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The entire arc of Scott Adams is a cautionary tale. To go from a brilliant satirist to becoming terminally online and just completely falling off the far right
by ryandvm 9mo ago
The entire arc of Scott Adams is a cautionary tale.
To go from a brilliant satirist to becoming terminally online and just completely falling off the far right cliffs of insanity is incredibly sad. And unfortunately, this is plight is not uncommon. It is incredibly dangerous to make politics part of your identity and then just absolutely bathe yourself in a political media echo chamber.
- Cuuugi 9mo agoThe online world breeds extremism. It wasn't too long ago criticizing someone on their obituary was considered classless. This is the world we have made.
- greenavocado 9mo agoUnwillingness to engage with others breeds extremism. There are many who are silenced if they do not fit into the social dogma. Those people eventually lose it if they can't find a productive outlet.
- andrewmutz 9mo agoCompletely agree. If you're motivated enough about a topic to post about it online, you're probably emotional about it and unable to see it in a clear-headed manner. The people I know who have the most reasonable political opinions never post about it online. The people who have developed unhealthy and biased obsessions are the ones who post constantly.
- BugsJustFindMe 9mo ago> If you're motivated enough about a topic to post about it online, you're probably emotional about it and unable to see it in a clear-headed manner. > The people I know who have the most reasonable political opinions never post about it online. And here you are posting your opinions online! How fascinating. I hope you recognize the extreme irony in the fact that you were motivated enough about this topic to post about it.
- qarl 9mo agoHeh... do you realize that your comment undermines itself?
- officeplant 9mo ago> It wasn't too long ago criticizing someone on their obituary was considered classless. It's very easy to avoid getting criticized in your obituary, don't be an asshole. If you devote your life to being an asshole, the civilized response gloves will come off and maybe more people should learn this lesson.
- Cuuugi 9mo agoThe implication is that you are attacking the defenseless. There is none more defenseless than the dead.
- fogus 9mo agoNo one cares less about defending themselves being attacked than the dead.
- card_zero 9mo agoNo one is less tolerant of attacks than the dead.
- mcdonje 9mo agoNot true. 1. Plenty of living people defend the reputations of dead people. 2. There's no proof that anything we say or do has any impact on dead people.
- card_zero 9mo agoWell, if you think of person as a bunch of ideas, maybe with a mind attached, then by attacking a dead person you're attacking a bunch of vulnerable ideas that no longer have a mind to defend them. You can still call it a person, if you like.
- twixfel 9mo ago>You can still call it a person, if you like. No thanks, because a person is not a group of ideas + a mind.
- mossTechnician 9mo agoI read the Dilbert Principle when I was young, but still old enough to appreciate a lot of its humor. Later, when I discovered Scott was online and had a blog, I couldn't believe it was the same person. To me, the Scott Adams of comic strip fame had already died many years ago.
- dralley 9mo agoSee also: Elon Musk
- sneak 9mo ago[flagged]
- speedgoose 9mo agoCome on.
- esposito 9mo agoA bold claim
- sneak 9mo agoIt shouldn’t be, it’s factual. :( The partisan brawling in the USA is to me most tiresome mostly because neither of the factions seems particularly interested in the truth anymore.
- egypturnash 9mo agolet's just ignore the time he threw a straight-up Heil Donald at the inauguration I guess https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk_salute_controversy https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elon_Musk_salute_controversy and did you know Wikipedia has an entire page on his politics? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_activities_of_Elon_Musk https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Political_activities_of_Elon_M...
- sneak 9mo agoi’ve actually read both of those WP pages before. right != far right his conservative viewpoints and political support (which incidentally i do not share) do not automatically make his beliefs “far right”. i have not seen or heard a single thing he’s expressed or done that suggests “far right”. if anything, he appears rather centrist. and can we stop already with the smearing? it clearly wasn’t intended to be a nazi salute, which both the ADL as well as the person who made the gesture have clarified. do we think he is lying about that? why would someone who wants to make nazi salutes on stage then go and lie about it later? scott adams, however, has said and clarified his far-right viewpoints many times publicly. there’s no ambiguity there.
