The entire arc of Scott Adams is a cautionary tale.
To go from a brilliant satirist to becoming terminally online and just completely falling off the far right cliffs of insanity is incredibly sad. And unfortunately, this is plight is not uncommon. It is incredibly dangerous to make politics part of your identity and then just absolutely bathe yourself in a political media echo chamber.
> just absolutely bathe yourself in a political media echo chamber.
It seems to me that social media belongs in the same "vice" category as drinking, drugs, and gambling: lots of people can "enjoy responsibly", some make a mess but pull back when they see it, and some completely ruin their lives by doubling down.
The danger is those three are usually done in social situations where others can "pull you back" - which is why online gambling and drinking/drugs alone can get so bad so fast.
Social media has nobody to pull you back, you just get sucked in to the whirlpool.
Absolutely. Social media is designed to elicit a constant stream of dopamine hits, prey on our need for social validation, keep the amygdala engaged, stoke conflict, and bolster whatever beliefs we carry (no matter how deranged). It’s the ultimate distortion machine and is wildly dangerous, particularly for individuals who struggle to keep it at arm’s distance and fail to equip mental PPE prior to usage.
I read the Dilbert Principle when I was young, but still old enough to appreciate a lot of its humor. Later, when I discovered Scott was online and had a blog, I couldn't believe it was the same person. To me, the Scott Adams of comic strip fame had already died many years ago.
Just watching it now (and what a house it is). There's a TV in almost every room, and Fox News is on each of them. He says: "Yes, it is the same station on every television, because that's how the system is designed. It's designed so it'll play the same station all over the house. It happens to be Fox News, but I do flip around. It's not nailed on Fox News, in case you're wondering."
What makes it cautionary? From what I can tell, he hardly suffered from what you described. I'm not saying that I agree with everything that came out of Scott's mouth, but I never saw a sign of regret in him in regards to politics.
I don't recall where (Vic Berger?), but someone made a compilation of "regret" clips from Trump influencers (Alex Jones and others, and Scott Adams). This was in the circa January 6 days, where humiliation reigned, and they all felt betrayed because "RINOs" dominated Trump's term, "the deep state" was still standing, and he accomplished nothing of note. It's been memory-holed since then but that was the dominant mood back then (they blamed his mediocrity on "bad staffing", which later led to Project 2025).
Well Scott Adams was in there, venting (in a video) that his life had basically been ruined by his support for Trump, that he'd lost most of his friends and wealth due to it, and that he felt betrayed and felt like a moron for trusting him since it wasn't even worth it. Nothing had changed and the country wasn't "saved".
This video is so badly edited that it’s really difficult to figure out what he’s actually saying. It’s obviously cut to portray some kind of regret, but for example what does “he left me on the table” even mean? Who? How?
Well okay, if you could find this compilation then I'd be interested. That really doesn't sound like the Scott Adams I've seen over the course of the last decade.
I’d be interested in seeing this. Not to doubt you, but I suspect a more accurate characterization is not “my life was ruined by my support for Trump” but rather “look what being right about everything gets you in a world of trump haters.”
I have a two famous friends in the television industry. It seems they fall into the trap that since they produce popular TV shows that they then can think they know every thing about everything else, mostly because of the people that surround them want to stay friends so they can be associated with the fame. I think this is the trap Adams fell into as well. Whether that was with his knowledge or ignorance I do not know.
I do not let my friends get away with them thinking they are experts on everything.
Adams turned his fame of Dilbert into his fame for saying things online. I mean he even started a food company! Anyone remember the "Dilberito"??? Seems he was always just looking for more ways to make money. And reading his books it sounded like he wanted to get rid of religions.
So he was human, just like the rest of us. And he died desperate and clutching to life, leveraging whatever power he had to try to save it from who ever he could.
When I was young I didn't understand meaning of the words "do not bear false witness" and it was explained to me as "do not lie". As I've gotten older and now understand the words better, the much broader category of "do not bear false witness" seems like the better precept. Spreading false witness, even if sincere, has great harm.
Actually it’s more accurate to say Scott was always a far right troll and provocateur, but at some point he fell down a racist rabbit-hole. The book “The Trouble with Dilbert: How Corporate Culture Gets the Last Laugh” shows how Scott Adams never cared about the plight of workers in the first place, using his own words. It was way ahead of its time, as the angry reviews from 1998 and 2000, back in Dilbert’s heyday, demonstrate.
I say this as someone who used to really enjoy Dilbert, but looking back with a critical eye, it’s easy to see an artist who deliberately avoids bringing up topics that might actually do something to improve corporate culture.
I do not know about anybody else, but I do not read comics, watch movies, listen to music, or read books [for pleasure] in order to learn a lesson, learn how to "improve corporate culture", or anything else. Entertainment is, for me, 100% escapist. I indulge in entertainment as a brief escape from reality. If Dilbert had been preachy, which A LOT of comics seem to be these days, I would not have enjoyed it.
The online world breeds extremism. It wasn't too long ago criticizing someone on their obituary was considered classless. This is the world we have made.
Completely agree. If you're motivated enough about a topic to post about it online, you're probably emotional about it and unable to see it in a clear-headed manner.
The people I know who have the most reasonable political opinions never post about it online. The people who have developed unhealthy and biased obsessions are the ones who post constantly.
Unwillingness to engage with others breeds extremism. There are many who are silenced if they do not fit into the social dogma. Those people eventually lose it if they can't find a productive outlet.
Good to know that "Don't speak ill of the dead," is now truly dead. Ironic that an online post trying to push a political point is attempting to frame itself as rising above. There is no middle ground. There is no common decency.
The reaction to Adams death is simply a reflection of how he lived his life.
There’s this curious demand (often though not exclusively from right leaning folks) for freedom of speech and freedom from consequences of that speech. It doesn’t work that way.
You have the freedom to say reactionary things that upset people as much as you want. But if you do, then you die, people are going to say “he was a person who said reactionary things that upset people”.
I've never entirely understood "don't speak ill of the dead"; it seems like a vastly-scoped rule with far too many exceptions (and that can prevent learning any lessons from the life of the deceased). Forgive the Godwin's law, but: did that rule apply to Hitler? If not, then there's a line somewhere where it stops being a good rule (if it ever was one to begin with) – and I'd feel confident saying that there's no real consensus about where that "cutover" occurs.
To me, comments like "the entire arc of Scott Adams is a cautionary tale" rings less of vitriol and more of a kind of mourning for who the man became, and the loss of his life (and thus the loss of any chance to grow beyond who he became).
That rings empathetic and sorrowful to me, which seems pretty decent in my book.
Because the dead can't respond or defend themselves. That's why you don't do it.
And it's the framing of the statement that is the problem. They didn't say "I disagreed with Scott" or "I didn't like Scott"; they framed it in a way that made it seem like truth. "the entire arc of Scott Adams is a cautionary tale" makes it seem like he did something wrong and there is some universal truth to be had, when it's really just this person disagreed with Scott's political views. It's persuasion, which ironically I think Scott would have liked.
> I've never entirely understood "don't speak ill of the dead"
Agree. Much more hurtful to speak ill of the living. I can even see both R's and D's as people suffering in the duality of the world and have compassion for them. “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
You don't even really need to invoke Godwin's law, since you can just ask the same question about financier to the billionaires Jeffrey Epstein or beloved British presenter Sir Jimmy Savile (presented without speaking ill of the dead).
