How or why Scott Adams went completely of the rails is perhaps something we'll sadly never understand. Was this opinions he'd always had, but suppressed, did he somehow become radicalized or was it perhaps medically induced, e.g. a stroke or something. It was incredibly sad to see him throw away his life's work and go down a path most of us at least hadn't foreseen and die having alienated his fans.
It started at roughly the time of his divorce, so it's hard to imagine there's not a connection. But, of course, you're right that we'll never know.
They weren't surpressed; he was very open about them from very early on in his career as a comic artist; they were central to his “origin story” and were woven directly into the comics. Its just, for a while, other aspects of his still-recent experience in corporate America gave him other relatable things to say that were mixed in with them, which made it easier to overlook them.
The key is that it seemed like he was Dilbert when he actually always thought of himself as Dogbert.
Not sure why we are being coy about the triggers. Society of his youth and the biology are well documented.
I don't want to excuse his opinions but that's the sort of event that can change a person.
He did online chats, and did one immediately after. It's a tough watch. https://x.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/1046764270128484352
He used to blog about pretty innocent stuff; his wife making fun of him for wearing pajama pants in public, behind the scenes on drawing comics, funny business interactions he'd had. But then he started getting taken out of context by various online-only publications, and he'd get a burst of traffic and a bunch of hate mail and then it'd go away. And then he'd get quoted out of context again. I'm not sure if it bothered him, but he started adding preambles to his post, like "hey suchandsuch publication, if you want to take this post out of context, jump to this part right here and skip the rest."
I stopped reading around this point. But later when he came out with his "trump is a persuasion god, just like me, and he is playing 4d chess and will be elected president" schtick, it seemed like the natural conclusion of hill climbing controversy. He couldn't be held accountable for the prediction. After all, he's just a comedian with a background in finance, not a politics guy. But it was a hot take on a hot topic that was trying to press buttons.
I'm sure he figured out before most people that being a newspaper cartoonist was a downward-trending gig, and that he'd never fully transition to online. But I'm sad that this was how he decided to make the jump to his next act.
I remember reading (I think in newspaper interview) in the late 1990s his own description of how comics became his full-time focus and his deep resentment of how difficult it had been to advance in management in corporate America because he was a White man in the 1980s (!?!) was pretty central to it.
At the time i read those i probably thought they were on point. I've changed my views over the years. You can't keep them or you end up like Adams. That's probably the key to understanding him. He grew up in an era where black students were not allowed to attend white schools. The world changed. He didn't.
It took a long time to actually get to diversity that was beyond token "person of group" inclusivity.
It’s so common that we barely remark on it any longer. So I don’t think it’s really a mystery, it can happen to anyone who’s not getting outside enough.
My first clue something was wrong was when he didn’t understand the criticism around the Iraq war of the early 2000s. Which even most conservatives have come around now to acknowledge as a disaster.
Somewhat later (but still quite a while before what people describe as him “turning”), he would also claim his Dilbert show on UPN was cancelled because he was White, making it the third job he lost for that reason. (More likely, it was cancelled because its audience was both small and White and UPN was, looking at where it had successes and wanting a coherent demographic story to sell to advertisers and in an era where synergies between the appeals of shows on the same network was important to driving ratings, working to rearrange its offerings to focus on targeting Black audiences.)
Almost everyone is reasonable, it’s the contexts that our reasons are relevant to, which are different.
I'd bet dollars to donuts that (if there is truth at all to him being told what he claims) the superiors making the promotion decisions so that told him he was being passed over because he was a White men were also White men. If he had to justify it, he might say that PHB also became a manager before the wave of political correctness.
This is 100% the case, with very infamous baddies, but people don't want to acknowledge it. It's a sad reality of this always on media we ingest. No idea what can be done, other than slowly ignoring more and more algorithmic stuff, and choose your own adventures based on content providers you have known for a long time, and still have their backbone intact.
If you want an explanation for why he would try ivermectin for cancer treatment he had a lot of beliefs in that vein for a long time. I consider that tragic for him.
The 6/11/1994 comic about sensitivity training comes to mind. "I can't find my keys" and "my blouse falls to the floor."