- theultdev 9mo ago[flagged]
- dyauspitr 9mo agoSeems like he aligned pretty perfectly with the Fox News/Newsmax echo chamber.
- theultdev 9mo ago[flagged]
- albedoa 9mo ago> His politics were not insane just because you disagreed with him. Literally nobody is claiming that his politics were insane because they disagreed with him. > edit: downvoted and flagged for saying we shouldn't hurl ad-hominem attacks Absolutely not what "ad hominem" means.
- negzero7 9mo ago[flagged]
- deleted 9mo ago[deleted]
- regularization 9mo agoLike trying to treat his cancer with ivermectin? Doesn't seem to have worked.
- tasuki 9mo agoHow many times did you have terminal cancer? My girlfriend died of cancer. She was 30 years old and we had a toddler. No matter how rational you start, terminal cancer diagnosis throws much rationality out the window.
- NoSalt 9mo agoI agree 100%. If I received a terminal cancer diagnosis, I would be willing to do almost anything to live longer.
- BrandoElFollito 9mo agoI would not. At some point this becomes agony, this is the reason I have a suicide plan in place for a long time alredy, despite being in perfect health. It's not when you need it that you start googling around
- ravenstine 9mo agoWhat makes it cautionary? From what I can tell, he hardly suffered from what you described. I'm not saying that I agree with everything that came out of Scott's mouth, but I never saw a sign of regret in him in regards to politics.
- concinds 9mo agoI don't recall where (Vic Berger?), but someone made a compilation of "regret" clips from Trump influencers (Alex Jones and others, and Scott Adams). This was in the circa January 6 days, where humiliation reigned, and they all felt betrayed because "RINOs" dominated Trump's term, "the deep state" was still standing, and he accomplished nothing of note. It's been memory-holed since then but that was the dominant mood back then (they blamed his mediocrity on "bad staffing", which later led to Project 2025). Well Scott Adams was in there, venting (in a video) that his life had basically been ruined by his support for Trump, that he'd lost most of his friends and wealth due to it, and that he felt betrayed and felt like a moron for trusting him since it wasn't even worth it. Nothing had changed and the country wasn't "saved".
- ravenstine 9mo agoWell okay, if you could find this compilation then I'd be interested. That really doesn't sound like the Scott Adams I've seen over the course of the last decade.
- hamburglar 9mo agoI’d be interested in seeing this. Not to doubt you, but I suspect a more accurate characterization is not “my life was ruined by my support for Trump” but rather “look what being right about everything gets you in a world of trump haters.”
- asd 9mo agoIs this the video? Scott Adams talks about losing friends, money, etc. around the 3:35 mark: https://youtu.be/HFUr6Px99aQ?t=215 https://youtu.be/HFUr6Px99aQ?t=215
- shin_lao 9mo ago[flagged]
- robert_foss 9mo agoHe treated his cancer with the anti-threadworm medication Ivermectin.
- good8675309 9mo agoPretty sure he tried everything, not just that, wouldn't you?
- y0ssar1an 9mo agoNo
- negzero7 9mo ago[flagged]
- qarl 9mo ago[flagged]
- Jtsummers 9mo ago[flagged]
- gus_massa 9mo agoSome snake oil treatments are very expensive and cause more harm for you and your family. For example, this was (is?) popular for breast cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-dose_chemotherapy_and_bone_marrow_transplant https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-dose_chemotherapy_and_bon... Ivermectin is a very used cheap and safe drug, so I don't expect many nasty side effects, but IANAMD, so ask a real medical doctor before trying.
