Charlie StrossFeb 27, 2023
Good riddance, don't let the doorknob hit you on the way out, etc.
Show threadCharlie Stross

I remember when Dilbert was funny-ish, circa 1993. Then gradually stopped being funny, circa 1995-97. Then turned actively un-funny and offensive by about 2000. This is LONG overdue.

(Seriously, working from home is definitely not for everyone: you can gradually lose your grip on consensus reality and be captured by some really weird and unfortunate echo chambers. Scott Adams is a perfect example: it wasn't inevitable that he'd end up here, but the seeds were planted in fertile soil early on.)

Feb 27, 2023 at 10:32amWeb
Show threadHugo MillsFeb 27, 2023
@cstross I remember some time after I stopped paying attention to Dilbert, finding out that he'd gone all Men's Rights on his blog, and feeling relieved that I was ahead of the curve on not caring about him or his cartoons any more.
Show thread🦇 Jennie Rigg 🏳️‍🌈 (she/her)Feb 27, 2023
@darkling saaaaaaaaaaame @cstross
Show threadPer VognsenFeb 27, 2023
@cstross There's a 99% likelihood he's going to start writing a Dark Dilbert strip now that will be an even more annoying version of Mallard Fillmore.
Show threadCharlie StrossFeb 27, 2023

A new strip for Scott Adams:

Dilbert is downsized by Elon Musk. Tries to retire, but cashed in his 401(K) early to invest in crypto, lost his shirt, and now works checkout in a WalMart plagued by Neo-Nazis. Catbert works in Security, tormenting the checkout staff via headsets and electroshock belts. The PHB was also downsized but landed a job as Branch Manager at this WalMart.

Dilbert's necktie has a permanent droop because he can no longer afford to buy Viagra.

Dogbert is dead.

@pervognsen

Show threadJoe CotelleseFeb 27, 2023
@cstross @pervognsen I'd read this.
Show threadDavid EmmettFeb 27, 2023

@cstross This is always a bigger problem for the wealthy and successful than for those who aren't, because the incentives of people surrounding the wealthy are to indulge them, rather than challenge them. The more narcissistic they are, the worse this is.

But there were also signs that the Dildude had a propensity for weirdness was the last chapter in the Dilbert Future, where he starts to talk about being able to make your own luck and change reality.

Show threadTigerfortFeb 27, 2023
@motomatters @cstross
Wasn't that also the section that went off on one about how evolution would soon be proved wrong because he didn't understand it?
I don't remember the details, except that a big chunk of his argument involved an alternate theory of gravity that could be trivially shown to be wrong by anyone capable of understanding GCSE-level science.
Show threadDavid EmmettFeb 27, 2023
@tigerfort @cstross yes. It was such a weird and dissonant ending to the book. Really striking.
Show threadBart van der OuderaaFeb 27, 2023
@cstross I think I stopped loving the strips after "the dilbert principle" where it became clear that the writer didn't really spend that much time taking his work seriously. But even worse accepted that his reality was THE reality instead of just seeing the toxic workplace as a reason to find something else. For me (around the time I needed to start looking for work) also the start of this idea that work needs to inspire, be fun or at least be honest in some way.
Show threadOggieFeb 27, 2023

@cstross Completely ignoring who it's about (because honestly fuck him and paying any attention to anything else he ever says) I absolutely love your usage of consensus reality in this. It brings to mind the prachettism of the brownian motion of society keeping human beings knowing they are, well, human.

It's an important concept. We aren't inherently anything, certainly not sane. We wander and poke and reinforce ideas all on our own, and sometimes need external bumps to course correct.

Show threadex or current IDF unwelcomeFeb 27, 2023
@cstross I worked in the computer unit of a telecomms manufacturer and we deduced from some strips that Adams worked in Telecomms. He actually worked for Patel in the USA
Show threadSchroedingerFeb 27, 2023
@cstross For quite some time, I saw my working environment in Dilbert strips. I realise that I haven't for a long time now.
Show threadCharlie StrossFeb 27, 2023

@SteveClough Circa 1992-95, I worked in a corporate environment where we got advance warning of a visit by senior management every time because, the morning of the visit, managers would patrole the cubicles and take down all the Dilbert strips on the walls.

