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What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

meghanboilard.substack.com

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Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#191

Post by nonameiguess »

logicalmonster wrote: post #15
bediger4000 wrote: post #3

The easy answer to the title question is that Scott Adams gained enough wealth that he lost touch. That seems to be a common experience of commercially successful artists. The author never explores this explanation.

That's not a good explanation to me. Think of Hollywood: dominated by wealthy and out of touch artists. With very few exceptions, they all publicly express politically correct and safe ideas that ensures they keep making money comfortably. That's the total opposite of the direction Scott Adams has been going.

They have to work with a lot of other people. A comic strip writer doesn't. It's a different level. Wealthy celebrities can become out of touch with the working class or rural Americans or whatever, but a solo creator can become out of touch with everybody.

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#192

Post by clucas »

jfabre wrote: post #159
aldebran wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It feels like that started happening around 2014-2015. I genuinely wonder if he is afflicted with some mental issue. I stopped following him and the comics when he started blogging about how great trump was.

He didn't start blogging about how great Trump was, he blogged that Trump had a high chance of winning the election and explained why. Can't you make the difference between explaining a phenomena and encouraging it?

He explicitly endorsed Trump: http://web.archive.org/web/20190716163531/https://www.scotta...

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#193

Post by cat_plus_plus »

jrockway wrote: post #132
ravenstine wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It really makes me wonder what the common experience is for others not just in tech but Corporate America in general. I myself have run into anti-white and anti-male phenomena, unconscious bias pseudoscience training, diversity pledges, and so on, as have now others in my peer group. Dilbert's commentary has so far been entirely appropriate based on my experience, hence it's puzzling to me when people think there's s…

I've taken unconscious bias training. I thought it was very good. I remember catching myself in some meeting talking over a quiet woman who had probably been wanting to talk for quite a while. My brain remembered the training, I shut up, and let her participate in the meeting as an equal. Without the training, I would probably be silently making people miserable. Now I don't do that, as much. You use the word "pseudo…

It was considerate of you to do that, on the other hand adults also need to learn to be assertive to succeed in social aspects of work. If you were cutting her off or not paying attention to a raised hand, sure try to change that. But otherwise you are not doing her any favors for her long term career growth, where she will have to participate in meetings with confident, knowledgeable and busy people focused on work rather than psychology.

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#194

Post by jayd16 »

Some of the referenced strips from the article are just bad.

Who deals with this stuff actually and not in an imagined way? No one is complaining about made up cramps and if they did you would just tell them to file the sick day.

Dilbert used to be easy to identify with but these just don't seem close to reality at all.

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#195

Post by warning26 »

sterlind wrote: post #144
horsawlarway wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is my take. Personally - I think Scott Adams is more than a little bit batshit insane, but I certainly don't think he's punching down in the strips presented here.

The issues themselves aren't punching down, but the way he's using the characters is. Imagine Alice deciding to falsely accuse the PHB of sexual harassment to get rid of him. Or Asok becoming a manager and only promoting members of his caste. I feel like this is like that. I transitioned at work, and I've tried really hard not to be this character. I asked people to use my new name and pronouns but never complained t…

> eventually started passing so nobody remembers I'm trans anymore.

Exactly, so by presenting in a particular way, you were able to get people to use the pronouns you wanted. I think this is the key to why people find pronoun declaration so meaningless — pronouns are meant as a shortcut chosen by the speaker to refer to another person based on who that person appears to be. Making pronouns into a declaration breaks a fundamental piece of language functionality for very little gain.

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#196

Post by cholantesh »

ChrisMarshallNY wrote: post #171

Adams has been like that for years. If anyone remembers the DNRC period[0], it was full of really nasty stuff. I do not consider him to be a nice person, but I have enjoyed Dilbert, quite a bit. These days, I don't really follow Dilbert, anymore. Adams just got so bad, that I couldn't follow Dilbert, without thinking about his creator. [0] https://en-academic.com/dic.nsf/enwiki/208698

This is definitely not the first time he's allowed his comics to be a vehicle for his bad takes, though he seems to be doing it with stunning frequency because his retirement is imminent.

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#197

Post by danaris »

CoastalCoder wrote: post #27
kayodelycaon wrote: post #9

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I kind of agree with this view. The problem I see Dilbert running into is the comic previously was aimed at corporate culture and specific jobs and stereotypes. In a way, it was punching up at more powerful, impersonal forces. Now, he appears to be punching down at people less powerful than him (individually) who have been fighting to get recognized. Despite these rather nasty policies governments and companies have…

There's definitely a perception that people forcing diversity training, pronoun protocols, etc. are in positions of power over regular employees. Perhaps attacking people in previously marginalized groups is punching down, but attacking HR DEI enforcers is definitely punching up.

That doesn't track.

When people who are and have been marginalized, after centuries of fighting, finally get some of the establishment on their side, it doesn't suddenly become "punching up" to mock and satirize the efforts to get them the recognition, opportunity, and equity they deserve, even if said punches are, on the surface, aimed at individuals with positions of power.

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#198

Post by [deleted] »

AinderS wrote: post #4

Simple. Workplace complaints and management priorities have changed, and Dilbert followed. When Dilbert started, the government wasn't yet training employees how to "interrupt whiteness" [1], or Coca-Cola how to "be less white" [2], or Cigna simply forbidding hiring whites [3], nor did academia require mandatory diversity pledges for new hires and promotions [4]. Dilbert is doing what we are told art is supposed to d…

[deleted]

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#199

Post by falcolas »

ricardobeat wrote: post #185
falcolas wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I figured out how to offend a manager at work: express concerns about Elon Musk. I was reprimanded for being "inconsiderate". EDIT: No, I do not work somewhere that has Elon Musk in a direct or indirect supervisory position, including the board. The manager (whom I don't even report to in the chain) just didn't care for the lack of unconditional praise for Elon Musk in a slack thread.

I have the feeling "express concerns" here is a much softened description of what actually happened? Could it be that whatever you said would be inconsiderate regardless of the target?

What I said was actually just linking to his "pedophile diver" twitter comment, and a NPR article about his ongoing spat with the SEC. Definitely not the smoothest presentation, but I figured it'd be best to let more neutral sources speak than express an opinion in my own words.

And sure, if a person unconditionally worship someone, that person would probably consider anything that tarnishes the image of that someone as inconsiderate.

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#200

Post by jacquesm »

paganel wrote: post #190
jacquesm wrote: post #38

He's gone off the deep end. I've seen the same happen with some friends and wrote about it, it's a sad thing when formerly intelligent human beings start losing it and fail to recover only to sink further and further into their own version of reality.

There are realities and realities. A (by now former?) good friend of mine phoned me in the spring of last year, very worried that I had gone into the deep end (those were not his exact words, but that was the feeling). My "mistake" had been in approving and liking on social media messages and public figures who were against the announced vaccine mandate. I was finding that mandate dictatorial, still do. I was also al…

I'm pretty much of the same position: I would vaccinate (and did) because I think that it is the right thing to do (unfortunately I caught a pretty bad case of the virus well before vaccines were available, so by the time I got the vaccine it was more for mobility reasons than because I expected a major boost against the virus from it) and at the same time oppose a vaccine mandate, it just doesn't seem right to me, people should have the right to choose such things even though the net result for society is negative and if they catch if for them personally it is even more negative or even fatal.

As for Afghanistan: that's a mess that has such a complicated history (going back 100+ years if you really dig into it) that someone who is mostly following orders by whoever is in command of that particular group is likely not going to bother reading up on to make up their mind on which side of that particular line they want to stand. Otherwise they wouldn't be in that line of business to begin with.

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