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 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 Stross
@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.
Feb 28, 2023 at 11:29pmWeb
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.