Scott Adams, ‘Dilbert’ Creator, Dies at 68

[hbelkins]

This one was always one of my favorites:

I used to work at a large company with a similar email address structure (first initial plus first seven letters of last name). Someone else working there was named Sam Harting, which left him with a very unfortunate email.

That's reminiscent of a story I once heard about an organization where the email address structure was the last name, followed by the first initial of the first name.That created an unfortunate email address for Tim Takashi.

[kphoger]

I used to work at a large company with a similar email address structure (first initial plus first seven letters of last name). Someone else working there was named Sam Harting, which left him with a very unfortunate email.

So I just looked.  The closest I can get is a network ID shartt in Atlanta.

[Scott5114]

It's been a while since I've interacted with Scott Adams's work, so I have no real memories of any high points of it. One thing I saw pointed out after his passing was a short book called The Trouble With Dilbert: How Corporate Culture Gets the Last Laugh, which according to one synopsis "argues that the Dilbert comic strip actually promotes negative images of employees and reinforces the positions of management." The basic thrust of the book was that basically that Dilbert normalized mistreatment of employees, and encouraged them to simply laugh it off as "just the way the world is". I haven't read enough Dilbert to know whether I agree with that, but it seems like at least it was an interesting piece of media analysis that would be worth talking about, at least.

Adams's response to the book didn't really make a lot of sense to me.


One time for a road trip (I want to say it was the 2008 Chicago meet?) my mom borrowed a copy of one of his audiobooks that we listened to on I-44 through Missouri. It was an Andy Rooney-style "funny observations of the world" type of book, and while I remember getting a few laughs out of it, there was an extended segment where he laid out a rather bizarre argument for why there is no such thing as free will. I found that pretty off-putting and not very funny.

I guess if he genuinely doesn't believe he has free will, that could explain his bizarre behavior the last few years.

Wikipedia has some interesting information about the Dilbert TV show:

The first season centered around the creation of a new product called the "Gruntmaster 6000". It was critically acclaimed and won an Emmy Award, leading to its renewal for a second season. The second season did away with the serial format and was composed entirely of standalone episodes, many of which shifted focus away from the workplace and involved absurdist plots such as Wally being mistaken for a religious leader ("The Shroud of Wally") and Dilbert being accused of mass murder ("The Trial"). The second season's two-episode finale included Dilbert getting pregnant with the child of a cow, a hillbilly, robot DNA, "several dozen engineers", an elderly billionaire, and an alien, eventually ending up in a custody battle with Stone Cold Steve Austin as the Judge.

When UPN declined to renew the series for its third season,

Yeah, I think after that last sentence in the first paragraph, we all saw that coming.

...Adams stated, "I lost my TV show for being white when UPN decided it would focus on an African-American audience."

Really? Uh, are you sure it wasn't because of the two-part Pregbert hillbilly cow child episode? Are you really sure it wasn't cause of that? No? It's cause you're white? Not the custody battle with Stone Cold Steve Austin? Okay.

We long-timers at work still have usernames that are first initial, middle initial, last name.  But several years ago, they started issuing usernames like B62015 or C21884 or whatever.

For the system at the casino we had that used that same terminal system you guys have with the QINTER and all that, our accounts were one or two letters followed by a number. The letters were the department you were in: slot techs were EG for electronic games, pit bosses were CG for card games, cashiers were C, player's club was PB for...some reason. But if you ever transferred departments they couldn't change the username, so you would be stuck with a weird login that didn't match anyone else's. I always found it amusing when some bigshot manager in suit and tie would get on one of the computers to try and figure out if someone was trying to cheat the casino or whatever and you'd see him log in with a C number or something like that.

[formulanone]

As someone who read the Dilbert strip sparingly at most, I think it was always rather focused on a narrow band of an overall audience. Not everyone was going to get the jokes about coding, product development, networking, or something a little more obscure. They might have understood the role of the clueless and careless boss, the unflinching Human Resources department, or the apathy that surrounds the workplace, but those jokes showing why those reactions occurred weren't necessarily based of mass appeal, but because they were responses seeded by trivia or co-existing in that type workplace. You weren't likely to "get it" if you're 17 and working in retail or performing manual labor. But it was funny when you understood it.

