Dilbert: Quiet quitting

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Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
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One counterpoint:
“The trouble with fighting for human freedom is that one spends most of one's time defending scoundrels. For it is against scoundrels that oppressive laws are first aimed, and oppression must be stopped at the beginning if it is to be stopped at all.”

― H.L. Mencken

Not stating that's what's going on, just that we shouldn't dismiss contrarians and/or people defending scoundrels.

To clarify: not defending Scott Adams. The point of my original post was how he chose to explain (1) his original video, (2) the follow-up video interview clarification, and (3) how the media took it & ran with it.
 

mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
20,983
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In light of @Kaido 's comments that SA basically "made a mistake", I decided to take a look at Scott Adam's twitter account, because you know if someone has made a mistake, they stand right up and admit it, right?

Of course that wasn't the case, but there was this video SC quoted that "you ought to see before you pass judgement":


I am just shy of five minutes in (to a video labelled "Scott Adams Interview - It's OK to be white" - in case as a white person you weren't fucking aware of that), and the following has happened:

SA says he "identifies as black"
SA claims he is a leftist, but is a "single issue voter solely on the point of fentanyl"
He says that he was all about helping out with BLM but then found out that "they're not a legitimate organisation".

Here's the interviewer's face while he's coming out with this shit!
Screenshot from 2023-03-01 13-32-03.png

Was this the extra nuance that I should have been seeking? Do I really have to watch two hours of this pathetic little right wing troll and witness every step of the hole he's dug for himself? I've seen this shit played out before a multitude of times on this forum, like "I used to be a lefty until...", and "I think I'm hilarious and edgy by identifying as black".

Here's another gem, re BLM not being legitimate, "I'm not sure if everyone knows that but it's pretty well established".

Here's the interviewer's face when he drops that one:
Screenshot from 2023-03-01 13-34-55.png

It's like some Will Ferrell comedy where the actor has to play some washed up old angry racist white man, it's funny because it's an eerily accurate representation but it's so fucking cringeworthy because people actually go on the air with the intention of airing these idiotic and fucked-up views and you just want to shout at the TV, "JUST PLEASE FUCKING STOP TALKING!".
 
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Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
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In light of @Kaido 's comments that SA basically "made a mistake", I decided to take a look at Scott Adam's twitter account, because you know if someone has made a mistake, they stand right up and admit it, right?

If that's the case & I'm in the wrong - that he is, in fact, racist & publicly so - then I apologize! I'm open to change. It doesn't seem like that's actually the case, based on his comments. But that's just my interpretation. Again, not supporting racism, bad videos, or even Scott Adams himself. etc. Per my original post earlier:
Preface:

1. Racism is bad. Let's get that out of the way because some people won't be able to see past the ragebait topics here.
2. Unpopular opinion from the knee-jerk reactions going around: I think he got taken immensely out of context, and a lot of media companies are making a lot of money off ragebait articles about this right now.
 

mikeymikec

Lifer
May 19, 2011
20,983
16,229
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Honestly Kaido, you do you. My last post wasn't intended to convince you, more like a quick summary for any poor sod who thought of watching that shit so they can find something better to do with their day. I frankly find your position utterly baffling, but it's not complete nonsense if you're starting with a fanboy mindset and saying what it takes to maintain that mindset. "But the context!", you cried. "Here's some more context, it's an even bigger shitshow now"... "But still!"

Just be aware that your fanboy mindset isn't doing you any favours. And anyone who's been on this forum a while has seen this kinda BS before that you posted:

It's ages since I've seen that kind of post here, but it used to be really common especially with that one forum user who used to throw in regular mile-long "gamergate update" posts including two-hour video clips of whatever conspiracy theory BS and collages that in real life would have little bits of red ribbon running between newspaper clippings and such. If anyone responded to that user, they wouldn't directly respond to the points being made but would divert some more. You're not that far down that rabbit hole just yet, but if you don't nip this shit in the bud you soon will be.
 

nakedfrog

No Lifer
Apr 3, 2001
62,766
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In light of @Kaido 's comments that SA basically "made a mistake", I decided to take a look at Scott Adam's twitter account, because you know if someone has made a mistake, they stand right up and admit it, right?

Of course that wasn't the case, but there was this video SC quoted that "you ought to see before you pass judgement":


I am just shy of five minutes in (to a video labelled "Scott Adams Interview - It's OK to be white" - in case as a white person you weren't fucking aware of that), and the following has happened:

SA says he "identifies as black"
SA claims he is a leftist, but is a "single issue voter solely on the point of fentanyl"
He says that he was all about helping out with BLM but then found out that "they're not a legitimate organisation".