- 9mo ago
- sneak 9mo ago[flagged]
- andrewclunn 9mo agoGood to know that "Don't speak ill of the dead," is now truly dead. Ironic that an online post trying to push a political point is attempting to frame itself as rising above. There is no middle ground. There is no common decency.
- dyauspitr 9mo agoYou can’t have a middle ground when your tenets offer up personal harm to a significant portion of the population.
- petesergeant 9mo agoWhy shouldn’t you speak ill of the dead?
- card_zero 9mo agoI suppose you shouldn't jeer at them for being dead, for a start, and you should make allowances for their being dead when judging their actions. Treat them fairly.
- bena 9mo agoIt's mostly because the dead cannot defend themselves. You are attacking someone who you have no fear of reprisal from.
- cthalupa 9mo ago
- claaams 9mo agoHe gave a tour of his house on YouTube a long time ago and on every tv in nearly every room he has Fox News playing.
- haakon 9mo agoJust watching it now (and what a house it is). There's a TV in almost every room, and Fox News is on each of them. He says: "Yes, it is the same station on every television, because that's how the system is designed. It's designed so it'll play the same station all over the house. It happens to be Fox News, but I do flip around. It's not nailed on Fox News, in case you're wondering."
- jcjn 9mo ago[flagged]
- conception 9mo agoNarrator: “It was nailed on Fox News.”
- mvdtnz 9mo agoI think the "TV in every room" is far more concerning than the choice of station. That cannot be good for the mind.
- tasuki 9mo agoI have no television in any room. Having a tv in nearly every room sounds like a nightmare. Doubly so if playing Fox News.
- jcjn 9mo ago[flagged]
- jquery 9mo agoActually it’s more accurate to say Scott was always a far right troll and provocateur, but at some point he fell down a racist rabbit-hole. The book “The Trouble with Dilbert: How Corporate Culture Gets the Last Laugh” shows how Scott Adams never cared about the plight of workers in the first place, using his own words. It was way ahead of its time, as the angry reviews from 1998 and 2000, back in Dilbert’s heyday, demonstrate. I say this as someone who used to really enjoy Dilbert, but looking back with a critical eye, it’s easy to see an artist who deliberately avoids bringing up topics that might actually do something to improve corporate culture.
- NoSalt 9mo agoI do not know about anybody else, but I do not read comics, watch movies, listen to music, or read books [for pleasure] in order to learn a lesson, learn how to "improve corporate culture", or anything else. Entertainment is, for me, 100% escapist. I indulge in entertainment as a brief escape from reality. If Dilbert had been preachy, which A LOT of comics seem to be these days, I would not have enjoyed it.
- razingeden 9mo agoScott Adams’s boss at Pacbell in 1985 was (still) an SVP (and my boss) at AT&T in 2012. There was always a buzz and a whisper whenever someone was frustrated: “SHE’s the boss who inspired Dilbert.” Internally there was a saying that ATT stands for “Ask The Tentacles.” I haven’t really read the “funnies” since I was a kid but the few Dilbert comics I ever did read NAILED her org. I will never forget being paged 1,000 times a night - not even kidding — or having my boss demand I “check sendmail” every time anything and I mean anything went down. Voice? Data? CALEA tunnels? IPTV? Fax? No, I can’t go immediately investigate the actual issue, I have to go into some crusty Solaris boxes the company forgot about 11 years ago and humor some dinosaur with three mansions who probably also directly inspired the Peter Principle in 1969 and are still working there. Dilbert was BARELY satire. And that’s enough out of me.
- ghaff 9mo agoAs a product manager in the computer industry from the mid 80s into the 90s, Dilbert really resonated with me as satire--except, as you say, when it was barely satire. Not so much except for occasional later strips that really nailed some specific thing.
- erezsh 9mo ago[flagged]
- cthalupa 9mo agoWhen my everyday life is no longer impacted by politics, I'll be able to put it aside for a day, because I'll be able to ignore the impact politics has on me for that day. But that's not the world we live in. It won't ever be the world we live in.
