He always felt culturally like family to me. His peaks—the biting humor about corporate absurdity, the writing on systems thinking and compounding habits, the clarity about the gap between what organizations say and what they do—unquestionably made me healthier, happier, and wealthier. If you worked in tech in the 90s and 2000s, Dilbert was a shared language for everything broken about corporate life.
His views, always unapologetic, became more strident over time and pushed everyone away. That also felt like family.
You don’t choose family, and you don’t get to edit out the parts that shaped you before you understood what was happening. The racism and the provocations were always there, maybe, just quieter. The 2023 comments that ended Dilbert’s newspaper run were unambiguous.
For Scott, like family, I’m a better person for the contribution. I hope I can represent the good things: the humor, the clarity of thought, the compounding good habits with health and money. I can avoid the ugliness—the racism, the grievance, the need to be right at any cost.
Taking inventory is harder than eulogizing or denouncing. But it’s more honest.
This is the only issue I have with your statement.
I have a lot of favourite creators who are noteworthy for something bad or another. I like their stuff. The bad stuff doesnt particularly affect me. We get on fine. I read Howard and Lovecraft. I enjoy the heck out of them. I used to watch reruns of the Dilbert cartoon.
The issue here is sort of the implication that family is a net positive despite bad behaviours. Thats bs. Anyone who has had to push shitty assholes from their family isn't happy that they existed, or made better through their existence. Scott Adams is just a niche internet microcelebrity who made some funny comics and said some shitty things on his podcast. Blocking him is a lot easier than getting rid of an abusive family member, and his net effect on someone is going to be a lot lower.