Adams jumped to Pacific Bell and completed his degree, thinking he was on the fast track to upper management. But in his book, Adams wrote that as was the case at Crocker National, his new employer was also coming under fire for a lack of diversity in its executive ranks.
Instead of getting mad, Adams got to drawing. Believing all this was a sign for him to revive his dream of cartooning, he purchased a primer on how to submit a comic strip and went about creating Dilbert.
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/news/general-news/scott-ad...
But Trump was elected president. Twice. So maybe Adams was right? Or what did you mean with "hill climbing controversy"?
James Hoffman, the coffee YouTuber, had an interesting comment on how he tried to use that in one of his 90s barista competitions, but seemed skeptical of it now. Scott remained a believer.
Perhaps?
He didn't have peers to challenge him on anything, and after a couple decades of that, he was just high on his own supply. Elon Musk and Kanye West have the same issue.
I think Scott Adams' biggest problem in life (although partially what also made him entertaining), is that he'd kind of pick fights that had little upside for him and a lot of downside.
For people who haven't read The Dilbert Future: https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/32627/has-anyone...
It's a weird book and not in a great way. He presents a bunch of very strange "theories" in a way where he kind of says "haha just a silly lil thought... unless it's true", which I remember seeing in some of his early Trump stuff too.
Tl; dr: it's about adding a second layer to your communication which attends to the subconscious, not unlike art. It was originally for therapy, but unfortunately a lot of businessdorks in the 90s got into it and perverted it.
Does that sound reasonable to you?
btw, affirmations is a pretty common thing in a lot of religions and other superstitions. Every single Catholic mass is pretty much just the same affirmations/mantra/rituals over and over with a bible story at the end. They even publish the schedule on an annual basis iirc. (my wife briefly converted to Catholicism when we were getting married)
Similarly he felt his TV show was cancelled after two seasons because it wasn't PC, but his show wasn't getting good viewership and had a terrible time slot. That's a pretty typical trajectory for a TV show, it's like complaining your startup failed.
He wrote a lot about explicitly magical thinking. Sort of along the lines of The Secret; that he could achieve things where the odds were against him through sheer force of will and wishing. That's not necessarily a problem but it does set you up for denial when things don't always go your way. And the denial is dangerous.
The later chapters of his life were marked by tragedy. His stepson died of overdose. His marriage collapsed. He lost the ability to speak and had to fight like hell to get a proper diagnosis and treatment (he later recovered). He went through COVID like the rest of us. Unfortunately these events would seem to have hardened and radicalized him.
I think we can understand and empathize with that without condoning it. I hope he found his peace in the end.
Some of it goes quite far back, even:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070222235609/http://dilbertblo...
Another type of work I avoid are "the making of ..." documentaries/accounts of classic works of film, music, and TV shows. Pulling back the curtain really destroys the magic.
"WE'RE THINKING ABOUT HAVING SEX WITH YOU!"
Adams more or less tells female readers to just deal with it, while also telling male readers that they're broken/lying if they're not engaged in a constant sexual fantasy about their female coworkers.
To be honest, this did real damage to how I felt about sexuality and gender. Not a huge amount on its own, but it's just such a distorted take from a respected author, whose books my father kept checking out, that I read at a young age.
Scott Adams clearly lived an atypical life. Most people don't quit their jobs to write comics about corporate culture. If I had to guess why he took such a hard turn later on, I think, maybe it's something that happens when a humorist can't compartmentalize their penchant for absurdity and need for attention from real life, they can tell jokes that resonate with a lot of people, but at the same time their serious views also end up becoming ungrounded...
Think of it this way: if you were cancelled and repressed and censored in your own home and unable to express yourself, your efforts to communicate to remain authentic would intensify not die down. Or you die and let yourself morph to the average new censor-ship approved world.
Scott wouldn't do that and neither would I. All this to say I think its normal to intensify your opinions and even take on and be pushed to more extremes when you live in a controversial time of "you're either on my side or the other side and theres no acceptable middle gray area.
Manifesting things into reality through writing them often enough is FAR from a normal belief. Dude was a bit looney from the get go
He explains it himself, if you are open to primary source material.
No surprises for me. By my standards he was never radicalized just an objective thinker with a flair for humor.
uh I don't know, try asking almost any person who was born pre-1960? Doubt they all had brain damage. Not that it was necessarily a good thing, but it was certainly 'normal' in many eras throughout time.