*Back then and there* it was brutal social commentary—about a kind of society that shouldn't be allowed to exist (ie. corporate culture).

Show threadwiredogFeb 27, 2023

@cstross

The sad thing is, his strips were occasionally still amusing. And more creative than Peanuts, (still in the Washington Post!) and the daily Doonesbury (also in the WaPo.)

Show threadHugo MillsFeb 27, 2023
@wiredog @cstross I'm fairly sure I can only remember one actual Dilbert strip. Compare that to, say, Steve Bell's If..., where I can still remember whole storylines from the 1990s...
Show threadOpenDNA⚙️Feb 27, 2023
@wiredog @cstross "Scott Adams has fewer new ideas than Charles Schulz" is low-key funny af.
Show threadHryscanFeb 27, 2023
@cstross
I remember reading this https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/85604.The_Trouble_with_Dilbert back in 1997.
The Trouble with Dilbert: How Corporate Culture Gets th…

Most readers assume Dilbert is on their side in a tough…

Goodreads
Show threadAlexFeb 27, 2023
@cstross I'll always have this one and the whole Alice boyfriend project up there as unimpeachably good. But you are right, something went very wrong with Scott.
Show threadEdmund SchluesselFeb 27, 2023

@cstross I recall this essay by Miles Wray about how, as Adams' Class position had shifted from worker to petty bourgeois, the hero of his comic has similarly shifted from worker to manager

https://www.theawl.com/2017/12/dilbert-a-reckoning/

Dilbert: A Reckoning

Dilbert is dead, long live Dilbert.

The Awl
Show threadSellaTheChemistFeb 27, 2023
@cstross And Spot on. Your comment is also a reminder of the perils of home schooling too. Imagine what sort of echo chamber parents can construct if their child never sits in classes with other children.
Show threadCharlie StrossFeb 27, 2023
@sellathechemist Yeah, which is why the Screaming Jeezus People are so keen on home schooling.
Show threadSellaTheChemistFeb 27, 2023
@cstross Indeed!
Show threadAnnaleeFeb 27, 2023

@cstross I'm personally glad I'm not old enough to remember when it was allegedly funny.

Literally the first Dilbert where I remember understanding the 'joke,' back when I was a kid, was some misogynistic nonsense that 2023 would clock as incel bullshit at 100 paces. The racism wasn't hard to spot either.

Liking Dilbert has been a "is this person okay with his bullshit or just too clueless to notice it?” smell for as long as I can remember.

Show threadCharlie StrossFeb 27, 2023
@Annalee I am teh oldz, and I am an immigrant to modernity from an era when comedy was EXPECTED to be offensive and cruel and punch down (the 1970s), and EVEN FROM THAT PERSPECTIVE Adams' humour was always edging tastelessness with a side-order of "ick, did he just imply that?" so maybe I was trained to put up with it for longer than I should have, in clear hindsight. But I'm pretty certain he wasn't this bad until some time after about 1995.
Show threadLaurel KrahnFeb 27, 2023
@cstross @Annalee This matches my recollection but I haven’t gone back to look at early strips. Part of Dilbert’s rise to popularity had to do with it being the first major comic strip that was freely available online (& Adams also had his email address in the strip, had to be among first to do that). Plus having the office place in Silicon Valley . . . it got embraced by many folks in tech.
Show threadkimuFeb 27, 2023
@cstross there was a time in the mid-90s when I was a new engineer working in a corporate culture that I thought he was satirizing in his strips. Now I distrust that any of it was actually funny &/or satire. Glad I left him behind when I stopped working in that kind of environment.
Show threadmsgbiFeb 27, 2023
@cstross @charles_ex
Show threadGeoWendFeb 27, 2023
@cstross that was what I thought the timeline might have been. I had remembered enjoying it, then had not really seen it in years…then saw it again and wondered. I seem to recall trying to read his book around 2001…and have no recall of anything about it.
Show threadrandom thoughtsFeb 27, 2023
@cstross He's been a creep for a long time, it took some time to admit his misogyny wasn't a part of him being trying to be funny but an actual thing.
Show threadJeroen RFeb 27, 2023
@cstross Working from home combined with Engineer Syndrome https://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Engineer%20Syndrome
Urban Dictionary: Engineer Syndrome