I suppose you shouldn't jeer at them for being dead, for a start, and you should make allowances for their being dead when judging their actions. Treat them fairly.
As much as I dislike Adams and disagree with a lot of the attempts to paper over a lot of reprehensible stuff, he gave it a try, abandoned it, and publicly denounced it after it didn't work, and even spoke out against the pressuring campaigns done by ivermectin/etc. quacks to push people to waste time, money, and hope on quack treatments.
There's much better examples of areas where he was off the rails than him spending a month on a relatively safe treatment trying to stay alive before giving up when faced with reality.
he gave it a try, abandoned it, and publicly denounced it after it didn't work
I'm not sure why that should be lauded. A sample size of 1 (and a trial length of merely 1 month, according to other posts) does not make a convincing study to warrant any public statements.
The man spend a tremendous amount of time trying to discredit the entire medical industry. In the past he has claimed to avoid cancer through prayer. This is part of a pattern.
My grandfather was a surgeon, an excellent one. When he was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer, he went to every dubious healer my grandmother could find. He did it for her, and likely for himself as well. He was never right wing.
Scott Adams did me a considerable and unsolicited kindness almost 20 years ago, back in 2007. One day my site traffic logs showed an unexpected uptick in traffic, and recent referrals overwhelmingly pointed to his blog. Of course I recognized him from Dilbert fame, both the comic strip and The Dilbert Principle.
I sent him a thank you email for the link, and he replied graciously. This began a conversation where he referred me to his literary agent, and this ultimately led to a real-world, dead-tree-and-ink book publishing deal[1]. He even provided a nice blurb for the book cover.
I can't say that I agreed a lot with the person Scott Adams later became--I only knew him vaguely, from a distance. But he brought humor into many people's lives for a lot of years, and he was generous to me when he didn't have to be. Today I'll just think about the good moments.
It's a sad moment for me. I got into Dilbert at the tender age of eight years old. I don't know why I liked it so much when half the jokes went over my head, but I loved computers and comics, and I plowed through every book at my local library. It was my real introduction to software engineering, and it definitely influenced me in many ways that certainly shaped the man that I am today.
I never agreed with him politically, and I honestly think he said some pretty awful stuff. However, none of that changes the positive impact that his comics had on my life. Rest in peace.
> I got into Dilbert at the tender age of eight years old. I don't know why I liked it so much when half the jokes went over my head, but I loved computers and comics
Same! Or at least I got into them as a young kid I don’t remember the exact age, it was probably a few years older but definitely tweens max.
I’m also not sure why I liked them so much, other than that I loved computers and always knew I’d end up working in the industry, so maybe it was like a window into that world that I liked. I also loved the movie Office Space, so maybe I just had a thing for office satire.
very interesting to find other folks who jibed with this comic at a young age. My mom and aunt had cubicle jobs and the entire idea seemed very fun to me. I recall looking at my 4th grade classroom and thinking we could really benefit from some cubicles.
Sadly I'm doomed to work in an open floorplan.
I wasn't exactly a daily reader at the time, but I was sad to hear when dilbert was pulled, and why. I tried to send him some fan mail when I heard he had fallen ill, but the email of his that I found had been deleted.
Same! My dad worked in corporate HR and loved Dilbert (I guess it spoke to him), so we usually had a few of his books and/or a strip-a-day desk calendar around the house that I would read. I never considered it before, but maybe I'm the cynical software engineer I am today because of Scott Adams. The world is a funny place sometimes.
I got to interact with Scott just once on Twitter. I shared one of his strips in response to a tweet he made. My intent was tongue-in-cheek and very inline with the themes of his work, but he reacted very aggressively and then blocked me.
It was a bit of a crushing moment because inside my head I was thinking, "I know and love this guy's work. Surely if I just engage him at his level without being a jackass, we can add some levity to the comments section." My instinct was that maybe he really was just a jackass and I should label him as such in my brain and move on.
But then my cat got sick last year and went from being a cuddly little guy to an absolute viscious bastard right up to the day he died. It was crushing. One day I realized it felt similar to my experience with Scott. I wondered if maybe Scott was just suffering really badly, too. I have no idea what the truth of the matter is, and I don't think that people who suffer have a free pass for their behaviour. But I think I want to hold on to this optimism.
Quite frankly, this is a worry for me. I have noticed that I've become shorter with people and less tolerant as I've got older. I've started to feel some resentment in certain situations where I felt I was being unfairly treated.
I recognise these feelings and things, which I am grateful for. So I work hard to correct this, and I hope I succeed, but I seriously worry about my brain changing and becoming someone quite unpleasant. You look at people from the outside, and it is so easy to judge, but we're all just a big bag of chemicals and physics. Personality change does happen, it could happen to any of us.
There was a super weird alignment at a previous job where the appearances, personalities, and seniority/rank of some of my co-workers matched characters in Dilbert to the T. It was really funny and almost eerie, like Scott Adams was hiding in a cube taking notes.
I didn't always agree with Scott Adams on everything he did and said, but "The Dilbert Principle" taught me more about living in a corporation and management than any other book on business and his dilbert comics were a source of endless wisdom and amusement, which I use often today.
Really love Scott for creating Dilbert one of the best all-time comic strips, teaching the psychology of persuasion, and for writing How to Fail At Almost Everything and Still Win Big. It taught me to focus on systems and habits as a preference over goals (goals are still useful, but can be unrealistic and less adaptable). Plus God's Debris was an interesting thought experiment about the origin of the universe. Really great thinker and humorist. RIP Scott.
I always enjoyed Dilbert, one of the few of my friends who did as it was a bit of a specific sense of humor. But Scott Adam’s really, really fell off a cliff into some very odious takes in his recent years. Feels like he should have stuck to Dilbert, but he lived long enough to see himself become the villain instead.
He fell off the cliff when he left his day job to write the comic full time. At least that is my opinion. Falling down the cliff took a while, at first he was still close enough to corporate reality to still be realistic in his exaggerations and thus funny, but the longer he was a way the less his jokes were grounded in reality and so they became not funny because they felt a little too far out.
Of course writing a comic takes a lot of time. I don't begrudge him for wanting to quit, and others have made the transition to full time humorist well - but he wasn't the first to fail to make that switch. He should have retired when he was a head....
Let the above be a warning to you. I don't know how (or if) it will apply, but think on it.
The story I read long ago was that he had a long-standing agreement with his manager that if his cartooning ever became an issue for his day job, he would leave. Then a new manager came in who basically said "OK."
Very true, loved Dilbert. I guess I was unaware of his dubious takes early on because my only interaction was seeing the comics. Later on the interactions became Dilbert + Reddit post on how Scott Adams is an antivaxxer.
Worth the read: “The Trouble With Dilbert: How Corporate Culture Gets the Last Laugh” https://a.co/d/7b7Jnt6
I couldn’t read Dilbert the same after that. Adams avoids, with surgical precision, things like unionization, while the author simultaneously supports downsizing despite seeming to mock it in his strips.
Anyway, shame he’s dead, but to me he died a long time ago. I only feel sad when thinking about how I used to enjoy Dilbert.