- afavour 9mo agoAdams was the one who refused to put his politics aside, this thread is simply a reflection of that.
- hamburglar 9mo agoNot having a dog in this fight, what it really looks like to me is the “haters” started as people who respectfully acknowledged his greatness while also recognizing that there were aspects of him they didn’t like. The real hatred came out when people couldn’t handle this due to sharing a political identity with him.
- caminante 9mo ago> while also recognizing that there were aspects of him they didn’t like Except you're not being objective. Accusing anyone of "falling off the far right cliffs of insanity" is a subjective and negative portrayal. e.g., I could say and get away with the former, but not the latter when critiquing a co-worker's idea.
- hamburglar 9mo agoI think maybe you’re reading too much into it. I’ll happily acknowledge that I’ve fallen off my own cliffs of insanity at times. It’s hyperbole, not an attack.
- Dylan16807 9mo ago> Except you're not being objective. Of course "recognizing that there were aspects of him they didn’t like" is not going to be objective. And it's fine for it to not be objective. > Accusing anyone of "falling off the far right cliffs of insanity" is a subjective and negative portrayal. Yeah but it's right. > I could say and get away with the former, but not the latter when critiquing a co-worker's idea. You have to bite your tongue at work in a lot of ways that don't make sense outside work.
- NoSalt 9mo ago> "terminally online" Bad choice of words.
- pjc50 9mo ago> just absolutely bathe yourself in a political media echo chamber. It seems to me that social media belongs in the same "vice" category as drinking, drugs, and gambling: lots of people can "enjoy responsibly", some make a mess but pull back when they see it, and some completely ruin their lives by doubling down.
- cosmic_cheese 9mo agoAbsolutely. Social media is designed to elicit a constant stream of dopamine hits, prey on our need for social validation, keep the amygdala engaged, stoke conflict, and bolster whatever beliefs we carry (no matter how deranged). It’s the ultimate distortion machine and is wildly dangerous, particularly for individuals who struggle to keep it at arm’s distance and fail to equip mental PPE prior to usage.
- SoftTalker 9mo agoI don't think it's by design. I think it is by its nature. Most people crave social interaction, and when others engage with them it triggers that dopamine hit. As you say, we all have need for social validation. Even HN has that effect, and it's not engineered to elicit it as far as I know. Even USENET had that pull, and people would waste hours on it, engage in flamewars, etc. Now platforms like TikTok and Instagram might optimize for it but even if they didn't, they would have that addictive quality. I don't think there's any way to do social media that would avoid this.
- cosmic_cheese 9mo agoThe effect is much stronger than it has to be due to how these services have been optimized for increasing engagement at the cost of all else. In more traditional places of online discussion, things like flamebait is at minimum penalized and often deleted. Posters with strong tendency towards incivility and outright falsehoods get banned. Participating with one’s lizard brain at the wheel is strongly discouraged. There’s no reason why that can’t be true of social media, too. It could be tuned to elevate content that doesn’t pull people into a degenerative cycle, but that’s not nearly as profitable and so it’s not.
- Noaidi 9mo agoI have a two famous friends in the television industry. It seems they fall into the trap that since they produce popular TV shows that they then can think they know every thing about everything else, mostly because of the people that surround them want to stay friends so they can be associated with the fame. I think this is the trap Adams fell into as well. Whether that was with his knowledge or ignorance I do not know. I do not let my friends get away with them thinking they are experts on everything. Adams turned his fame of Dilbert into his fame for saying things online. I mean he even started a food company! Anyone remember the "Dilberito"??? Seems he was always just looking for more ways to make money. And reading his books it sounded like he wanted to get rid of religions. So he was human, just like the rest of us. And he died desperate and clutching to life, leveraging whatever power he had to try to save it from who ever he could.
- faefox 9mo agoSocial media is a poison and Mr. Adams drank deep from the well. It's a shame.