Here's the interviewer's face while he's coming out with this shit!
View attachment 77400

Was this the extra nuance that I should have been seeking? Do I really have to watch two hours of this pathetic little right wing troll and witness every step of the hole he's dug for himself? I've seen this shit played out before a multitude of times on this forum, like "I used to be a lefty until...", and "I think I'm hilarious and edgy by identifying as black".

Here's another gem, re BLM not being legitimate, "I'm not sure if everyone knows that but it's pretty well established".

Here's the interviewer's face when he drops that one:
View attachment 77401

It's like some Will Ferrell comedy where the actor has to play some washed up old angry racist white man, it's funny because it's an eerily accurate representation but it's so fucking cringeworthy because people actually go on the air with the intention of airing these idiotic and fucked-up views and you just want to shout at the TV, "JUST PLEASE FUCKING STOP TALKING!".
He was the "only person he knew who supported Colin Kaepernick who wasn't black"? He's "super left wing", but voted for Trump twice, thinks anti-vaxxers are the real winners (not from this video, but easy to find articles on), and is a single issue voter on fentanyl? Systemic racism is real, but it's because the public school system is a failure?
And yeah, his "justification" of "identifying as black" is... not great. "I figured I could benefit from it, so I did it", basically.
 

Torn Mind

Lifer
Nov 25, 2012
12,078
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If that's the case & I'm in the wrong - that he is, in fact, racist & publicly so - then I apologize! I'm open to change. It doesn't seem like that's actually the case, based on his comments. But that's just my interpretation. Again, not supporting racism, bad videos, or even Scott Adams himself. etc. Per my original post earlier:
I'm currently a tad sleep deprived and not exactly fully sharp, but calling it hyperbole in his "clarification interview" isn't really "nuance". Yes, does provide some more situation examples fleshing out related situations, but the statements themselves in the segment that "damned him" can be legitimately interpreted negatively, especially the "get the hell away from" statement, which is quite off-the-rails as an imperative action even as hyperbole. "Get the hell away" would not only fit a "strictly legal" definition, but also hint at "it's in the heart", the latter of which the "blasphemy police" will auto-enforce like a violation of scripture.
In addition, it wasn't just that, but that in no way should white people should help black people; I mean, there's a non-altruistic, prudent reason for "helping" black people even if there are negative qualities in the black population, which is to limit social fermentation and creation of radicals.

There's also a lot of meandering around the matter itself, which is really annoying because it makes tedious and difficult determining whether the meandering points are relevant to the core assertion/points/etc at hand.

There are nuances to be dealt with regarding the poll question itself that neither Adams nor the "secular blasphemy police" really dealt with, which I hinted at in my prior post, but it might have been too verbose.

For the poll question itself, the person reading the question is going to interpret according to his state of being and background knowledge. This is where the load of good meat to discuss is but well, no one is really focusing on that.
Myself, I would have answered the question based on feelings and reasoning stemming from the intra-racial conflict highlighted in "Their Eyes Were Watching God" and the biographical elements of bi-racial musicians like Mariah Carey or Lenny Kravitz, and the standing of how Elvis was viewed blacks contemporary to his time(more appreciative and "in community with") versus blacks in subsequent generations(a greater tendency to view him as yet another bad white guy appropriating black labor). I'm also Asian, so I don't personally belong to any of the groups.
My answer would have likely been "not sure".

Other interpretations or considerations could be:
1. Is it okay for a white person to be physically white?
2. A person's white, is that innately a bad thing?
3. Does being white innately mean that the carry certain beliefs, actions, or tendencies that harm other people, thus making white people not be "okay"?
3. Is it okay for blacks to "act white", preferentially or totally?
4. Is it ok to treat "passers" or their descendents treated as white?
5. Is it ok to treat "passers" or their descendents treated as black?
6. Is it ok to marry outside of the "race" socially, even if it's fully legal?
7. Respondent is of mixed heritage, and whites treated him poorly.
8. Respondent is of mixed heritage, and blacks treated him poorly.
9. Respondent is of mixed heritage, and more "pure-looking" of both races treated respondent like garbage

Adams had a chance to indeed clarify and even pointed out the question is indeed open to interpretation. ,But he didn't really change how he interpreted that VERY open-ended question in a manner that is "stretching it" at the least. His apparent interpretation is that almost half of all Blacks thinks it's not okay to be just a white guy, and that he considers answering explicitly in the negative and not being sure as being essentially the same answer.

The most obvious thing is that a black answering that question may not even be thinking about whites at all but rather intra-racial dealings.