The description of reality is not at all the same as supporting it. "Is" vs. "Ought to be".
Or I don't know, maybe everyone hates corpo suit types no matter the race?
I was expecting something insightful, an insider's view of why the right had coalesced around Trump.
Instead it was some of the most awful drivel I have ever read.
In fact, growing up in the very affluent part of my city, I saw a bunch of kids die using opiates to mentally escape the weird family fiefdoms where they [p/m]atriarch inexplicably wouldn't ever need for money, so went completely off the rails mentally. I was prescribed a bunch of opiates (including fent) after a bad ski accident, and can tell you that they basically work by turning down the volume on life around you. I can understand why someone would turn to them to mentally escape a bad family life.
About the only good thing I can say about recreational Xanax is that those kids are generally still alive in contrast to the ones who preferred opiates.
Are we really beyond that now?
Many of the initiatives I've experienced are the same thing today, which is why I'm not a big fan.
(The same) people also call him crazy (or "toxic") for those other writings. Maybe those other writings were right as well?
Seems at least plausible.
And yeah, I also thought it was completely impossible for Trump to get elected even once. Never mind twice. I was wrong.
I didn't know about his comments about Black people until today. It's more than a bit pathetic that he devolved into colour-based absurdities so late in life. For someone who could pattern match the reality of life at a large company so effectively, it's unfortunate he couldn't realize he was being played by 4chan trolls and fellow travelers in the media.
If you aren't familiar with it, well I was once given a copy by a friend who said they used it to 'get their partner'.
I tried reading it, found it despicable (its basically everything we hate about manipulation in the attention economy,) also the person who loaned it to me had bad narcissistic tendencies; the only time I saw them cry was when someone died that they didnt get to bang.
and "Learning hypnotism has been my Jedi mind trick to sleep with more women".
Scott Adams put himself on a pedestal above anyone else in his comics; he was Dilbert. The only smart person in the room. He was always a celebrity obsessed with his own existence. Little difference between him and Tim the Toolman or a Kardashian.
Low effort contributor whose work people laughed at due to social desirability bias. No big loss.
Actually, they probably did.
How sheltered are you people? Scott Adams was a pretty standard non-woke boomer. Do you think that just because you don’t hear certain opinions in the workplace or the faculty or the Atlantic podcast, that they aren’t widely held by members of the public? Do you think everyone’s into DEI, BLM, trans-rights, multi-culturalism etc?
He has plenty of fans right up to the end, it's amazing how people think someone went "off the rails" just because he has a different political opinion.
Do you normally see people cry a lot? I don't think I've seen any of my friends cry more than once.
Why? People all say that but it is never stated how or what he said.
When viewed in light of his Twitter persona, embrace of Trump / hard right politics in general, and his declaration that black people are a hate group, I really don't know why anyone would be eager to extend him the benefit of the doubt. He provided plenty of ammo himself, no media distortion needed.
He always seemed like the archetypal "Californian creative who fried his brain with psychedelics and new age woo-woo in the 70s" type
It’s one thing to, say, acknowledge and respect the cleverness of a villain succeeding by pulling a trick and then deconstruct the trick.
It’s a totally different thing when you go beyond mere respect/acknowledgement and start incessantly praising the villain’s cleverness, professing your love for the villain, worshipping the villain, publicly fantasizing about having hot sex with the villain, etc.
Adams at first was vaguely alluding to do the first thing, but testing the waters showed him which side of the sandwich was buttered, and he went fully with the second.
But his (first) divorce was in 2014 and his blog posts already seemed bitter around that time.
Edit: as another comment points out, it was a few years even earlier than that so I stand corrected.
The internet has become a more unkind and manipulative place that ever. It is making people into the worst version of themselves, to serve the ends of groups that benefit from division.
I mourn many things with this news today. RIP Scott Adams.
Others provide convincing demonstrations of what Adams himself said about women so this is more of a tangent....
But good god that was well within the era of "I hate my wife" comedy being rampant. I will never understand fellow men who seem to think "Women suck" or "The person I married is garbage" as the pinnacle of humor.
It's just not funny.