- moralestapia 9mo agoWhat a distasteful comment. The man did way more good than harm to everyone around him. He also just passed away, show some respect.
- MPSimmons 9mo ago>He also just passed away, show some respect. It takes more than dying to earn respect.
- bigstrat2003 9mo agoNo. You show respect for those who have just died, period. It's proper manners to do so.
- voganmother42 9mo agoRight, be like the US president!
- cosmicgadget 9mo agoBased on his later years I think the best way to honor him is with an internet shitshow and simping for Donald Trump. I volunteer for the former.
- MPSimmons 9mo agoAll humans get a certain amount of respect, Scott Adams included. What level of respect do you think dying earns you, above and beyond that? And why would being dead earn you more respect than you had in life?
- energy123 9mo agoI never pegged him for a liar though. He believed what he said, unlike so many political commentators.
- epistasis 9mo agoWhen I was young I didn't understand meaning of the words "do not bear false witness" and it was explained to me as "do not lie". As I've gotten older and now understand the words better, the much broader category of "do not bear false witness" seems like the better precept. Spreading false witness, even if sincere, has great harm.
- duxup 9mo agoDoes it matter? How can you tell anyway?
- machomaster 9mo agoThat's the most important thing that matters, when choosing whose words to even allow to enter one's ears. Consistency of explanations and of the underlying logic.
- energy123 9mo agoHe started supporting Trump in 2015-2016 when it was deeply unfashionable in his local context, at personal cost.
- cosmicgadget 9mo agoHe actually believed Trump would normalize relations with DPRK and send special forces to take out fentanyl factories in mainland China?
- bdangubic 9mo agoOf all the things people believe(d) Trump will/would do this one would not make top-100 list :)
- DyslexicAtheist 9mo agoyes, posts like these do not look like they were made by a mentally stable individual https://bsky.app/profile/dell.bsky.social/post/3mccx32hklc2f https://bsky.app/profile/dell.bsky.social/post/3mccx32hklc2f
- itbeho 9mo agoAnd why did he say that? And what was the end result of him posting that? You should add context so people know that Kaiser was delaying his treatment, Trump's team got Kaiser in gear so that he could receive it (Trump did indeed help him). Now imagine any other non-famous person with Stage IV cancer trying to get treatment without the help of a president.
- 2OEH8eoCRo0 9mo agoI think the world was better with him in it despite his controversies. Dilbert was great. Rest in peace
- gadders 9mo ago[flagged]
- roman_soldier 9mo ago[dead]
- thefz 9mo agoNotch too. I never understood the urge to self destruct online. Jesus, take the money and fame and disappear like Tom of myspace.
- bena 9mo agoEh. I don't think Notch can really self-destruct. Was made a billionaire with the sale of Mojang to Microsoft. People may not like him, but I don't think it can ever truly affect him.
- duxup 9mo agoI’m a believer in the idea of “twitter poisoning”, but of course it applies to all social media. https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/opinion/trump-musk-kanye-twitter.html?unlocked_article_code=1._U8.zITe.lggtAgqxn7_N&smid=url-share https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/opinion/trump-musk-kanye-...
- IAmBroom 9mo agoSee also: JK Rowling. Pre-2018: Inclusion! Weirdos are people too! The marginalized need a voice! Post-2019: Transsexuals are a blight on society! They cause cancer in puppies!
- decremental 9mo ago[dead]
- duxup 9mo agoSadly I suspect many people aren’t really driven by ideology as much as they wave around ideology when they think it gets them something they want. Outside that… ideology is out the window.
- qarl 9mo agoIt's a long list. Sadly, Dawkins is also on there. And I'd argue Elon fits the bill, too.
- kstrauser 9mo agoTo argue that, you’d have to find someone who disagrees.