Dilbert was pretty influential for me in the 90s and early 2000s. I enjoyed those comics a bunch while I was kid. He seemed to struggle a bit with his fame, and apparently his divorce caused him a pretty big psychic trauma, which was unfortunate.
His later personality was.. not my style.. and I dumped all of his books into little free libraries a few years back. The only things I really found interesting from his later work was focusing on systems rather than process.
Can't deny the early influence, though. The pointy-haired boss will live on forever.
Always gave a sensible chuckle to his comics. One of my favorite scenes from the show was about "The Knack". My dad originally shared this with me, reminding me that I'm "cursed" for inheriting the knack from him.
Dilbert definitely captured a 90s era corporate zeitgeist. But, after he departed PacBell, although there was the occasional strip that really nailed it, Dilbert never really moved on to modern SV/startup/open floor plan tech and it mostly felt like been there, done that. That said, Dilbert in its prime was easily in the top comics I enjoyed.
That’s exactly it. I got into the industry right at that transition, at a startup that sold software into telcos. At the startups we found out what happens when Wally becomes the CEO…
I loved Dilbert back in the day, and even the books were witty and poignant.
I would like to point out that the quality of his satire really feel of as time went on. He came from an office life in the late 90s and had a lot of insight into it's dysfunctions. But after decades of being out of that world, he had clearly lost touch. The comics often do little to speak to the current corporate world, outside of squeezed in references.
As I see it, decline in quality and the political radicalization go hand in hand. You cannot be a good satirist and be so long removed from the world you are satirizing.
The political radicalization and the divorces. The strips he created after being fired by his syndicate are a bleak insight into his mindset in his final years. https://x.com/WyattDuncan/status/2011102679934910726
Taking his anodyne setup-punchline-sarcastic quip formula and applying it to aggressively unfunny shock material is actually low key brilliant, albeit unintentionally so.
It’s like if Norm MacDonald didn’t posses a moral compass.
This guy was always interesting...because he understood satire so well, he understood nuance and made comedy from it...then he became chronically online and went down insane alt-right rabbit holes.
Even those of a logical mind may not have the fortitude to protect themselves from propaganda that exploit their victimhood.
> After a 2022 mass shooting, Adams opined that society leaves parents of troubled teenage boys with only two options: to either watch people die or murder their own son.
Which is at it should be. Wikipedia isn't a news source, and especially for something like this should be careful about allowing edits to stand until they can cite sources.
> Later (incorrect) predictions repeatedly featured in Politico magazine's annual lists of "Worst Predictions", including that one of Trump, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden would die from COVID-19 by the end of 2020,[98] that "Republicans will be hunted" if Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election
> In a 2006 blog post, Adams asked if official figures of the number of deaths in the Holocaust were based on methodologically sound research.
It's not about assumptions, it's rationalization. The tribal playbook requires one to demonize the enemy in order to justify what they want to do to them.
I loved Dilbert and I really believe that you often have to separate art from artist if you want to enjoy many things. He put a very unique perspective on corporate and tech environments that made me laugh. Sad to see a human pass but also sadder that his later opinions diminished his contributions in many people's eyes.
He was from a kinder more tolerant time, when people thought being non-anonymous online was safe. Sort of the same problem that others from his generation, Julian Assange, many others had. But I wonder if time won’t prove these people right. If you do put yourself out there you make enemies and open yourself to the hatred on many psycho basement dwellers. But if you don’t the world never knows you. All if that is too many words to say there’s a price to be paid for fame. Anyway, Dilbert was an important part of our cultural landscape and made a lot of people feel good despite the pains of cubicle life. To make people smile and feel better, that’s a pretty great achievement after all. Rip Scott, hopefully you’ll be making many folks smile in the afterlife too.
I disagreed with him politically, especially during the last few years, but I'm very appreciative of Dilbert and in particular the Dilbert cartoon. The Knack is one of those clips that I keep coming back to and sharing with friends whenever someone shows signs.
I think that a lot of us on here can give credit to Scott Adams for helping develop their cynicism, for better or worse.
He was a role model to me for helping me to make sense of the corporate world and its denizens. This might not sound like a compliment, but it is. He was my Mr. Miyagi for mental resilience by providing good arguments for most people not being evil, despite how it might seem.
For those who do not know, Adams was still putting up daily Dilbert strips, just for paid subs on Twitter instead of in a newspaper. I think it's impressive he didn't stop until the end, even though AIUI he was in serious pain for a while. (He did stop doing the art himself in Nov.)
"In November 2025, he said his health was suddenly declining rapidly again, and took to social media to ask President Trump for help to get access to the cancer drug Pluvicto. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. replied saying "How do I reach you? The President wants to help." The following month he said he was paralyzed below the waist and had been undergoing radiation therapy."
"On January 1, 2026, Adams said on his podcast that he had talked with his radiologist and that it was "all bad news." He said there was no chance he would get feeling back in his legs and that he also had ongoing heart failure. He told viewers they should prepare themselves "that January will probably be a month of transition, one way or another." On January 12, Adams' first ex-wife, Shelly Miles, told TMZ that Adams was in hospice at his home in Northern California."
Wow that is really fast, in my view, and I wonder how many more of his cohort will similarly crash out.
I don’t have an estate to get in order, so to speak. Then again, I also won’t pass along a house full of a lifetime of “collections” or “mementos” with little to no monetary value. The oncoming secondary market is about to be awash in Boomer junk. Nobody wants to send their precious collections to the dump or recycling.
One of my biggest mental hiccups to work through of late is the changing nature of collective memories, fame, and idols. Scott is a great example who was “big in the 90s” and 30 years later his method (print cartoons and books) is basically dead and can’t be folllowed. Gen Z will be spared Scott, and probably Elvis and the Rocky Horror Picture Show, ABBA, and Garth Brooks comparatively speaking.
This is a meandering way to note how fast we can be poof gone and life will move on with a pace quite breakneck.
> The oncoming secondary market is about to be awash in Boomer junk. Nobody wants to send their precious collections to the dump or recycling.
Maybe, maybe not. My mother died a couple years ago, and while she was too old to be a boomer, she still had plenty of accumulated possessions in her estate. We sold as much as we could, kept the few things we wanted and had space for, and the rest went to recycling or the dump. I'd guess 90% went to the dump.
The owner of that stuff may not want to send it to the dump. My mom would be mortified to hear some of the things she treasured held no value for anyone else, but when you're dead, you aren't making those decisions. The next generation probably isn't that sentimental about it.
Sad news. Dilbert was a big part of my life for a long time, and brought much laughter and enjoyment to my life. But on the other hand, later in his life Scott said a lot of things I found frankly repugnant, and Dilbert more or less disappeared, all of which made me sad. But he was still an amazing writer of comedy at his best, and I hate to know that he has passed. Plus, every death is at tragedy for somebody - friends, family, loved-ones of all sorts - whether we specifically like someone or not.
I was vacationing in New York, and we went to some pretty standard-looking mall bookshop somewhere near Poughkeepsie some time in mid 90s. And I bought an interesting looking comic book, something I had never seen before.
I liked Dilbert for a long time, but Adams's Trump Dementia became so bad in the last decade that it completely tainted his legacy for me. His role in enabling Donald Trump to rise to power is undeniable, and his death makes me wish I had reserved a bottle of sparkling wine for the occasion.