I haven't listened to everything Adams said because I haven't had that much time, but it appears to my knowledge he hasn't bothered to discuss the actual whys because the answers to the poll, including why the subset of Black Americans answers in the distribution they did in the poll.
 
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Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
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Adams had a chance to indeed clarify and even pointed out the question is indeed open to interpretation

Pretty much all he had to do was make a Twitter post to clarify his intentions, which he sort of did today (if we're willing to remove the historical "it's OK to be white" loaded Internet phrase), but he's already lost a massive amount of business (80%, he says) & respect (which was already dicey to a lot of people). In his follow-up video interview, he says he likes attention, so I don't know if he's just trolling at this point or what; it's not that hard to make a follow-up post & say nope, that's not what I meant!

But...he didn't do that clearly & immediately, and so the knee-jerk reaction is that he publicly outed himself as a racist, which seems pretty odd given a 34-year history as a public-facing cartoonist. So the problem has not only to do with the way he did the original video, but also how he handled the response. To me, racism is a very sensitive subject, which has the ability to hurt a lot of people's feelings if not handled properly, and is a huge hot-button topic online, given how instantly media can go viral these days. It's not that hard to issue an apology video and say "what I meant was this" & say sorry for how he came across sounding, because despite whatever his intentions were, he's now branded as a racist cartoonist probably forever now. He's got enough money not to care, but it was a pretty disappointing video & pretty disappointing response on his part, especially for those of us who like the Dilbert comic.
 

Torn Mind

Lifer
Nov 25, 2012
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Pretty much all he had to do was make a Twitter post to clarify his intentions, which he sort of did today (if we're willing to remove the historical "it's OK to be white" loaded Internet phrase), but he's already lost a massive amount of business (80%, he says) & respect (which was already dicey to a lot of people). In his follow-up video interview, he says he likes attention, so I don't know if he's just trolling at this point or what; it's not that hard to make a follow-up post & say nope, that's not what I meant!

But...he didn't do that clearly & immediately, and so the knee-jerk reaction is that he publicly outed himself as a racist, which seems pretty odd given a 34-year history as a public-facing cartoonist. So the problem has not only to do with the way he did the original video, but also how he handled the response. To me, racism is a very sensitive subject, which has the ability to hurt a lot of people's feelings if not handled properly, and is a huge hot-button topic online, given how instantly media can go viral these days. It's not that hard to issue an apology video and say "what I meant was this" & say sorry for how he came across sounding, because despite whatever his intentions were, he's now branded as a racist cartoonist probably forever now. He's got enough money not to care, but it was a pretty disappointing video & pretty disappointing response on his part, especially for those of us who like the Dilbert comic.
Well, one could engage in an exercise interpreting the "interpretations" in a light most favorable to Adams. If a quarter of the Black population is indeed not okay with someone being white ipso facto(one of many inferences of "being white"), that's a fairly substantial amount of people who are literally pre-judging and possibly acting against any white person.

To "not be sure" about a white person just physically being white would also be indicative of something wrong, because someone is still considering thoughts on whether just having particular physical features is "okay" or not. The act of even considering it would thus then be an error of mind and possibly someone not to associate with.

Such a "gut reaction" interpretation is not necessarily unreasonable for some white guy who just came across the results and thinks his own skin color is something people are not okay with.

However, even if we assume the answers are indicative of racism against whites and not some other "pathway", that doesn't mean Adams response to their racism is "not racism". Instead, the actual result is both he and the the relevant respondents are racist. After all, there's still the 53% who are still okay with "being white". Some of the statements Adams made in the initial first video showed no indication of nuance at all, and make it appear the 53% who are okay simply became...nonexistent.
Sure, such a poll does give rise to many questions that can be asked, but Adams went beyond just questioning to basically "cancelling".

But still, Adams has yet to show he isn't quite aware of just what the question actually was. Maybe he is fully aware but now in sort of "troll" or "contraian" mode, who knows. I'm not even sure the Rasmussen poll guys even realized the full scope of the question they asked. That the question is actually the verbal equivalent of an "ambiguous image".

Another matter is the language of English itself and how it influences its speakers. Westerners focus on nouns while Asians like Chinese focus on action. Put that poll question into google translate, and the phrase used in Chinese is not "okay", but "do you accept someone being white?"(你能接受白人吗?, Nǐ néng jiēshòu báirén ma?), a question with far less ambiguity in interpretation. So, it is plausible, given Adams' apparent race and English language upbringing, his brained basically took some shortcuts and interpreted the answers as regarding white people and not the other potential actions that could mean "being white" to someone.
 

Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
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Adams has yet to show he isn't quite aware of just what the question actually was.

It's just disappointing to see someone whose work you like (Dilbert comic etc.) go off the rails like this. This article sums it up:

"With his remarks, he canceled himself."
 

RPD

Diamond Member
Jul 22, 2009
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For starters, I'm going to point out that you're comparing Scott Adams saying, "you need to get the hell away from all black people" with "I hope some black people win some awards today".

That aside, let me pose a hypothetical scenario to you:

Two kids in a school. Kid A has been making kid B's life an absolute misery, beats the living shit out of them every chance they get, etc.

On a given day, let's say kid A has done it again, but gets caught red-handed this time. What's your reaction here?
Now let's change that situation and say that kid B has finally had enough of kid A's bullshit and beats the living shit out of kid A. What's your reaction here?
No for starters you are comparing an out of context quote, it doesn't make it correct or even not bad, but the context in which he says it, is important.
My reaction is why in the fuck hasn't the school stepped in after the 1st or second beating? Caught on which time? Kid should be gone. Reaction to kid B defending themselves is good.
I hate to put words into your poor analogy, but are you trying to say white people are "beating the living shit" out of black people every day and now black people are "beating the living shit" out of white people, so it's ok?
Lots of questions here, but still waiting on someone to answer my first case.
 

Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
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out of context quote, it doesn't make it correct or even not bad, but the context in which he says it, is important.

I don't know why he didn't just hop on CNN & state his intentions once it went viral, because out of context, the video does sound absolutely awful. Out of context, it really does sound like a "racist tirade". Which, again, should strike anybody as very odd for a public figure worth millions who has a 34-year comic career to just magically "expose" himself publicly as a racist & tank his business after all this time.

For the sake of his business & IP, I feel like he should have done some media soundbites, where he could have fostered a far better discussion than that's going on now, but instead it seems like he just kind of fed into it. The Twitter post below is 1,000% NOT how he came across in the video being touted across the news & social media. Analyzing it from a marketing POV:

1. Out of context, the video is pretty bad. Damaging to people's feelings & damaging to his work. He should have gone into PR damage control mode immediately. Not only that, but even within context, the way he spoke about things could be misconstrued a thousand different ways. Racism is a very sensitive topic, and having moved from comics to persuasion professionally, this should have been a huge red flag in his own mind when presenting the video.
2. He knows how the media operates & has written about it in several books, so he should have known exactly how it would be distributed.
3. He didn't make much of an effort to get out there & clear things up. It's really hard to change public perception once you've been branded a certain way!
4. He didn't offer any kind of apology for the whole situation (intention vs. impact).
5. He went with the whole "being white is OK" for another comic he later posted on Twitter. I highly doubt that he's unaware of the historical nature of that particular phrase. So rather than making an effort to clear his name, it seems like he just sort of doubled-down & went to stir the pot.
6. He's made some pretty off-colored comments in the past, which are all getting dredged up now. I 100% agree with the accountability aspect of the public reaction here.

Impact:

1. He claims to have lost 80% of his income. Public estimates put him at a net worth of $50 to $75 million, so I'm sure he's not hurting too much, but still, why would you tank your empire like that & not act immediately to do damage control? It's like Kanye & Adidas all over again!
2. His comic was dropped by a ton of newspapers. He stated that Dilbert will only be available on his subscription service on the Locals platform.
3. He said “My publisher for non-Dilbert books has canceled my upcoming book and the entire backlist". I don't know if the backlist includes other products, but "To date, more than 40 “Dilbert” reprint books have been published, with “The Dilbert Principle” becoming a New York Times best-seller. Total “Dilbert” book and calendar sales have topped 20 million units, according to Andrews McMeel." Also, "On Monday, Adams' distributor, Andrews McMeel Universal, said they are severing ties with the cartoonist because the company does not support "any commentary rooted in discrimination or hate."
4. His book agent dropped him.

Cleveland Plain Dealer editor Chris Quinn, in a letter to readers, said “It’s a staggering string of statements, all but certain to result in the loss of his livelihood." From what I can tell, he doesn't have a public-facing middleman to act as a buffer between what he wants to say & how he says it. According to his statements, the tweet below was his intention, but yeah...what a staggering string of mistakes to make:

1. The video was bad
2. The concept of the video was poorly done
3. The poll it was based on was garbage
4. The whole "it's OK to be white" phrase has double meaning
5. His post-viral response was not good in how he decided to respond to everything

The whole thing just boggles my mind. He has enough media connections to instantly hop on & clear things up, and even promote a good discussion about things in order to change the narrative direction on the news. He did the Hotep interview & made a few statements like the one below, but like...when you're on CNN headline news as being accused of being racist, and if you don't want to be seen that way, why on earth wouldn't you go into overdrive mode to protect your brand & your personal reputation?