A student currently studying engineering who believes he or she is better than everyone else simply because he or she studies engineering. It is especially common with engineers who are not failing all of their classes, but can be seen in any and most engineers.

Urban Dictionary
Show threadheavybootsFeb 27, 2023
@cstross Yep, curating your news sources very carefully is important. I watched an extremely left leaning friend start listening to Rush Limbaugh back in the 90s “just so he could argue more effectively with them" and now 20 years later he's probably the most extreme conservative I know. 😬
Show threadPatrick Johanneson 🚀 🇨🇦Feb 27, 2023
@cstross Going back and reading the intro text to even the oldest comic collections, there's already that whiff of "I'm super intelligent and everyone else is an idiot".
Show threadLisPiFeb 27, 2023

@cstross Regarding the working from home part, I can't help but think that technologies to help mitigate that have gotten better.

And also, from experience I've encountered more than enough cranks in meatspace that had little to no use for a computer and still managed to be the screw-ups they were.

Some even manage to find a community of similar cranks. Supremacist groups are a very good example.

Show threadJoe HelfrichFeb 27, 2023
@cstross It stopped being funny when companies caught up with the things it was satirizing about office life. Then it went from occasionally funny and occasionally offensive to always depressing and occasionally offensive. And since then the frequency of "offensive" has only gone up.
Show threadAlan PurdomFeb 27, 2023
@cstross you have to credit him getting 30 years out of about 4 jokes.
Show threadCharlie StrossFeb 27, 2023
@modrup If only they were funny!
Show threadAlan PurdomFeb 27, 2023

@cstross bosses are stupid, women are irritable, Indians are hard working but incredibly naive and foreigners are inferior humans. I think the only black character he had was sometimes black and sometimes white and killed off periodically.

If you ever looked at the comment sections under his comics on his website they’ve been nothing but white supremacists right wing asshats for a long time.

Show threadHannah is trying to copeFeb 28, 2023
@cstross I've genuinely been thinking about this all day - are you really arguing that Adam's racism is cos... he worked from home for too long? Many - if not most - cartoonists are home based. Alison Bechdel or Charles Schulz didn't become MAGA chuds. This seems like a bizarre reach to me.
Show threadCharlie StrossFeb 28, 2023
@internetnerdgrl You're misreadming me. Folks who work from home have the elbow room to become more themselves. If Adams was a bit MAGA-inclined before he went WFH, then WFH insulated him from rubbing shoulders with people who disagreed with him—which is a corrective influence towards the consensus centre. So WFH didn't make him a racist, but it disinhibited him and enabled him to express it openly.
Show threadHannah is trying to copeFeb 28, 2023
@cstross Based on what evidence? This is a bizarre pattern of reasoning without factual basis. He's a syndicated cartoonist and has been for decades, so he probably worked from home for years. His online behaviour seems to have become more openly bigoted around the 2016 election - probably as part of the more permissive atmosphere for racist and right wing behaviour under Trump. Like a lot of these older, established but fading media stars (Rowling, Glinner, Ye) I wouldn't be surprised if he thought he'd be safe from criticism, as he keeps erroneously saying that no-one is really disagreeing with him. Of all the excuses for radicalisation, this one of yours is one of the weirdest. It's up there with blaming rap or video games.