I yearn for the time when it was possible to never meet your idols.
We say things like "you gotta separate the art from the artist" when we talk about folks like Scott Adams, whose take on the corporate world were unique in the comic industry and funny in general.
However, Scott Adams as an individual was deeply problematic and I would not ever stand him up as a role model for my children or behavior in general.
Of course, I wouldn't do the same for a vast number of famous people, politics aside.
The "problem" (which is in scare quotes because it's not a discrete identifiable sole-source issue but a complex and dynamic phenomenon that permeates every aspect of our modern-day life) is that we have collectively determined that if you're good at your art, you must be a person we should listen to for topics outside of your art.
To use an inflammatory but real-life example: Donald Trump is a great showman. He knows how to incite a crowd, and he knows how to feed into this modern-day mess we've made of our world. He is objectively a terrible manager of a country, and objectively a terrible human being.
But, for some reasons that have to do with politics, and some reasons that have to do with identity, folks who like Donald Trump as a showman are unable to disassociate his showmanship from his policies. To the point that if you were to write down the actual actions taken and attribute them to a leader of the other side (famous examples: Biden, Obama) as their policies, the same folks who are loudly cheering Donald Trump on would immediately castigate those actions if taken by someone on the "left".
It's a problem with no easy solution, and it requires more growth from humanity than we are at this moment exhibiting we possess. Scott Adams is a shining example of both this problem and our reaction to it, and while I mourn the passing of his art, I do not mourn his passing, and reading this comment section instead mourn our present state of wrapping ourselves in the cloth of identity politics while not engaging seriously on the fundamental underlying problems we face as a people.
Sadly, Scott Adams' political opinions came to overshadow Dilbert, but I shall choose to remember him as Dilbert's creator and how Dilbert captured a moment in time and work so aptly.
Back when Dilbert was massive my company ran the following ad in cinemas in Silicon Valley: https://imgur.com/a/ZPVJau8 Everyone seeing that ad knew what we were referring to.
Loved Dilbert as a kid, even into college, but fell off it eventually. Even if he turned to right wing trolling, I'll always remember those big comic compilations fondly.
The entire arc of Scott Adams is a cautionary tale.
To go from a brilliant satirist to becoming terminally online and just completely falling off the far right cliffs of insanity is incredibly sad. And unfortunately, this is plight is not uncommon. It is incredibly dangerous to make politics part of your identity and then just absolutely bathe yourself in a political media echo chamber.
> just absolutely bathe yourself in a political media echo chamber.
It seems to me that social media belongs in the same "vice" category as drinking, drugs, and gambling: lots of people can "enjoy responsibly", some make a mess but pull back when they see it, and some completely ruin their lives by doubling down.
The danger is those three are usually done in social situations where others can "pull you back" - which is why online gambling and drinking/drugs alone can get so bad so fast.
Social media has nobody to pull you back, you just get sucked in to the whirlpool.
Absolutely. Social media is designed to elicit a constant stream of dopamine hits, prey on our need for social validation, keep the amygdala engaged, stoke conflict, and bolster whatever beliefs we carry (no matter how deranged). It’s the ultimate distortion machine and is wildly dangerous, particularly for individuals who struggle to keep it at arm’s distance and fail to equip mental PPE prior to usage.
I read the Dilbert Principle when I was young, but still old enough to appreciate a lot of its humor. Later, when I discovered Scott was online and had a blog, I couldn't believe it was the same person. To me, the Scott Adams of comic strip fame had already died many years ago.
He gave a tour of his house on YouTube a long time ago and on every tv in nearly every room he has Fox News playing.
Just watching it now (and what a house it is). There's a TV in almost every room, and Fox News is on each of them. He says: "Yes, it is the same station on every television, because that's how the system is designed. It's designed so it'll play the same station all over the house. It happens to be Fox News, but I do flip around. It's not nailed on Fox News, in case you're wondering."
Narrator: “It was nailed on Fox News.”
I have no television in any room. Having a tv in nearly every room sounds like a nightmare. Doubly so if playing Fox News.
https://theonion.com/area-man-constantly-mentioning-he-doesn...
Scott Adams would've approved, I think.
I own three colanders.
Social media is a poison and Mr. Adams drank deep from the well. It's a shame.
I’m a believer in the idea of “twitter poisoning”, but of course it applies to all social media.
https://www.nytimes.com/2022/11/11/opinion/trump-musk-kanye-...
What makes it cautionary? From what I can tell, he hardly suffered from what you described. I'm not saying that I agree with everything that came out of Scott's mouth, but I never saw a sign of regret in him in regards to politics.
I don't recall where (Vic Berger?), but someone made a compilation of "regret" clips from Trump influencers (Alex Jones and others, and Scott Adams). This was in the circa January 6 days, where humiliation reigned, and they all felt betrayed because "RINOs" dominated Trump's term, "the deep state" was still standing, and he accomplished nothing of note. It's been memory-holed since then but that was the dominant mood back then (they blamed his mediocrity on "bad staffing", which later led to Project 2025).
Well Scott Adams was in there, venting (in a video) that his life had basically been ruined by his support for Trump, that he'd lost most of his friends and wealth due to it, and that he felt betrayed and felt like a moron for trusting him since it wasn't even worth it. Nothing had changed and the country wasn't "saved".
Is this the video? Scott Adams talks about losing friends, money, etc. around the 3:35 mark: https://youtu.be/HFUr6Px99aQ?t=215
Thanks, it's better to have the real quotes than my recollections.
This video is so badly edited that it’s really difficult to figure out what he’s actually saying. It’s obviously cut to portray some kind of regret, but for example what does “he left me on the table” even mean? Who? How?
You're confused if you think Berger is a bad editor
Well okay, if you could find this compilation then I'd be interested. That really doesn't sound like the Scott Adams I've seen over the course of the last decade.
I’d be interested in seeing this. Not to doubt you, but I suspect a more accurate characterization is not “my life was ruined by my support for Trump” but rather “look what being right about everything gets you in a world of trump haters.”
I think the world was better with him in it despite his controversies. Dilbert was great. Rest in peace
> "terminally online"
Bad choice of words.
I have a two famous friends in the television industry. It seems they fall into the trap that since they produce popular TV shows that they then can think they know every thing about everything else, mostly because of the people that surround them want to stay friends so they can be associated with the fame. I think this is the trap Adams fell into as well. Whether that was with his knowledge or ignorance I do not know.
I do not let my friends get away with them thinking they are experts on everything.
Adams turned his fame of Dilbert into his fame for saying things online. I mean he even started a food company! Anyone remember the "Dilberito"??? Seems he was always just looking for more ways to make money. And reading his books it sounded like he wanted to get rid of religions.
So he was human, just like the rest of us. And he died desperate and clutching to life, leveraging whatever power he had to try to save it from who ever he could.
I never pegged him for a liar though. He believed what he said, unlike so many political commentators.
When I was young I didn't understand meaning of the words "do not bear false witness" and it was explained to me as "do not lie". As I've gotten older and now understand the words better, the much broader category of "do not bear false witness" seems like the better precept. Spreading false witness, even if sincere, has great harm.
See also: JK Rowling.
Pre-2018: Inclusion! Weirdos are people too! The marginalized need a voice!