The rise of the strip in tandem as workplaces struggled and succeeded along with rapid social changes via computers and Internet really spurred its popularity. I'd argue that something like Office Space doesn't get released in 1999 if it weren't for Dilbert; it kind of paved the way for that kind of techie humor, and probably would have been 5-10 years down the pipeline.

But there was always going to be digital divide of who understands your in-jokes and who does not. It's unfortunate when someone seems to blame everyone else and doesn't own up to the world they have to live in. Cartoonists – like prolific writers and content creators – exist in bubbles against a constant production cycle because of those bottomless demands, which can incrementally push you ever so gently out of touch with society. Sometimes when you push the envelope, you can succeed, change limits, public perception, whatever...and sometimes you've got nothing left to mail yourself home. There's no exact limit for either scenario and the public doesn't warm to everything against a lot of competition.

I hadn't kept up on his terrible rants but it sounds like taking the yoke of personal responsibility off and hurling it into the abyss while later claiming you were subsequently carjacked, is just a straight-up dick move.

[kphoger]

I have a book of Dilbert comic strips from around the time that the internet was just starting to become mainstream.  Some of those strips are really fun to look back at now.  For example, though I can't remember the exact wording off the top of my head right now, one character mentioned that, as computers become more and more a vital part of life, there will be a name for people who know how to use computers well;  the other character replied that, yes, they will be called 'secretaries'.  Ha!  Also, some of the digs at Dan Quayle are fun to read, mainly because otherwise it's really easy to forget Dan Quayle ever existed.

[Rothman]

All I can say is that when I was much younger, I got through maybe 1.5 episodes of the Dilbert TV show before I gave up on it.  One of the worst translations from original media to the TV ever.  Still feel bitterly disappointed in it.

Have a Dilbert collection on my bookshelf, though.

[kphoger]

...Adams stated, "I lost my TV show for being white when UPN decided it would focus on an African-American audience."

Really? Uh, are you sure it wasn't because of the two-part Pregbert hillbilly cow child episode? Are you really sure it wasn't cause of that? No? It's cause you're white? Not the custody battle with Stone Cold Steve Austin? Okay.

Reminds me of one time at work, we had a pallet of PlayStations in the warehouse, and a few of them went missing.  Checked the security footage for the day they went missing, and the cameras had been turned off for a period of time that evening.  Leading up to the gap in camera footage, a person could be seen walking into the comm room, and the same person could be seen walking out of the comm room when camera footage was restored.  There was only one employee on site at the time, and that person on camera was her girlfriend.  The company fired her.  She then filed a lawsuit against the company, claiming that we fired her because she's black.

[hbelkins]

The thing about the "Dilbert" culture is that it applies to government just as much as it did/does the corporate world.

In a previous job, I was part of a group that was constantly being reminded of "deliverables" and other Dilbert-esque buzzwords. At the time, I subscribed to a newspaper that carried "Dilbert" and I amassed quite a collection of strips I'd cut out that described perfectly the bureaucratic nonsense we had to navigate.

[TheHighwayMan3561]

...Adams stated, "I lost my TV show for being white when UPN decided it would focus on an African-American audience."

Really? Uh, are you sure it wasn't because of the two-part Pregbert hillbilly cow child episode? Are you really sure it wasn't cause of that? No? It's cause you're white? Not the custody battle with Stone Cold Steve Austin? Okay.

I read somewhere that Adams became bored with the TV show after the first season, which was generally well-received, and tanked the second season so it would get cancelled. Apparently this wasn't true, but the second season was so wildly different from the first.

[formulanone]

Creators and artists also have lots of trouble dealing with the fact they will eventually Fall Off and recede into unpopularity or just forgotten, as with 99.99% of all works. It takes a massive ego to think one can bypass this phenomenon; look at how many one-hit wonders and one-time actors there were (and will continue) or writers with a single book, cartoonists who make a limited name for themselves. Many painters or poets weren't even discovered as brilliant when they were even alive. Statistically, this is how it goes and will continue to do so. Sure, if you have a fortune you can continue to prop up your own career and that's laudable by itself. But it's never a guarantee of continued success.

