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ParappaTheDapper -> Dilbert has been a bad boy. (6/15/2011 10:07:07 AM)
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So this story has been developing for some time, but it's recently exploded into an unsavory little denouement! Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, has been skirting the line between a very real ability to glibly skewer the sorts of schmucks many of us grow to despise in the workplace and what seems to be a delusional honking self-image as a sort of modern Kafka serving as a prophet for the white oppressed white collar white white males of the 21st century.
Here is a nice summation of his descent all the way down to creating a sockpuppet account to defend his own honor on Metafilter.
The story speaks for itself but a couple of comments so you know where my own biases are:
First, I find it entertaining that I know a couple of hardcore Dilbert fans who buy into Scott's explanation that he was "trolling" as a sort of social commentary when he created the sockpuppet account. My response to this is that if he'd been more over the top, Louis-CK-drunk-on-Twitter-style, I might find this more compelling! Instead he was a boring dude who made a boring dude persona as a sockpuppet solely to call himself a genius. Lame, Scott, lame. Sin more that grace may abound more but half-steppers get shredded.
Second, my opinion of Dilbert as a comic is basically that Adams was really good at taking facile cheap shots and created a kind of Beavis and Butthead for second tier math dorks (first tier math dorks are usually cool people who enjoyed the real Beavis and Butthead) who find themselves feeling persecuted because they have to accept large paychecks in exchange for taking orders from guys with better social skills who probably don't even know the quadratic formula! I enjoyed him immensely when I was a whiny 14 year old passive aggressive nerd with a "nice-guy-who-always-gets-friend-zoned" chip on his shoulders. When I outgrew that phase, I took a kind of patronizing view of Dilbert strips that people were always forwarding around via email (this sure was the late 90s!) and thought "He's kind of funny sometimes but man it's sad a guy with all that money can't get over high school." Then I ignored the strip for ten years or so until recently when Adams ended up in the news and outed himself as a pretty gross misogynist glibertarian without a scrap of dignity remaining and now it's funny and sad to me at the same time.
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