Post-2019: Transsexuals are a blight on society! They cause cancer in puppies!
yes, posts like these do not look like they were made by a mentally stable individual https://bsky.app/profile/dell.bsky.social/post/3mccx32hklc2f
Actually it’s more accurate to say Scott was always a far right troll and provocateur, but at some point he fell down a racist rabbit-hole. The book “The Trouble with Dilbert: How Corporate Culture Gets the Last Laugh” shows how Scott Adams never cared about the plight of workers in the first place, using his own words. It was way ahead of its time, as the angry reviews from 1998 and 2000, back in Dilbert’s heyday, demonstrate.
I say this as someone who used to really enjoy Dilbert, but looking back with a critical eye, it’s easy to see an artist who deliberately avoids bringing up topics that might actually do something to improve corporate culture.
I do not know about anybody else, but I do not read comics, watch movies, listen to music, or read books [for pleasure] in order to learn a lesson, learn how to "improve corporate culture", or anything else. Entertainment is, for me, 100% escapist. I indulge in entertainment as a brief escape from reality. If Dilbert had been preachy, which A LOT of comics seem to be these days, I would not have enjoyed it.
Notch too.
I never understood the urge to self destruct online. Jesus, take the money and fame and disappear like Tom of myspace.
See also: Elon Musk
His politics were not insane just because you disagreed with him.
What he practiced was the exact opposite of a political media echo chamber.
You just labeled him far right and insane without providing any positions you disagreed with.
edit: downvoted and flagged for saying we shouldn't hurl ad-hominem attacks
Seems like he aligned pretty perfectly with the Fox News/Newsmax echo chamber.
> His politics were not insane just because you disagreed with him.
Literally nobody is claiming that his politics were insane because they disagreed with him.
> edit: downvoted and flagged for saying we shouldn't hurl ad-hominem attacks
Absolutely not what "ad hominem" means.
The online world breeds extremism. It wasn't too long ago criticizing someone on their obituary was considered classless. This is the world we have made.
> It wasn't too long ago criticizing someone on their obituary was considered classless.
It's very easy to avoid getting criticized in your obituary, don't be an asshole.
If you devote your life to being an asshole, the civilized response gloves will come off and maybe more people should learn this lesson.
Gravedancing on someone because they said things you don't like makes you an asshole, actually.
You could simply just carry on with your day and say nothing, but leftists cant help themselves.
The implication is that you are attacking the defenseless. There is none more defenseless than the dead.
Not true.
1. Plenty of living people defend the reputations of dead people.
2. There's no proof that anything we say or do has any impact on dead people.
No one cares less about defending themselves being attacked than the dead.
Completely agree. If you're motivated enough about a topic to post about it online, you're probably emotional about it and unable to see it in a clear-headed manner.
The people I know who have the most reasonable political opinions never post about it online. The people who have developed unhealthy and biased obsessions are the ones who post constantly.
Unwillingness to engage with others breeds extremism. There are many who are silenced if they do not fit into the social dogma. Those people eventually lose it if they can't find a productive outlet.
What a distasteful comment. The man did way more good than harm to everyone around him.
He also just passed away, show some respect.
>He also just passed away, show some respect.
It takes more than dying to earn respect.
Good to know that "Don't speak ill of the dead," is now truly dead. Ironic that an online post trying to push a political point is attempting to frame itself as rising above. There is no middle ground. There is no common decency.
The reaction to Adams death is simply a reflection of how he lived his life.
There’s this curious demand (often though not exclusively from right leaning folks) for freedom of speech and freedom from consequences of that speech. It doesn’t work that way.
You have the freedom to say reactionary things that upset people as much as you want. But if you do, then you die, people are going to say “he was a person who said reactionary things that upset people”.
> he was a person who said reactionary things that upset people
HOW DARE YOU!
I've never entirely understood "don't speak ill of the dead"; it seems like a vastly-scoped rule with far too many exceptions (and that can prevent learning any lessons from the life of the deceased). Forgive the Godwin's law, but: did that rule apply to Hitler? If not, then there's a line somewhere where it stops being a good rule (if it ever was one to begin with) – and I'd feel confident saying that there's no real consensus about where that "cutover" occurs.
To me, comments like "the entire arc of Scott Adams is a cautionary tale" rings less of vitriol and more of a kind of mourning for who the man became, and the loss of his life (and thus the loss of any chance to grow beyond who he became).
That rings empathetic and sorrowful to me, which seems pretty decent in my book.
Because the dead can't respond or defend themselves. That's why you don't do it.
And it's the framing of the statement that is the problem. They didn't say "I disagreed with Scott" or "I didn't like Scott"; they framed it in a way that made it seem like truth. "the entire arc of Scott Adams is a cautionary tale" makes it seem like he did something wrong and there is some universal truth to be had, when it's really just this person disagreed with Scott's political views. It's persuasion, which ironically I think Scott would have liked.
He was
- Anti-evolution (https://scienceandculture.com/2018/12/scott-adams-intelligen...)
- Racist (https://www.mercurynews.com/2023/02/23/dilberts-scott-adams-...)
- Anti-vaccine (https://www.politifact.com/factchecks/2023/jan/26/scott-adam...)
- Questioned holocaust numbers (https://forward.com/fast-forward/538571/dilbert-cartoon-crea...)
Yeah I'd go with little more than "I respectfully disagreed with him" on that one chief
Kind of crazy your original post got flagged, it was completely reasonable.
---
> which ironically I think Scott would have liked
Agreed, RIP.
> I've never entirely understood "don't speak ill of the dead"
Agree. Much more hurtful to speak ill of the living. I can even see both R's and D's as people suffering in the duality of the world and have compassion for them. “Father, forgive them, for they do not know what they are doing.”
You don't even really need to invoke Godwin's law, since you can just ask the same question about financier to the billionaires Jeffrey Epstein or beloved British presenter Sir Jimmy Savile (presented without speaking ill of the dead).
Why shouldn’t you speak ill of the dead?
I suppose you shouldn't jeer at them for being dead, for a start, and you should make allowances for their being dead when judging their actions. Treat them fairly.
They weren't dead yet when they did the actions for which they are judged, right?
It's mostly because the dead cannot defend themselves. You are attacking someone who you have no fear of reprisal from.
You can’t have a middle ground when your tenets offer up personal harm to a significant portion of the population.
That he doesn't share your views doesn't mean he is "off the far rights cliffs of insanity".
Its really not enough to say that Adams simply had different views. He was incredibly hyperbolic, attention seeking, and intentionally inflammatory.
He treated his cancer with the anti-threadworm medication Ivermectin.
As much as I dislike Adams and disagree with a lot of the attempts to paper over a lot of reprehensible stuff, he gave it a try, abandoned it, and publicly denounced it after it didn't work, and even spoke out against the pressuring campaigns done by ivermectin/etc. quacks to push people to waste time, money, and hope on quack treatments.
There's much better examples of areas where he was off the rails than him spending a month on a relatively safe treatment trying to stay alive before giving up when faced with reality.
he gave it a try, abandoned it, and publicly denounced it after it didn't work
I'm not sure why that should be lauded. A sample size of 1 (and a trial length of merely 1 month, according to other posts) does not make a convincing study to warrant any public statements.