If the characters that you put into place as archetypes do not change much, they can become stale. Of course, you can change them too much and you eventually lose your audience / meaning / plot and be branded as nuts / Sell Out / desperate / woke / misunderstood genius / have to pitch snake oil to bolster your income.

[vdeane]

One thing I saw pointed out after his passing was a short book called The Trouble With Dilbert: How Corporate Culture Gets the Last Laugh, which according to one synopsis "argues that the Dilbert comic strip actually promotes negative images of employees and reinforces the positions of management." The basic thrust of the book was that basically that Dilbert normalized mistreatment of employees, and encouraged them to simply laugh it off as "just the way the world is". I haven't read enough Dilbert to know whether I agree with that, but it seems like at least it was an interesting piece of media analysis that would be worth talking about, at least.

It's also interesting given how most people thought it was a critique on bad management and assumed that that the pointy-haired boss, Catbert, etc. were the bad guys.  Harry Potter is the same way, considering that I'm pretty sure that JK Rowling's author avatar is Petunia Dursley.

[kkt]

This one was always one of my favorites:

Yes.  I specially like that his own e-mail address, in small print between the first and second frames, is an exception

[kphoger]

I used to work at a large company with a similar email address structure (first initial plus first seven letters of last name). Someone else working there was named Sam Harting, which left him with a very unfortunate email.

So I just looked.  The closest I can get is a network ID shartt in Atlanta.

I also see now that there's someone in San Diego with a network ID {first initial}{last name}{number}, and his last name is Hite.  Unfortunately, his first name does not begin with S.

There's also someone named S. Lutz with the same network ID format, but unfortunately hers appears to use her maiden name or something instead.

This is fun!

[wxfree]

The thing about the "Dilbert" culture is that it applies to government just as much as it did/does the corporate world.

In a previous job, I was part of a group that was constantly being reminded of "deliverables" and other Dilbert-esque buzzwords. At the time, I subscribed to a newspaper that carried "Dilbert" and I amassed quite a collection of strips I'd cut out that described perfectly the bureaucratic nonsense we had to navigate.

That was my impression.  I'm a lifelong newspaper reader and I love comics.  Dilbert always made me feel excluded, as if it's written for someone else.  There's nothing wrong with that, but it wasn't one of my favorite comics because sometimes I got the joke and sometimes I didn't.  For example, Dilbert is where I first read about Chat GPTXYZ, or whatever it's called.  I had no idea what it was, so the jokes made no sense to me.  I still don't really know what it is, and I'd probably like to live out the rest of my days without finding out.  Even when I was young, I had no place in my mind for things like fads and buzzwords (probably because it was the 80s and the world was overloaded with them).  Without a grasp on those things, I won't understand Dilbert the way it was meant to be read.

Some of them were funny to a more general audience, though.  I still remember the one with a person calling in to cash out some kind of crypto coin and being told that making withdrawals is a functionality they haven't added yet.  When she asked how to get her money, she was told "try hacking us, our cybersecurity is terrible."

[kphoger]

So I just looked.  The closest I can get is a network ID shartt in Atlanta.

I also see now that there's someone in San Diego with a network ID {first initial}{last name}{number}, and his last name is Hite.  Unfortunately, his first name does not begin with S.

There's also someone named S. Lutz with the same network ID format, but unfortunately hers appears to use her maiden name or something instead.

Then again, I work in an industry where people are actually encouraged to use their "butt set" at customers' homes, so...

[Max Rockatansky]

The thing about the "Dilbert" culture is that it applies to government just as much as it did/does the corporate world.

In a previous job, I was part of a group that was constantly being reminded of "deliverables" and other Dilbert-esque buzzwords. At the time, I subscribed to a newspaper that carried "Dilbert" and I amassed quite a collection of strips I'd cut out that described perfectly the bureaucratic nonsense we had to navigate.

