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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?

#21

Post by bjt2n3904 »

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…

I think, as an extension of what you pointed out... The problem I have discussing your linked articles with friends is that they don't believe it, and end up thinking I'm the crazy one.

That Coca-cola would tell employees to "be less white" is so ridiculous and far fetched, that it simply can't be happening.

Or, if it is happening, it's just some overzealous person whose hot take about "whiteness" just got bad press -- it's isolated to that one event, and certainly not happening across the country.

The effect is that you (and I) begin to look like the crazy ones. And the more we see it happening, the more frenzied we become in trying to warn people, the less they believe us, and the crazier we look.

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#22

Post by [deleted] »

giraffe_lady wrote: post #13
oceanghost wrote: post #12

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yep. I was once advised by HR to "try not to offend anyone." I asked the HR woman, "How do I know what offends any particular person?" She looked genuinely stumped.

If this is going to work you need to tell us what prompted this conversation so we can see how plausible it is to pretend you didn't know it was offensive.

[deleted]

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#23

Post by Retric »

pram wrote: post #5
h2odragon wrote: post #2

Remember "Doonesbury." Might've been funny once but degraded into political polemics for the last decade or more. Once you've got an audience the temptation to use their trust to persuade them of, well, anything; seems to be hard to resist. Moreso when you have opinions that others emphatically do not share. I can think of dozens of "liberal comics" that never tried to be funny, that were merely political propaganda…

Doonesbury was never funny.

Doonesbury is occasionally hilarious, but a lot of strips are setups for a later payoff.

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#24

Post by rcarmo »

I used to love Dilbert because it echoed (down to every single minute detail) my work environment (which, like Adams', was a telco).

Then it became creepy because it anticipated everything that was coming to pass (sometimes the very day, sometimes within a week, we'd have reorgs, discussions with Marketing, trips to our equivalent of Elbonia).

The peak, for me, was when Dogbert was hailed as a cloud guru the week I started leading a cloud transformation project...

Now it's just borderline insane, but still eerily realistic, despite what one might think of Adams himself (I don't think they should be directly associated in some contexts, and it is just a cartoon, not a political essay).

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#25

Post by zafka »

pram wrote: post #5
h2odragon wrote: post #2

Remember "Doonesbury." Might've been funny once but degraded into political polemics for the last decade or more. Once you've got an audience the temptation to use their trust to persuade them of, well, anything; seems to be hard to resist. Moreso when you have opinions that others emphatically do not share. I can think of dozens of "liberal comics" that never tried to be funny, that were merely political propaganda…

Doonesbury was never funny.

I beg to differ :) I guess a lot depends on set and setting.

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#26

Post by mbg721 »

oceanghost wrote: post #12
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…

Yep. I was once advised by HR to "try not to offend anyone." I asked the HR woman, "How do I know what offends any particular person?" She looked genuinely stumped.

HR is always going to say "don't make waves". They don't care about the source of the waves, and never have. If you worked in Saudi Arabia, they would say eating pork and uncovering female faces was unprofessional. If you worked in the Vatican in 1850, they'd say eating flesh on Fridays was unprofessional. So if you work for an American corporation today, don't be surprised when HR expects you to drink the unwritten Kool-Aid about what is or is not sacred.

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#27

Post by CoastalCoder »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #9
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…

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.

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#28

Post by romwell »

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…

Ah yes, diversity statments are the real problem in academia.

Not, say, 10:1 PhD student to position ratio. Or exploitation. Or the visa slavery (accept all the crap, or get kicked out of the country you've been toiling for over the course of 10 years). Or $50K/yr being acceptable research professor's salary. Or the disgusting proportion of adjunct positions used as full-time. Or (gasp) actual lack of diversity.

Nooo, it's the statements, which were invented as a non-solution that requires nobody to sacrifice anything, changes nothing, but can be a great taking point.

Same with the industry. Wage stagnation, treating workers as disposable, job conditions — no, it's the diversity efforts that are the problem.

Never mind that diversity is profitable [1], and is pushed by managements for that reason if they have the brains to understand it.

Which Scott Addams, sadly, does not.

If Dilbert is a mirror, it's one that's been covered with poop its maker piled up on it.

No, I don't like what I see. Or smell.

[1]https://www.mckinsey.com/featured-insights/diversity-and-inc...

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#30

Post by kforo9n »

kayodelycaon wrote: post #9
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…

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…

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