Dropping the creator of ‘Dilbert’ is free speech at work

https://www.washingtonpost.com/opinions/2023/02/27/dilbert-scott-adams-racist-rant-canceled/

by mirthlessend • 3 years ago

39 26 3 years ago

washingtonpost.com

klyrs2• 3 years ago

https://archive.is/pkLcH

threatofrain• 3 years ago

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34939717

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34942090

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34943972

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34945760

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34964335

villgax• 3 years ago

Correct

Waterluvian4• 3 years ago

I’m not convinced that many actually need a tutorial on free speech (the principle.) You can talk but you can’t make people listen and you can’t make others host you. I think the crying wolf that tends to happen is more of an emotional response to being shown the door.

I had some run-ins with Scott Adams on Twitter over the Trump years. The thing that caught my attention was how he was so insecure and petty that he would argue with complete “nobodies” like myself for extended periods of time if you tried to be reasonably persuasive. I think some people badly crave validation of their positions.

ninjin2• 3 years ago

[H]e was so insecure and petty that he would argue with complete “nobodies” like myself for extended periods of time if you tried to be reasonably persuasive.

I do appreciate Adams’ work, although I think he has “gone off the deep end”. However, is what you write here not potentially a very uncharitable take? Is it not also possible that this man genuinely cares about a fellow man and believes he can somehow get through to you? This is of course putting aside whether he is on the right side of the argument and whether he himself can be argued out of his own position.

Waterluvian4• 3 years ago

Ad hominem attacks aren’t a great way to get through to anyone.

Perhaps “argue” is the wrong word.

klyrs2• 3 years ago

That's the thing that really stands out to me in his response to this.

My publisher for non-Dilbert books has canceled my upcoming book and the entire backlist. Still no disagreement about my point of view. My book agent canceled me too.

It's no surprise that he's digging his heels in, no surprise that he's playing the victim... but when he says "no disagreement" he seems to think that people not debating him is tacit agreement that he's right. Or maybe that's what he wants his audience to think. People like you have been debating him on this stuff non-stop for years now. It's inconceivable that people in his professional strata haven't been doing the same. That he's getting canned for crossing the line so blatantly cannot even remotely be a surprise, he must have gotten warnings over his years of edgelording. His only response is the sea lion's battle cry: "debate me!"

sdenton4• 3 years ago

There was that time he showed up on Metafilter anonymously and called himself a genius in third person, eventually getting outed...

https://mefiwiki.com/wiki/Scott_Adams,_plannedchaos

foogazi• 3 years ago

From the mefiwiki:

He wrote that he makes contrarian predictions as calculated bets that in the unlikely event they pan out, he would get credit.

Doesn’t care about being right or wrong, but getting credit for the appearance of being right. Poisoning the well for his own amusement.

To clever to be caught but when it happens it’s because it was all part of the master plan

awb• 3 years ago

free speech is not the same thing as consequence-free speech

Well, protected speech needs to free of consequences from the government.

But the author is right that protected speech does not need to be free of personal or business consequences.

acomjean• 3 years ago

I used to love dilbert in the 90s. I had a couple books and the daily comic calendar. But around 2000 it kinda stoped being so funny so it drifted out of my life.

But then 6 months ago, this article came out and posted/flagged. This whole episode was kinda predicted.

“The normally innocuous workplace comic strip is arguably trying to get itself cancelled after three decades in syndication. But why?”

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32317993

ZeroGravitas• 3 years ago

He has a long history of being a generic crank. Denying evolution, questioning the holocaust, boasting about his high IQ, a wide spectrum of oddness.

Its become more political recently, while remaining thoroughly odd. Like he said he was going to vote Hilary over Trump in 2016, but only because he feared assasination.

https://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Scott_Adams

o_____________o• 3 years ago

Related. Sourced from Reddit, note 2004:

https://i.imgur.com/FfH7WHn_d.webp?maxwidth=760&fidelity=gra...

avalys• 3 years ago

This is so stupid. His email address was at the bottom of every Dilbert strip. Was AIM doing email verification in 1999? The obvious answer is some trolls signed up for those accounts with his address.

n8ta2• 3 years ago

Can we get a link to what he said? I don't see it in the article.

maybe_pablo• 3 years ago

Check out https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6TnAn7qV1s

n8ta2• 3 years ago

13:41 is where the relevant bit starts

PaywallBuster2• 3 years ago

    I'm accepting criticism from anyone who has seen the full context here.

    The rest of you are in a fake news bubble but I trust you suspected that.

    Scott Adams Interview - It's Okay to Be White

    https://www.youtube.com/live/oeFA-n3SMRw?feature=share

https://twitter.com/ScottAdamsSays/status/162983363644608102...

strken• 3 years ago

I went and dug up the primary source: it's https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K6TnAn7qV1s, and the objectionable bit starts around the 13 minute mark.

While it's annoying that some of the media are refusing to quote him in full or link to his video, the context doesn't add much. He quoted a poll about the demographics of who agrees with https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/It%27s_okay_to_be_white (which is both an innocuous statement and a white supremacist campaign to troll the media into complaining about said statement), then said some frankly ridiculous things about how he no longer (?) identifies as black. He did actually call black Americans a hate group, for some reason.

Overall he appears to have gone insane and I'm not surprised papers are dropping him now. It's not just some ambiguously-racist statements where he's saying it's okay to be white, but also a lot of bizarre and erratic behaviour that must make him a PR nightmare to work with.

PaywallBuster2• 3 years ago

so far as I've been following him

the covid pretty much killed the income from dilbert comics, and he's creating a commotion because it has near 0 impact on whatever residual income he's getting from it

majikaja• 3 years ago

Dilbert sure seems popular lately

pupppet• 3 years ago

Man, what do we do about these guys falling down these social media enabled rabbit holes.

Dropping the creator of ‘Dilbert’ is free speech at work

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