That was my impression.  I'm a lifelong newspaper reader and I love comics.  Dilbert always made me feel excluded, as if it's written for someone else.  There's nothing wrong with that, but it wasn't one of my favorite comics because sometimes I got the joke and sometimes I didn't.  For example, Dilbert is where I first read about Chat GPTXYZ, or whatever it's called.  I had no idea what it was, so the jokes made no sense to me.  I still don't really know what it is, and I'd probably like to live out the rest of my days without finding out.  Even when I was young, I had no place in my mind for things like fads and buzzwords (probably because it was the 80s and the world was overloaded with them).  Without a grasp on those things, I won't understand Dilbert the way it was meant to be read.

Some of them were funny to a more general audience, though.  I still remember the one with a person calling in to cash out some kind of crypto coin and being told that making withdrawals is a functionality they haven't added yet.  When she asked how to get her money, she was told "try hacking us, our cybersecurity is terrible."

Dilbert always struck me as a white collar comic.  It never really resonated with me but my dad (a white collar guy) was a big fan of it.

[kkt]

I used to work at a large company with a similar email address structure (first initial plus first seven letters of last name). Someone else working there was named Sam Harting, which left him with a very unfortunate email.

So I just looked.  The closest I can get is a network ID shartt in Atlanta.

I also see now that there's someone in San Diego with a network ID {first initial}{last name}{number}, and his last name is Hite.  Unfortunately, his first name does not begin with S.

There's also someone named S. Lutz with the same network ID format, but unfortunately hers appears to use her maiden name or something instead.

This is fun!

Our work e-mail address had no pattern.  There were too many people for any practical scheme to have no exceptions.  All students, faculty, and staff, as well as alumni and retirees had e-mail addresses in the universty's domain.  They were first-come first-served.  I scored with getting kkt.

[kphoger]

I scored with getting kkt.

Back in the wild wild west of early 2000s e-mail, I made it my goal to have as short an e-mail address as possible.  For a while, I used an email address of <kph@k.ro>.

[1995hoo]

I scored with getting kkt.

Back in the wild wild west of early 2000s e-mail, I made it my goal to have as short an e-mail address as possible.  For a while, I used an email address of <kph@k.ro>.

I remember back in the even earlier days of early 1990s e-mail, one of my father's colleagues had a personal e-mail account that ended in @hotmail.com. She asked him why he never responded to e-mail and he said he hadn't received anything from her. She confirmed what his address was and said what hers was. That's when the problem became clear: He was deleting it all, unread, because he saw "hotmail" and assumed it was porno spam (not that he used the word "spam" back then, of course).

[kphoger]

She asked him why he never responded to e-mail and he said he hadn't received anything from her. She confirmed what his address was and said what hers was. That's when the problem became clear: He was deleting it all, unread, because he saw "hotmail" and assumed it was porno spam (not that he used the word "spam" back then, of course).

Reminds me of the story a friend of my dad's told back in the 1980s or 1990s.  He kept getting calls from AT&T one day, and he had no interest in talking to a salesman, so he kept hanging up the phone.  After enough times of that, he finally stayed on the line long enough for the person on the other end to ask if he'd like to accept a collect call from his wife.

[bing101]

I remember Dilbert was at its peak when it was satire directed at the Dot-com boom of the late 1990's and early 2000's. That's when Scott Adam's was the most liked person given that he was directed his parodies over the work environment of Silicon Valley at that time.

[Rothman]

I remember Dilbert was at its peak when it was satire directed at the Dot-com boom of the late 1990's and early 2000's. That's when Scott Adam's was the most liked person given that he was directed his parodies over the work environment of Silicon Valley at that time.

Bill Cosby was well-liked in his heyday, too.  Just sayin'...

[kphoger]

Bill Cosby was well-liked in his heyday, too.  Just sayin'...

I still enjoy listening to Cosby.  Just sayin'...

[Rothman]

Bill Cosby was well-liked in his heyday, too.  Just sayin'...

I still enjoy listening to Cosby.  Just sayin'...

Eesh.  After reading his deposition as printed in Rolling Stone, I can't.  Repulsed by everything Cosby ever since.

[kphoger]

Eesh.  After reading his deposition as printed in Rolling Stone, I can't.  Repulsed by everything Cosby ever since.

If I couldn't appreciate the art put out by nasty people, then my music collection would probably shrink by half.