The man spend a tremendous amount of time trying to discredit the entire medical industry. In the past he has claimed to avoid cancer through prayer. This is part of a pattern.
He tried for a month, next to his regular treatments and then called Makis who is currently promoting it a quack.
Pretty sure he tried everything, not just that, wouldn't you?
No
The fact you wouldn't try a drug to try and save your own life that at worst does nothing says a lot about you.
Some snake oil treatments are very expensive and cause more harm for you and your family. For example, this was (is?) popular for breast cancer https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-dose_chemotherapy_and_bon...
Ivermectin is a very used cheap and safe drug, so I don't expect many nasty side effects, but IANAMD, so ask a real medical doctor before trying.
No drug does nothing. That's kinda implied by the word "drug".
Go smoke some crack
> says a lot about you.
Do tell, what's it say about them?
My grandfather was a surgeon, an excellent one. When he was diagnosed with inoperable lung cancer, he went to every dubious healer my grandmother could find. He did it for her, and likely for himself as well. He was never right wing.
Scott Adams did me a considerable and unsolicited kindness almost 20 years ago, back in 2007. One day my site traffic logs showed an unexpected uptick in traffic, and recent referrals overwhelmingly pointed to his blog. Of course I recognized him from Dilbert fame, both the comic strip and The Dilbert Principle.
I sent him a thank you email for the link, and he replied graciously. This began a conversation where he referred me to his literary agent, and this ultimately led to a real-world, dead-tree-and-ink book publishing deal[1]. He even provided a nice blurb for the book cover.
I can't say that I agreed a lot with the person Scott Adams later became--I only knew him vaguely, from a distance. But he brought humor into many people's lives for a lot of years, and he was generous to me when he didn't have to be. Today I'll just think about the good moments.
[1] https://www.damninteresting.com/the-damn-interesting-book/
It's a sad moment for me. I got into Dilbert at the tender age of eight years old. I don't know why I liked it so much when half the jokes went over my head, but I loved computers and comics, and I plowed through every book at my local library. It was my real introduction to software engineering, and it definitely influenced me in many ways that certainly shaped the man that I am today.
I never agreed with him politically, and I honestly think he said some pretty awful stuff. However, none of that changes the positive impact that his comics had on my life. Rest in peace.
> I got into Dilbert at the tender age of eight years old. I don't know why I liked it so much when half the jokes went over my head, but I loved computers and comics
Same! Or at least I got into them as a young kid I don’t remember the exact age, it was probably a few years older but definitely tweens max.
I’m also not sure why I liked them so much, other than that I loved computers and always knew I’d end up working in the industry, so maybe it was like a window into that world that I liked. I also loved the movie Office Space, so maybe I just had a thing for office satire.
very interesting to find other folks who jibed with this comic at a young age. My mom and aunt had cubicle jobs and the entire idea seemed very fun to me. I recall looking at my 4th grade classroom and thinking we could really benefit from some cubicles.
Sadly I'm doomed to work in an open floorplan.
I wasn't exactly a daily reader at the time, but I was sad to hear when dilbert was pulled, and why. I tried to send him some fan mail when I heard he had fallen ill, but the email of his that I found had been deleted.
Same! My dad worked in corporate HR and loved Dilbert (I guess it spoke to him), so we usually had a few of his books and/or a strip-a-day desk calendar around the house that I would read. I never considered it before, but maybe I'm the cynical software engineer I am today because of Scott Adams. The world is a funny place sometimes.
I have a Catbert doll in my kitchen. I think an HR person I knew gave it to me at a going away party at a long-ago job.
“Engineers, Scientists and other odd people” chapter in the book “The Dilbert Principle” is one of the funniest things I have ever read
I got to interact with Scott just once on Twitter. I shared one of his strips in response to a tweet he made. My intent was tongue-in-cheek and very inline with the themes of his work, but he reacted very aggressively and then blocked me.
It was a bit of a crushing moment because inside my head I was thinking, "I know and love this guy's work. Surely if I just engage him at his level without being a jackass, we can add some levity to the comments section." My instinct was that maybe he really was just a jackass and I should label him as such in my brain and move on.
But then my cat got sick last year and went from being a cuddly little guy to an absolute viscious bastard right up to the day he died. It was crushing. One day I realized it felt similar to my experience with Scott. I wondered if maybe Scott was just suffering really badly, too. I have no idea what the truth of the matter is, and I don't think that people who suffer have a free pass for their behaviour. But I think I want to hold on to this optimism.
Confession:
Quite frankly, this is a worry for me. I have noticed that I've become shorter with people and less tolerant as I've got older. I've started to feel some resentment in certain situations where I felt I was being unfairly treated.
I recognise these feelings and things, which I am grateful for. So I work hard to correct this, and I hope I succeed, but I seriously worry about my brain changing and becoming someone quite unpleasant. You look at people from the outside, and it is so easy to judge, but we're all just a big bag of chemicals and physics. Personality change does happen, it could happen to any of us.
As you get older time is more precious so you want to waste less of it. This is a factor, how much of a factor it is differs from person to person.
There was a super weird alignment at a previous job where the appearances, personalities, and seniority/rank of some of my co-workers matched characters in Dilbert to the T. It was really funny and almost eerie, like Scott Adams was hiding in a cube taking notes.
The VP who "raises issues" reminded me perfectly of someone at a prior workplace.
IIRC he did get a lot of ideas from fans talking about their own workplaces …
I didn't always agree with Scott Adams on everything he did and said, but "The Dilbert Principle" taught me more about living in a corporation and management than any other book on business and his dilbert comics were a source of endless wisdom and amusement, which I use often today.
Farewell Scott, you are now God's debris.
Really love Scott for creating Dilbert one of the best all-time comic strips, teaching the psychology of persuasion, and for writing How to Fail At Almost Everything and Still Win Big. It taught me to focus on systems and habits as a preference over goals (goals are still useful, but can be unrealistic and less adaptable). Plus God's Debris was an interesting thought experiment about the origin of the universe. Really great thinker and humorist. RIP Scott.
Came here to say this, I really appreciated "How to Fail At Almost Everything and Still Win Big".
I'm not here to judge the man or everything he did, I'm here to say thanks for the stuff I loved.
I always enjoyed Dilbert, one of the few of my friends who did as it was a bit of a specific sense of humor. But Scott Adam’s really, really fell off a cliff into some very odious takes in his recent years. Feels like he should have stuck to Dilbert, but he lived long enough to see himself become the villain instead.
He fell off the cliff when he left his day job to write the comic full time. At least that is my opinion. Falling down the cliff took a while, at first he was still close enough to corporate reality to still be realistic in his exaggerations and thus funny, but the longer he was a way the less his jokes were grounded in reality and so they became not funny because they felt a little too far out.
Of course writing a comic takes a lot of time. I don't begrudge him for wanting to quit, and others have made the transition to full time humorist well - but he wasn't the first to fail to make that switch. He should have retired when he was a head....
Let the above be a warning to you. I don't know how (or if) it will apply, but think on it.
The story I read long ago was that he had a long-standing agreement with his manager that if his cartooning ever became an issue for his day job, he would leave. Then a new manager came in who basically said "OK."
No idea how true it is of course.
He always had dubious takes (he was anti-evolution for as long as I can remember) but that doesn't make Dilbert any less good.
