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

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.)

Show threadAnnalee

@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.

Feb 27, 2023 at 12:35pmWeb
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.