 1y ago[flagged]
- tim333 1y agoAlso telling other people can help as some of them may be able to help you get there.
- ActorNightly 1y agoFiguring on what you actually want in life and working towards that is productive, yes. But that's mild compared to what he says. He basically says he can influence the stock market with affirmations. You should read the chapters. https://www.scribd.com/doc/156175634/the-dilbert-future-pdf https://www.scribd.com/doc/156175634/the-dilbert-future-pdf. Starts on 218.
- mcv 1y agoAs weird as he is, his claim that Trump uses a form of mass hypnosis is still the best explanation for Trump's success that I've heard. But why then Adams would support Trump, who is clearly the ultimate PHB, is something I never understood.
- abirch 1y agoIf you've ever read Thinking Fast and Slow, Trump is great at appealing to System 1. He's spent his entire lifetime focusing on his branding and what people think of him. I dislike almost all of Trump's policies and his tactics; however, he's great at oversimplifying things and getting the visceral reactions he wants. Chapelle's SNL monolog about Trump is pretty spot on too.
- mcv 1y agoI haven't read it yet, but I've got it right here, and I just finished my previous book.
- abirch 1y agoIt's such a great book. You can skip the first few chapters as the evidence for those chapters on priming hasn't been replicated: https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-train-wreck-how-priming-research-went-of-the-rails/ https://replicationindex.com/2017/02/02/reconstruction-of-a-... However, the fundamental ideas of System 1 and 2 have made me rethink so many things.
- elcritch 1y agoHe seems to play the media like a fiddle. It's insane how gullible so much of the media establishment is nowadays and play right into it.
- astrange 1y agoThey like it because he's good for views, and because US politics media runs on Murc's law (anything bad is the Democrats' fault for not stopping it).
- legitster 1y agoDilbert also failed to keep up with the times. Despite publishing strips about AI or remote work or etc, you can still tell that he has spent so long away from that world that he no longer has any novel insight into it. All of the jokes come secondhand from anecdotes that he hears or reads about.
- paulddraper 1y agoThat's true. Dilbert is about the 90s.
- dhosek 1y agoSometime in the late 90s Dilbert pretty much became Pluggers but without the attribution to the readers sending in their ideas.
- rightbyte 1y agoI think Dilbert's cubicle nightmare frozen in time is somewhat charming.
- willis936 1y agoImagine the luxury of a cubicle in 2025.
- sonofhans 1y agoYou had cubicles? Luxury! Im my day, we put our spare-parts laptop on an old door for a desk and sat on a rickety metal chair on a concrete floor in an unheated warehouse. And we loved it!
- wombatpm 1y agoOh you had a chair! In my day we had a desk scavenged from sticks and rocks. Our chair was a piece of pipe with a 2x4 on the end. You had to balance carefully lets you impaled yourself.
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- ghaff 1y agoIt's almost certainly hard to maintain the energy/inspiration needed for a daily comic strip/comic. I also think Scott Adams had trouble moving beyond the 1990s Pac Bell environment after he was no longer part of corporate (much less startup) life.
- WalterBright 1y agoHe's also the earliest person to predict a Trump win in 2015, and was ridiculed for it, but turned out to be right.
- Kye 1y agoDemocrats snatching defeat from the jaws of victory is a vintage meme at this point. He may have been the most famous person to say what so many of us expected first, but it just means he paid attention.
- stevenwoo 1y agoOne of Bernie Sanders campaign slogans in his first primary campaigns which started in 2015 was “Bernie Beats Trump” - the lack of enthusiasm around Hillary Clinton was palpable.
- BJones12 1y agoMy quick search suggests that slogan only showed up in 2019.
- jskelly 1y agoI think all three of you are right. The official Bernie campaign did not use this as a slogan until the 2020 campaign (so 2019-2020)-- however, it was in use by supporters during the 2016 campaign (source: I was in the crowd of Bernie supporters at the 2016 Democratic National Convention when the guy standing next to me started the chant & it quickly spread. It was so interesting to see how quickly it spread from just one guy.)
- aerotwelve 1y agoThat slogan is from his 2020 primary campaign.
- ChrisMarshallNY 1y agoI was a Dilbert fanatic for a long time. Adams, himself? Not so much. I think he tends to have a rather nasty outlook on humanity, and I had a hard time reconciling it. I do know that he was/is pretty much about as far away from Diamond Joe* as you can get. Interesting that they seem to be fighting the same battle. * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden_(The_Onion) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joe_Biden_(The_Onion)
- ryandrake 1y agoMy one "boomer" take: Something I wish the younger generation would learn is that it's useful to be able to separate a work from its author. Some of my favorite films were produced by Harvey Weinstein. They're still my favorite films. The fact that a slimeball was a force behind making them doesn't detract from their content. I like Robert Heinlein sci-fi, even though, judged by today's moral yardstick, some of his views were... questionable. I still like Harry Potter even though J. K. Rowling went totally bananas. Troubled and/or terrible people can make great art and music, and it's OK to like the art and question the artist.
- jason_oster 1y agoI have to disagree with this, sadly. Supporting the work is supporting the author so they can continue doing terrible author things. This is why boycotts are effective and "oh well, I'll just keep buying it anyway" is not.
- dpkirchner 1y agoAdditionally, boycotting is one of the vanishing rare ways we have influence over anyone richer or more powerful than us.
- stackskipton 1y agoDepends on how you enjoy them. I'm re reading Harry Potter off and on. I already bought the books before JK Rowling expressed her views. My reading does not give her another dime. Same thing with Blu-Ray of Pulp Fiction though I believe Weinstein Company has given up all rights to most of their movies.
- lmm 1y ago> there really isn't anything quite like Dilbert to describe the sort of white collar insanity I've had to learn to take in stride. OneFTE was brilliant, and the creator explicitly talked about what he was doing differently from Dilbert - that you could mock the absurdities while still acknowledging the positives of the corporate life. And then he took the whole thing down :(.