Very true, loved Dilbert. I guess I was unaware of his dubious takes early on because my only interaction was seeing the comics. Later on the interactions became Dilbert + Reddit post on how Scott Adams is an antivaxxer.
Worth the read: “The Trouble With Dilbert: How Corporate Culture Gets the Last Laugh” https://a.co/d/7b7Jnt6
I couldn’t read Dilbert the same after that. Adams avoids, with surgical precision, things like unionization, while the author simultaneously supports downsizing despite seeming to mock it in his strips.
Anyway, shame he’s dead, but to me he died a long time ago. I only feel sad when thinking about how I used to enjoy Dilbert.
Dilbert was pretty influential for me in the 90s and early 2000s. I enjoyed those comics a bunch while I was kid. He seemed to struggle a bit with his fame, and apparently his divorce caused him a pretty big psychic trauma, which was unfortunate.
His later personality was.. not my style.. and I dumped all of his books into little free libraries a few years back. The only things I really found interesting from his later work was focusing on systems rather than process.
Can't deny the early influence, though. The pointy-haired boss will live on forever.
Always gave a sensible chuckle to his comics. One of my favorite scenes from the show was about "The Knack". My dad originally shared this with me, reminding me that I'm "cursed" for inheriting the knack from him.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=g8vHhgh6oM0
There was a time when his insight was relevant and spoke to a lot of people. I hope he finds peace in whatever is next.
Regardless of his political views, Dilbert was truly brilliant.
Dilbert definitely captured a 90s era corporate zeitgeist. But, after he departed PacBell, although there was the occasional strip that really nailed it, Dilbert never really moved on to modern SV/startup/open floor plan tech and it mostly felt like been there, done that. That said, Dilbert in its prime was easily in the top comics I enjoyed.
That’s exactly it. I got into the industry right at that transition, at a startup that sold software into telcos. At the startups we found out what happens when Wally becomes the CEO…
I discovered Dilbert because Omega Instruments distributed collections of his comics on individual cards.
Feels like an appropriate time to remind folks of one of his stranger pieces of work, this board game commissioned by Lockheed Martin: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/60686/the-ethics-challen...
I loved Dilbert back in the day, and even the books were witty and poignant.
I would like to point out that the quality of his satire really feel of as time went on. He came from an office life in the late 90s and had a lot of insight into it's dysfunctions. But after decades of being out of that world, he had clearly lost touch. The comics often do little to speak to the current corporate world, outside of squeezed in references.
As I see it, decline in quality and the political radicalization go hand in hand. You cannot be a good satirist and be so long removed from the world you are satirizing.
The political radicalization and the divorces. The strips he created after being fired by his syndicate are a bleak insight into his mindset in his final years. https://x.com/WyattDuncan/status/2011102679934910726
Oh wow. First time I’ve seen that shit.
Taking his anodyne setup-punchline-sarcastic quip formula and applying it to aggressively unfunny shock material is actually low key brilliant, albeit unintentionally so.
It’s like if Norm MacDonald didn’t posses a moral compass.
He was on a livestream either yesterday or the day before, and was still interacting with people.
He was generous with his time to the end.
This guy was always interesting...because he understood satire so well, he understood nuance and made comedy from it...then he became chronically online and went down insane alt-right rabbit holes.
Even those of a logical mind may not have the fortitude to protect themselves from propaganda that exploit their victimhood.
Unfortunately, examples abound.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scott_Adams
> After a 2022 mass shooting, Adams opined that society leaves parents of troubled teenage boys with only two options: to either watch people die or murder their own son.
That's something.
At 10:25am ET, HN is more up-to-date than Wikipedia (article hasn't been updated yet to reflect his passing).
Which is at it should be. Wikipedia isn't a news source, and especially for something like this should be careful about allowing edits to stand until they can cite sources.
Wikipedia is waiting for news sources to confirm things.
> Later (incorrect) predictions repeatedly featured in Politico magazine's annual lists of "Worst Predictions", including that one of Trump, Bernie Sanders and Joe Biden would die from COVID-19 by the end of 2020,[98] that "Republicans will be hunted" if Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election
> In a 2006 blog post, Adams asked if official figures of the number of deaths in the Holocaust were based on methodologically sound research.
Jesus christ.
> Republicans will be hunted" if Joe Biden won the 2020 presidential election
I don't know how he got there from Biden's literal pitch to donors that "nothing will fundamentally change".
Projection. The Republican pitch was to start hunting their enemies, so he and a lot of other people assumed the reverse applied too.
It's not about assumptions, it's rationalization. The tribal playbook requires one to demonize the enemy in order to justify what they want to do to them.
Submitted update to https://grokipedia.com/page/Scott_Adams
Not sure how long before that changes.
this is still a thing?
Why?
May he rest in peace. His characters were quite charming and funny.
I loved Dilbert and I really believe that you often have to separate art from artist if you want to enjoy many things. He put a very unique perspective on corporate and tech environments that made me laugh. Sad to see a human pass but also sadder that his later opinions diminished his contributions in many people's eyes.
Rest in peace, Scott.
Your Dilbert era was scary with how accurate it portrayed real life.
And your Coffee With Scott Adams era was impressive in explaining the goings on of life.
You will be missed!
"The Day You Became A Better Writer" is still my favorite piece on writing. Short, simple, useful. Worth saving: https://archive.ph/yomrs
Thanks for the laughs, Mr. Adams. May you rest in peace.
He was from a kinder more tolerant time, when people thought being non-anonymous online was safe. Sort of the same problem that others from his generation, Julian Assange, many others had. But I wonder if time won’t prove these people right. If you do put yourself out there you make enemies and open yourself to the hatred on many psycho basement dwellers. But if you don’t the world never knows you. All if that is too many words to say there’s a price to be paid for fame. Anyway, Dilbert was an important part of our cultural landscape and made a lot of people feel good despite the pains of cubicle life. To make people smile and feel better, that’s a pretty great achievement after all. Rip Scott, hopefully you’ll be making many folks smile in the afterlife too.
Never has so much goodwill been squandered so completely.
Sadly, there are a great many contenders for that crown. Consider https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_Cosby
Thank you for the several decades of smiles over human foibles.
I disagreed with him politically, especially during the last few years, but I'm very appreciative of Dilbert and in particular the Dilbert cartoon. The Knack is one of those clips that I keep coming back to and sharing with friends whenever someone shows signs.
I think that a lot of us on here can give credit to Scott Adams for helping develop their cynicism, for better or worse.
He was a role model to me for helping me to make sense of the corporate world and its denizens. This might not sound like a compliment, but it is. He was my Mr. Miyagi for mental resilience by providing good arguments for most people not being evil, despite how it might seem.
For those who do not know, Adams was still putting up daily Dilbert strips, just for paid subs on Twitter instead of in a newspaper. I think it's impressive he didn't stop until the end, even though AIUI he was in serious pain for a while. (He did stop doing the art himself in Nov.)
I read every Scott Adams book as a kid - insightful and approachable.
Prostate cancer. 68yo.
From Wikipedia:
"In November 2025, he said his health was suddenly declining rapidly again, and took to social media to ask President Trump for help to get access to the cancer drug Pluvicto. Robert F. Kennedy Jr. replied saying "How do I reach you? The President wants to help." The following month he said he was paralyzed below the waist and had been undergoing radiation therapy."
