zlacker

Scott Adams died today. I want to acknowledge something complicated.

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.

>>jchall+(OP)
> The racism and the provocations were always there

Were they? Can you cite an example? Because I also grew up with Dilbert, and I was never aware of it.

>>lisper+eX
It's in Chapter 1 of his autobiography. He used to work at a bank in the 80s, and was turned down for a managerial or executive position (can't remember) which went to an Asian candidate. He was certain it was due to DEI (in the 80s!) and quit the corporate world to become a cartoonist.

The strip that got him dropped in 2022 featured a black character (first in the history of the cartoon) who "identifies as white".

>>rchaud+U51
This wasn't when he got dropped. He got dropped in 2016 when he said he supported Trump. In an interview on CNN shortly after this, he talks about how all of his corporate gigs dried up and newspapers tried to cancel him. He also later talked about Venture capitalists dropping him as well because of this.

"it was due to DEI (in the 80s!)"

DEI used to be known as affirmative action in those days. I see so many people try to claim that it never happened, when many of us around during this time experienced it.

"The strip that got him dropped in 2022 featured a black character (first in the history of the cartoon) who "identifies as white"."

While I don't see a problem with this, this was a fuck you to corporations and newspapers that dropped him merely because of his political opinions, an inhumane and bigoted tactic by liberals. This is one of the reasons why I always respected him. He was willing to fight for his beliefs and never backed down.

>>billy9+na3
> an inhumane and bigoted tactic by liberals.

The free market is neither inhumane, bigoted or liberal in nature.