- Andrew_nenakhov 9mo agoThis progressive movement is absolutely totalitarian. As long as you adhere to all mainstream tenets, you're good and virtuous, like pre-2018 JK Rowling. Gay Dumbledore, yay! But if the mainstream tenets change, and some previously loyal followers disagree with some of them, they should be ostracised, cancelled and vilified, like post-2019 JK Rowling. The funny thing is that this is what real fascists and communists did to a T, yet, progressive people view themselves as anti-fascists.
- AlexandrB 9mo agoSomeone described it as Calvinball. The rules keep changing and if you don't keep up you're out. Meanwhile, the contradictions keep piling up...
- tharmas 9mo agoHe "mainlined" Rupert Murdoch's Fox News. That is pure poison for the soul.
- EnergyAmy 9mo agoPart of his arc was posting about himself on Reddit using sockpuppets, calling himself a genius: https://comicsalliance.com/scott-adams-plannedchaos-sockpuppet/ https://comicsalliance.com/scott-adams-plannedchaos-sockpupp...
- syncsynchalt 9mo agoDon't forget his claim that master hypnotists are using camgirls to give him super-orgasms to steal his money. He was a nutter in more ways than just his politics. https://web.archive.org/web/20201108112121/https://www.scottadamssays.com/2015/08/28/nate-silver-gives-trump-2-chance-of-getting/ https://web.archive.org/web/20201108112121/https://www.scott... > In other news, for several years I have been tracking a Master Wizard that I believe lives in Southern California. It seems he has trained a small army of attractive women in his method. The women create a specialized style of porn video clips that literally hypnotize the viewer to magnify the orgasm experience beyond anything you probably imagine is possible. Hypnosis has a super-strong impact on about 20% of people. And a lesser-but-strong impact on most of the rest. > Once a customer is hooked, the girls use powerful (and real) hypnosis tools to connect the viewer’s enjoyable experience (a super-orgasm, or several) to the viewer’s act of giving them money, either directly or by buying more clips. Eventually the regular viewers are reprogrammed to get their sexual thrill by the act of donating money to the girls in the videos. There are lots of variations tied to each type of sexual kink, but that’s the general idea. > My best guess is that 10% of the traffic that flows through their business model literally cannot leave until they have no money left. The Master Wizard is that good. The women are well-coached in his methods.
- cloudfudge 9mo agoThis is a fascinating development. Did he talk about this regularly?
- PaulHoule 9mo agoWhen I was a lot younger I thought the comic strip was funny but I read a review of it circa 2005 which pointed out it was dangerously cynical and that Dilbert is to blame for his shit life because he goes along with it all. That is, if you care about doing good work, finding meaning in your work, you would reject everything he stands for. It's tragedy instead comedy and it doesn't matter if you see it through the lens of Karl Marx ("he doesn't challenge the power structure") or through the lens of Tom Peters or James Collins ("search for excellence in the current system") I mean, there is this social contagion aspect of comedy, you might think it is funny because it it is in a frame where it is supposed to be funny or because other people are laughing. But the wider context is that 4-koma [1] have been dead in the US since at least the 1980s, our culture is not at all competitive or meritocratic and as long we still have Peanuts and Family Circle we are never going to have a Bocchi the Rock. Young people are turning to Japanese pop culture because in Japan quirky individuals can write a light novel or low-budget video game that can become a multi-billion dollar franchise and the doors are just not open for that here, at all. Thus, Scott Adams, who won the lottery with his comic that rejects the idea of excellence doesn't have any moral basis to talk about corporate DEI and how it fails us all. I think he did have some insights into the spell that Trump casts over people, and it's a hard thing to talk about in a way that people will accept. What people would laugh at when it was framed as fiction didn't seem funny at all when it was presented as fact. [1] 4-panel comics
- Andrew_nenakhov 9mo agoMany, many commenters here are themselves bathed in a political media echo chamber, just a different one. Ironic, isn't it? If you treat your political opponents as 'insane' instead of trying to understand what moves them, it says more about you than about people you consider insane.