Scott Adams taught ChatGPT to put humans into an instant bliss-state. "Seems at least plausible"?
I mean, no doubt people cry. I just can't remember the last time a friend was crying in my presence. It was honestly probably middle school. Maybe a handful of times since then, across all of my friends (men and women). I imagine women cry around women more than women cry around men, and certainly more than men cry around men.
My point was that judging someone for not crying around them much seemed weird to me. Granted, it was a strange thing to cry/get upset about, but the rarity of crying doesn't seem like reason to judge someone as narcissistic.
Maybe complain to these guys too, who were apparently still curious 14 years after that blog post?
https://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/documenting-numbers-of-...
Sources: Documenting Numbers of Victims of the Holocaust & Nazi Persecution, U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum;
“Holocaust Facts: Where Does the Figure of 6 Million Victims Come From?” Haaretz, (January 26, 2020);
Ofer Aderet, “Nazis Boasted About Six Million Holocaust Victims. But It Was a Jew Who First Cited That Figure,” Haaretz, (April 21, 2020);
Joel Rappel, “Six million victims,” Jerusalem Report, (May 4, 2020).
Personality changes over time, it's not necessarily about hiding.
People are correctly pointing out that the phrase “it’s okay to be white” is used as a dogwhistle.
They are not literally saying that it’s not okay to be white. They’re saying that those who speak that phrase are projecting their racist ideology. People who say “it’s okay to be white” think that white people are under attack and that white people need to re-establish dominance. To them, equality is a threat.
Saying something publicly is an action. Depending on what you say, you can’t take it back. If you tell your wife you think her friend is hot and you want a threesome you can’t take that back.
I also think you as the commenter should think a little bit about what motivates you to defend this guy. Why does he as a dead famous comic book author need his reputation defended? Why is it so important that we don’t see him as a racist asshole? What do you get out of that? Why not just let his own mistakes speak for themselves?
Most people never get interviewed on cable news at all, so that’s not a meaningful baseline. When someone is publicly accused, explaining yourself publicly is a predictable response, not evidence of guilt.
> Saying something publicly is an action. You can’t take it back.
Of course you can clarify or correct yourself—people misspeak all the time. Whether that matters depends on whether listeners are interested in understanding or just in cancelling someone they don't like.
> Why do you feel the need to defend him?
Because I’ve listened to hundreds of hours of Scott Adams over many years, and I’m confident I understand his views far better than people judging him from short, out-of-context clips.
I don’t get anything out of this except insisting that the truth matters. Even when the person involved is unpopular or dead.
As someone who likes the Harry Potter series, I hear you. It’s tough to see your idols fall into being dumbasses.
If you sincerely think Scott Adams had zero bias, that he’s not a bigot, that he didn’t support “stop the steal,” that’s on your conscience and your value system. I choose to believe the impulse of what he said, not the 30 minutes of damage control afterward.
I’d say nobody asked the guy his opinions on such subjects and just wanted to read his funny office comics.
But that’s what happens with celebrities like this.
Neighbors of a certain age have that same mindset.. “Want to come over for a drink and get away from the ball and chain?” Or “After your done with the lawn, would your wife let you come over for a drink?”
I mean I wouldn’t mind grabbing a beer but your view of relationships is exceptionally weird.
Sure — but I wouldn’t be if I thought he was a bigot. Having listened to hundreds of hours of him explaining his views, I’m far better informed than people judging him from short, out-of-context clips.
> It’s tough to see your idols fall into being dumbasses
I don’t treat public figures as idols. I also don’t think disagreeing with prevailing opinion automatically makes someone a “dumbass.” Sometimes it means they’re willing to take reputational hits for what they believe is right.
> If you sincerely think Scott Adams had zero bias
Nobody has zero bias. That’s an impossible standard.
> As someone who likes the Harry Potter series
For what it’s worth, I think J.K. Rowling is an example of someone who did the right thing at substantial personal and professional cost, particularly in defending women and girls. That’s not idol worship — it’s acknowledging moral courage when it’s inconvenient.
> That he didn’t support ‘stop the steal'
This is where the argument seems to shift from racism to political conformity. Disagreeing with someone’s politics isn’t the same thing as establishing that they’re a bigot.
When your politics are anti-democracy and pro-fascism, it isn’t a matter of “disagreeing with them.”