"On January 1, 2026, Adams said on his podcast that he had talked with his radiologist and that it was "all bad news." He said there was no chance he would get feeling back in his legs and that he also had ongoing heart failure. He told viewers they should prepare themselves "that January will probably be a month of transition, one way or another." On January 12, Adams' first ex-wife, Shelly Miles, told TMZ that Adams was in hospice at his home in Northern California."
Wow that is really fast, in my view, and I wonder how many more of his cohort will similarly crash out.
I don’t have an estate to get in order, so to speak. Then again, I also won’t pass along a house full of a lifetime of “collections” or “mementos” with little to no monetary value. The oncoming secondary market is about to be awash in Boomer junk. Nobody wants to send their precious collections to the dump or recycling.
One of my biggest mental hiccups to work through of late is the changing nature of collective memories, fame, and idols. Scott is a great example who was “big in the 90s” and 30 years later his method (print cartoons and books) is basically dead and can’t be folllowed. Gen Z will be spared Scott, and probably Elvis and the Rocky Horror Picture Show, ABBA, and Garth Brooks comparatively speaking.
This is a meandering way to note how fast we can be poof gone and life will move on with a pace quite breakneck.
> The oncoming secondary market is about to be awash in Boomer junk. Nobody wants to send their precious collections to the dump or recycling.
Maybe, maybe not. My mother died a couple years ago, and while she was too old to be a boomer, she still had plenty of accumulated possessions in her estate. We sold as much as we could, kept the few things we wanted and had space for, and the rest went to recycling or the dump. I'd guess 90% went to the dump.
The owner of that stuff may not want to send it to the dump. My mom would be mortified to hear some of the things she treasured held no value for anyone else, but when you're dead, you aren't making those decisions. The next generation probably isn't that sentimental about it.
Since there are many fans here, perhaps people can share some of their favourite comics for the others.
Why is this post being shadowbanned?
This topic has over 200 points, +180 replies and was published one hour ago.
Admins: don't play around and be fair.
Scott deserves respect and proper condolences.
Youtube links always have gotten downweighting. Enough votes can overcome it, but there are a few domains that HN penalizes.
And here we find a far larger amount of people agreeing that he should be respected.
Respect has to be earned.
Sad news. Dilbert was a big part of my life for a long time, and brought much laughter and enjoyment to my life. But on the other hand, later in his life Scott said a lot of things I found frankly repugnant, and Dilbert more or less disappeared, all of which made me sad. But he was still an amazing writer of comedy at his best, and I hate to know that he has passed. Plus, every death is at tragedy for somebody - friends, family, loved-ones of all sorts - whether we specifically like someone or not.
All of that said... RIP, Mr. Adams.
I was vacationing in New York, and we went to some pretty standard-looking mall bookshop somewhere near Poughkeepsie some time in mid 90s. And I bought an interesting looking comic book, something I had never seen before.
I liked Dilbert for a long time, but Adams's Trump Dementia became so bad in the last decade that it completely tainted his legacy for me. His role in enabling Donald Trump to rise to power is undeniable, and his death makes me wish I had reserved a bottle of sparkling wine for the occasion.
I yearn for the time when it was possible to never meet your idols.
Ooof, he fell for Pascal's Wager at the end. Cringe.
Pascal’s Wager is a refinement of Marcus Aurelius’ views; were you aware of that?
Eh, it's hard to find fault with someone staring eternity in the eye and getting a little nervous.
You're going to find out all too late that pascals wager was correct. But it was Quetzalcoatl you should have been worshipping.
I'm sad that he won't experience the full consequences of his actions.
I was hoping he would donate the Dilbert comics to public domain when he passed.
Sad news. Rest in peace.
Famously hard-hitting People magazine goes with "Scott Adams, Disgraced Dilbert Creator, Dies at 68".
Very sad news.
We say things like "you gotta separate the art from the artist" when we talk about folks like Scott Adams, whose take on the corporate world were unique in the comic industry and funny in general.
However, Scott Adams as an individual was deeply problematic and I would not ever stand him up as a role model for my children or behavior in general.
Of course, I wouldn't do the same for a vast number of famous people, politics aside.
The "problem" (which is in scare quotes because it's not a discrete identifiable sole-source issue but a complex and dynamic phenomenon that permeates every aspect of our modern-day life) is that we have collectively determined that if you're good at your art, you must be a person we should listen to for topics outside of your art.
To use an inflammatory but real-life example: Donald Trump is a great showman. He knows how to incite a crowd, and he knows how to feed into this modern-day mess we've made of our world. He is objectively a terrible manager of a country, and objectively a terrible human being.
But, for some reasons that have to do with politics, and some reasons that have to do with identity, folks who like Donald Trump as a showman are unable to disassociate his showmanship from his policies. To the point that if you were to write down the actual actions taken and attribute them to a leader of the other side (famous examples: Biden, Obama) as their policies, the same folks who are loudly cheering Donald Trump on would immediately castigate those actions if taken by someone on the "left".
It's a problem with no easy solution, and it requires more growth from humanity than we are at this moment exhibiting we possess. Scott Adams is a shining example of both this problem and our reaction to it, and while I mourn the passing of his art, I do not mourn his passing, and reading this comment section instead mourn our present state of wrapping ourselves in the cloth of identity politics while not engaging seriously on the fundamental underlying problems we face as a people.
Sadly, Scott Adams' political opinions came to overshadow Dilbert, but I shall choose to remember him as Dilbert's creator and how Dilbert captured a moment in time and work so aptly.
Back when Dilbert was massive my company ran the following ad in cinemas in Silicon Valley: https://imgur.com/a/ZPVJau8 Everyone seeing that ad knew what we were referring to.
Loved Dilbert as a kid, even into college, but fell off it eventually. Even if he turned to right wing trolling, I'll always remember those big comic compilations fondly.
Cancers a terrible way to go.
An old, Dilbert-related comment of mine seems relevant: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44034220
RIP Scott Adams.
Rest in Peace Scott. Thanks for everything!
Irrespective of any political views, or whatsoever be it as a human, a brilliant creator has gone from the face of the Earth!
I have always enjoyed Dilbert! Thanks for that!
Fuck cancer...
Fuck any disease that takes away human lives...
I hate cancer.
What a long and unpredictable path his life took. Too bad he isn't still with us.
I really loved Dilbert (the Gen X defining comic), and especially his first couple books.
He was a brilliant observer and reporter on the behaviors of humanity.
He will be missed.
This guys's work hung on more cubicle walls over the years than anything else.
Where's the black bar?
Agreed. Lets get the black bar. The times he made us laugh and think during the 90s and 2000s!
Can’t have a black bar for someone with near genocidal views.
That is news to me. Source? Controversial yes but he was a character.
“Get the hell away from black people” is close to suggesting next steps after that.
Very sad news, RIP Scott.
Sad to hear, RIP
NYT obituary:
Scott Adams, Audacious Creator of the ‘Dilbert’ Comic Strip, Dies at 68
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/arts/scott-adams-dead.htm...
non-paywall: https://www.nytimes.com/2026/01/13/arts/scott-adams-dead.htm...
Fuck cancer.