Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

meghanboilard.substack.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

41–50 of 416 posts

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#41

Post by good8675309 »

ravenstine wrote: post #11
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…

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…

We have a cultural problem in the West that is underpinning all of this. The emperor has no clothes and the sane rational ones are too afraid to talk about it because of the costs.

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#42

Post by AinderS »

romwell wrote: post #28
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. No…

> 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.

They require candidates to show a track record promoting diversity. Merely saying it is not enough, so they do in fact require sacrifices - even if you don't count being forced to profess beliefs you don't hold as a sacrifice. But then forced conversion is also no big deal.

This is required by one fifth of academic jobs, as of 2021: https://www.schoolinfosystem.org/2021/11/11/study-diversity-...

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#43

Post by bediger4000 »

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.

Even before 2016, Adams treated the Pointy Haired Boss more sympathetically. I used to buy and enjoy the desk calendars, but Adams' humor had already lost its edge and relevance before he found Trump.

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#44

Post by oneoff786 »

bjt2n3904 wrote: post #21
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…

I tend to agree. It sounds likely to be out of context. The only thing that comes to mind for me was we got some marketing material that featured only white people, n every image. That was genuinely “too white”. It is bad to suggest that normal business culture is just white people. I assume the context of these quotes was similar.

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#45

Post by woodruffw »

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…

Did we read the same Doonesbury? His drawings throughout Watergate are probably some of the most famous politically charged humorous cartoons in history.

I was never a particularly big Doonesbury fan (I like Pogo), but griping about "liberal comics" seems to follow the general trend of not realizing that your politics have been on the outside of mainstream cartooning for decades.

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#46

Post by bluedino »

I work at a Fortune 100 and we used to have Dilbert comics plastered up all over the place. Breakroom, cubicles, randomly around the copier, etc.

A lot of them might not have been the best thing to have up at work as they talked about 'evil corporations', slacking off at work, making fun of inept management... but they stayed up.

A short while back, someone complained that the Elbonian strips were a 'racist trope', and down they all went. It happened right about the time when we 'formed a global alliance' with an off-shore consulting firm and displaced over half of our in-house IT staff.

I can't imagine what would happen if the strips in the OP were stuck on the lounge fridge.

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#47

Post by yonaguska »

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…

How do you target harmful and ineffective policies without hitting a lot of innocent people though?

Affirmative action is a harmful and ineffective policy, but if you speak out against it, you are racist. I'm not here to argue whether you agree with that or not, just using it as an example of something you simply can't criticize without offending innocent people.

More to the task at hand though- I question if he's even really punching down anymore(or even if this is possible- societal status shouldn't shield you from criticism, and there is a difference between critique and baseless insults).

Anecdotally, one of my friends was interviewing a candidate- and the other person conducting the interview asked a thinly veiled political question. The candidate was rejected because of their stance, or lack thereof on this question. This was acknowledged internally, and embraced, and several meetings ensued until HR got involved and had to tell engineers that no- they couldn't discriminate on the basis of political beliefs. And that being sneaky about it by bringing up controversial tech figures in the community and gauging reactions was not actually legal.

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#48

Post by horsawlarway »

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.

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.

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#49

Post by jacquesm »

rcarmo wrote: post #24

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 s…

> it is just a cartoon, not a political essay

It wouldn't be the first time that 'it's just a joke' got used to be able to get away with some very distasteful politics. I don't think Adams sees it as 'just a cartoon', when placed in context of his other writings (for instance: on twitter) it is clear that he's using Dilbert as a platform for politics.

Re: What the Hell Is Up with Dilbert?

#50

Post by cm2187 »

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…

HR policies and management jargon are up, not down from the average employee.
Post reply on HN