Politics aren’t detached from real life, they aren’t some hypothetical. They have real consequences, and they represent real values.
Now I know where you stand. You follow every conservative talking point 100%.
You are playing the “I am taking a nuanced view, you’re just a sheep following popular opinion” card while you yourself are just doing the exact same thing on the other side with no nuance at all. You and I are at worst no different from each other in our belief systems.
Scott Adams was a Trumper, therefore you support him.
JK Rowling is anti-trans, which is the right wing party line, therefore you support her.
Good talk. You know where you stand, I know where I stand.
That's the sort of thing an Catholic inquisitor would say. Denial proves guilt!
Damned if you do damned if you don’t.
I'll get over it.
1. Poll says black people are not ok with with white people
2. Which makes them racist
3. Get away from racists
Turning this 180 degrees around is insanity.
If the initiatives that promoted diversity explicitly said that, they probably wouldn't have passed. The whole argument was about whether that was true because proponents would never be honest about that part so the public debate never got past that.
The Secret has sold 30 million copies.
And at the end of the day, it's prayer. 'Prayer helps, somehow' is a very common worldview.
> Sure — but I wouldn’t be if I thought he was a bigot.
That's not how that works.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2024_United_States_presidentia...
Yes, they think that.
> and that white people need to re-establish dominance. To them, equality is a threat
No. When a specific group is singled out and attacked, whether they’re white, black, or brown, man or woman, that can not be a basis for equality.
Hey, propaganda is a thing and it works. That's totally and example of manifesting things into reality through writing them often enough.
Unless they've revamped the format since I've last been, the bible stories (plural) are at the start and middle of mass.
People of all races can have legitimate grievances and harms. Im sure some racist black people said "black is beautiful", but that isnt a reason to forbid anyone from saying it.
I feel like this thread on Scott Adams is exposing how many people on HN are just overtly racist. You can enjoy his content before he went off the rails fine, but seeing some of the takes here feels like a bunch of people are one step away from arguing that segregation should come back.
He said after many years he wasn’t sure what hypnotism was exactly, or even if it was an identifiable thing at all, and that in a lot of ways he was just giving people license and cover to do stuff they probably wanted to do anyway. You can’t hypnotise people to do something they don’t want to, apparently.
So if he says “Come up on stage and cluck around like a chicken, make a real show of yourself in front of the crowd”, then quite a few people will go and do it and come away saying “That wasn’t me, the hypnotist made me do it, but what laugh eh?”.
He was less sure how this might apply to (for example) hypnotic pain control, but it was an interesting take.
> how many people on HN are just overtly racist
Like most people actually are... https://www.bbc.com/news/magazine-40124781
Regardless. Funny how quickly people of kindest hearts, tops of the virtue pyramid are to cancel someone for single misinterpreted wild sentence.
He could have easily figured this out but didn't, because he preferred to publish this neo-nazi adjacent rhetoric. Nazis use this talking point all the time, you see.
I.e. it's not at all about curiosity. Arguably Scott Adams was one of the least curious famous persons in history. His cartoons were based on office related cliches, and while that provides a bit of laughter and relief to people who have negative experiences from office environments it's not based on curiosity or interest in people.
Hard not to conclude women found him repellent.
It’s not like Scott Adams did nothing wrong and was pulled in front of an inquisitor. He said weird shit and then had to play a game of PR damage control.
He assigned this viewpoint to all black people and used it as justification for segregation.
Enlightenment is a fight against our tribal instincts. But some folks think we should return to warring tribes rather than striving for something better.
It’s funny how people with bigoted views can’t handle being canceled. Scott Adams literally predicted he would be “canceled” as he proceeded to say the things on his mind that he knew would cause controversy.
He was okay with saying things that hurt the reputation of others but he was ultimately not okay with hurting his own reputation once he self-inflicted his wound.
“It’s okay to be white” isn’t really the same as saying “black is beautiful” because of the context.
“It’s okay to be white” is spoken in the context of a majority group that has complete societal power over other minority groups, and is speaking the phrase in response to legitimate questions on the majority’s privilege over and treatment of those minorities.