We used to study media & marketing failures like this back in college, both on how the media takes a selective portion of a statement, crafts a narrative, and runs with it, which changes the minds & hearts of people as they cater to their selected audience demographics, as well as how having a single person be the face of a brand can adversely affect the business line when people's behaviors go off the rails. Especially when this has multiple facets: is racism bad? Yes. Is how he did the video & everything after that bad? Yes. Is how the media portrayed it, out of context, bad? Yes.

There are, of course, no repercussions for the media's take on it, because it's just another story sold to generate advertising revenue. But he also had a pretty big media damage control failure on a personal level by not instantly addressing, clarifying, and correcting the issue, as well as simply issuing an apology for how it might be construed. Just kind of blows my mind. Doesn't take much to clarify. Doesn't take much to be kind. The video, especially as he presented it, should have never existed in the first place, but his response to the fallout has been...uncanny. For those of us who are Dilbert fans...bummer.

1677786548631.png
 

nakedfrog

No Lifer
Apr 3, 2001
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The whole thing just boggles my mind. He has enough media connections to instantly hop on & clear things up, and even promote a good discussion about things in order to change the narrative direction on the news. He did the Hotep interview & made a few statements like the one below, but like...when you're on CNN headline news as being accused of being racist, and if you don't want to be seen that way, why on earth wouldn't you go into overdrive mode to protect your brand & your personal reputation?
Well, if we use Occam's razor, the simplest explanation is that he doesn't want to apologize for a racist rant because he felt there was nothing to apologize for (because he's a racist, perhaps?) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The Hotep interview does NOT make him look any better IMO.
 
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Kaido

Elite Member & Kitchen Overlord
Feb 14, 2004
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Well, if we use Occam's razor, the simplest explanation is that he doesn't want to apologize for a racist rant because he felt there was nothing to apologize for (because he's a racist, perhaps?) ¯\_(ツ)_/¯
The Hotep interview does NOT make him look any better IMO.

Another tone-deaf person

I mean, if you've listened to him in the past, unfortunately he sometimes kind of gets into that Jordan Peterson "whirlpool" type of mindset where gets so wrapped up in the literal definitions of things that he misses basic things like human kindness & stepping outside of the intention of what was said vs. the impact of how it was taken...like, do you have any idea how your video sounded, especially to people of color? It's not just about what was said but how it was said!

"Tone-deaf" is the best benefit-of-the-doubt explanation I can think of here...it reminds me of when you're a kid & another kid puts his finger like a inch away from your face and says I'M NOT TOUCHING YOU! I'M NOT TOUCHING YOU! Like...yeah, sure, you're technically not touching me, but you also don't have to engage in this type of behavior, you know? "Obtuse" is another good word. Intentionally obtuse, even.

As a Dilbert fan, this behavior upsets me because it's not how he portrays himself in his comics or his books, so initially it was pretty shocking to see the original video, then I read his statement, but then he just kind of...dropped the ball the rest of the way. My first post in this thread was about the media misrepresenting his intentions, which is a separate discussion from how the video was portrayed & what his response to the media fallout was. But then, rather than just being decent about it & taking an ego hit & saying hey, sorry, I didn't mean this to be construed that way, despite how it sounded...we get stuff like the tweet below. Again...it feels like the whole "I'm not touching you!" thing. Like yeah, we get what you mean, but it doesn't cost anything to be a little kinder & take some public responsibility for how you got portrayed in the media.

To me, it's somewhat horrifying to see someone build a huge media empire of fun comics, cartoons, calendars, books, etc. & then just kind of dig their heels into the sand. From being familiar with his work, I understand his perspective & the structure of his response, but like, c'mon...the optics are bad, the surface content is offensive, and if you don't want to be seen that way, it's a pretty easy fix thanks to the speed of the Internet these days. At this point, I think he's gotten sucked into the whirlpool of his own thinking to the point where he can't see things clearly from an outside perspective. Bummer.

1677792572013.png
 

skyking

Lifer
Nov 21, 2001
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more like a quick summary for any poor sod who thought of watching that shit so they can find something better to do with their day.
I really appreciate your efforts in that regard. This thread is enough of a trainwreck. I don't need to go light my few spare brain cells on fire like a stack of 20's and watch a racist wanker try to backpedal, while saying more outrageous shit.
He's had far more than his 15 minutes in the limelight.