Please note that I wrote this in September, 2022. Readers finding this post will no doubt be aware of Scott Adams’ more recent (February, 2023) comments. This article has nothing to do with those comments, as it predates them. However, Adams has effectively destroyed his career now, whatever point he was making – which, incidentally, is not the one the media is putting forward.
Anyone who has read the blog for any period of time may well be aware of the reverence in which I hold Dilbert.
Dilbert is a comic strip by Scott Adams. It deals with office life, and it was a virtual transcript of the situations and people I had to deal with when I was in the rat race myself.
Dilbert was first published in 1989, and since then it has been syndicated across 2,000 newspapers in 65 countries and 25 languages. In other words, it has been mega-successful, largely because nearly everyone who reads it can identify with it.
Dilbert moved with the times. In the late 80s it was just office life, but then it introduced the internet, followed by every other relevant development since then. It went to town on Teamworking, off-site development courses, and meetings. However, it has recently taken to lampooning ‘wokeness’.
And that appears to have now got it blocked by numerous American newspapers.
In recent strips, a character who is black (but who identifies as ‘white’ just to wind up management) has been introduced. And this trend seems to have worried some newspapers.
Ironically, ‘Dave’ – the black character – has only appeared in a handful of the daily strips since as far ago as July, but he has drawn complaints. And we all know that even one complaint on this topic is worth several thousand complaints about literally anything else in the known universe.
I said above that nearly everyone can identify with Dilbert. However, we are now in worryingly different times, and Dilbert is touching on issues about which it is close to being illegal to do anything with other than wholeheartedly embrace them and broadcast them from every rooftop and soapbox.
Scott Adams is worth about $50 million thanks to Dilbert, so I’m sure he will be deservedly secure as a result of his worthy contribution to society these last 30-odd years.
It’s the rest of us who need to be worried.