It also makes a lot less logical sense for the group with the upper hand to complain. It’s distasteful: it’s like saying “It’s okay to be regional vice president! as if you are blind to the fact that you boss everyone else around.
”The white majority justice system incarcerates black people for marijuana possession at a higher rate despite a similar use rate.”
”Yeah but it’s okay to be white.”
A wise man once said "Can't we all just get along"
> Arguably Scott Adams was one of the least curious famous persons in history.
That's a bold claim, and I would argue against it based on The Dilbert Future and God's Debris
I'll also re-quote OP: "...it's an example of how at the time his statements got oversimplified and distorted...[a]nyway, I saw a lot of examples of that -- he'd have a relatively nuanced take probably expressed too boldly, but people wanted to just lump him in to some narrative they already had going."
It's also an extremely low effort take on the issue. That entire article can basically be summed up in a sentence, 'I know very little and I have no explanation for why no one is spoon feeding me'. It's characterised by a blatant lack of curiosity, and presenting things that wouldn't come across as particularly ambigous if you actually were curious about them as highly ambigous and contentious.
And this tactic is really, really common among far-right activists. 'I'm just a dumb dude asking innocent questions, are things really as they seem or could women be another species that you need a bit of manly coercion to perfect? Is it really the oil or is it natural causes, like this dude in a suit on the telly said it might be? How come there are so many jews among nobelists, isn't that weiuhrd...?'
Again and again he's proven that he does not have either the intellectual integrity and rigour to examine subjects he brings up, and that he somehow thinks he's the most appropriate person to do it. His attempt at Dilbert Reborn is itself a good example of this. I'm not sure whether it's a grift or material he tried to put some authenticity into but I also don't really care, he was told both in words and actions that he should be better and as far as I know never tried to be.
It’s actually worse when you’re doing it as your job because you’re supposed to know better and be proficient at that craft. It’s not like someone hot micced him having a private conversation with his buddies, this was a man who had been interfacing with the public for decades.
You are hitting the nerve here - California has one of the highest rates of hate crimes in US.
He was a collateral damage because at the time cancelling white people was the vogue. Fortunately society moved on a little since then (and no I don't support current president (and I fucking hate to get sucked into US politics everyday like this)).
We literally tried that already and it didn’t work out so well.
I hate to say this but you control your destiny when it comes to your reputation. If you want people to celebrate your life instead of celebrating your death, spend your life being nice to people lifting them up.
Scott Adams didn’t do that. We are all free to feel however we want to feel about him. Don’t worry, his feelings won’t be hurt, he’s dead.
The only people frothing about the mouth over it are people who hate him over politics, it's a convenient gotcha - nothing more.
You’re probably thinking of politics. You may not have read some of his more philosophical and metaphysical works, which were downright kooky. For example he thought that the universe was the dust of a god that had killed itself.
I Write Sins Not Tragedies - Panic at the disco:
So you're a guest at a wedding and you're eavesdropping and passing judgement on people based on a snippet of conversation. Ruined.
Example:
Going the Distance - He's bad at racing and can't realize it. He's burning real relationships. I'd otherwise love this song.
Years ago my brother pointed out that lyrics are just a form of percussion.
I'm glad they add for you, they typically detract for me.
Not paying attention to the lyrics also les me deal with music as just grooves in a flow state as well.
Give him a generous read on his opinions if that’s what you want to do. To me, if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, it’s probably a duck.
Modern white supremacists don’t just come out and say things directly because of how it’s obviously reprehensible, they surround themselves with plausible deniability and murky language like the kind you are citing.
Let’s not forget: Scott Adams was a cartoonist. He was not some kind of sociologist or researcher on race relations. He went out of his way to go on a podcast and speak these opinions with no first hand experience or knowledge in any way.
He lived in Pleasanton, California where less than 2% of residents are black.
He has no experience or qualifications to know a damn thing about the subject. He didn’t even live near any black people - how would he know that they hate him?
No, he just wanted to say racist shit. That’s my read. If you read it different, that’s up to you.
I see extremists (on both sides) do this all the time, you don't argue the actual point you just say its "adjacent to bad thing, thusly bad"
But it’s not up for debate that white college applicants, particularly from poor and middle-class backgrounds, were discriminated against by top universities who implemented race-based admissions policies. The numbers are public. There’s simply no question.