oh internet

Comic-strip author learning to Internet

Summary

Scott Adams is the author of the work place focused comic, Dilbert.

He is known for posting and emailing his crazy political stances, inane blog posts, defending famous people like Gwyneth Paltrow from critical bloggers, becoming a sockpuppet in his own blog to reinforce his point of view, being the world's worst boss and restauranteur, and invoking Godwin's Law frequently.

Further, he has frequently used the internet to spew his views on his blog, in comments on other blogs and engaging web writers like Adrian Chen and the whole staff of Gawker.

Origins

He made a cartoon about how much work sucks and got famous from it.

Rise to fame

He is the creator of business comic Dilbert which is, for some reason, super-popular and is featured a lot in office stores such as Staples.

The internet started taking note of him closely in April 2011, when he was accused of being a sockpuppet in his own blog, which subsequently was found to be true.

Current status

Adams currently is going at it full bore with flame wars, statements to the press and blog posts shouting his opinions.

Crowdsourcing Hatred

Dilbert fans are not known for being of the well-adjusted and social sort so when Scott Adams asked his fan-base to choose a topic for him to blog about, they chose the powderkeg "mens' rights".

Throwing aside all common sense Adams jumped into the fire with an extraordinary post on March 3rd 2011 that oozed with the sexism one might expect from someone who would create a comic like Dilbert.

The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently. It's just easier this way for everyone. You don't argue with a four-year old about why he shouldn't eat candy for dinner. You don't punch a mentally handicapped guy even if he punches you first. And you don't argue when a women tells you she's only making 80 cents to your dollar. It's the path of least resistance. You save your energy for more important battles.
--Scott Adams

The post gained traction on many feminist blogs and fearing irrational female reprisals, Adams deleted the post and took to said feminist blogs to accuse them of not understanding his abject genius, and of being completely irrational women overrun with emotion.

In this case, the content of the piece inspires so much emotion in some readers that they literally can’t understand it. The same would be true if the topic were about gun ownership or a dozen other topics. As emotion increases, reading comprehension decreases. This would be true of anyone, but regular readers of the Dilbert blog are pretty far along the bell curve toward rational thought, and relatively immune to emotional distortion.
--Scott Adams

Adams, noting that perhaps the post had not increased his already low popularity amongst the ladyfolk then backtracked and tried to pretend his post was a hilarious meta-satire thus making him one of the great pranksters.

I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I was enjoying all of the negative attention on Twitter and wondered how I could keep it going. So I left some comments on several Feminist blogs, mostly questioning the reading comprehension of people who believed I had insulted them.
--Scott Adams

Many people questioned how a nerd might not understand how caches work, as that's where the deleted post was retrieved from. Of course, Adams claimed to know all about caches and that deleting the post was all part of his hilarious joke.

So either Adams spent weeks perfecting the ultimate trolling or he messed up. Take your pick.

Sockpuppetry

Adams soon took to the Wall Street Journal, writing an op-ed about business and education.

Website MetaFilter started a discussion about the article, and the commenters were joined a mysterious fellow named "PlannedChaos" who, although claiming to hate Adams, defended him to the hilt and seemed to have an encyclopedic knowledge about him.

The debate continued but PlannedChaos was quickly outed as Scott Adams, who predictably claimed it was all a hilarious joke in which he was the victor.

On the 18th of April 2011Scott Adams uploaded a long interview with himself to his blog[2] in which he accused "the wise and fair denizens of the Internet" of taking the very words he typed out of context. He also admitted having sockpuppeted for ten years.

Scott Adams Asks You to Stop Judging Already

In an April 26, 2011 blog post, Adams says it's wrong to judge. The post is in reference to Rachel Maddow saying gay news casters should come out of the closet. He not only invokes the 10 Commandments from the Bible, but calls the people at Gawker, "Nazi wannabes", which qualifies his post, if not entire blog for Godwin's Law. There are mentions of Libya, lazy journalists, TMZ and "a new standard". The post drones on with not much substance and no real direction, hitting many disparate points and then says:

Gawker, on the other hand, is pure evil.

His post illustrates that famous, rich or talented people can be just as crazy on the internet as regular users.

Media Responses

Lots of people have had their say on Scott Adams and his choices.

Thankfully, Dilbert cartoonist Scott Adams has found the solution. Using pseudonyms, geniuses should join the online communities where their haters linger. Then, cloaked in anonymity, they should praise themselves effusively, remind everyone of their genius status, and insult any ignoramus who criticizes their work. In Internet lingo, this is called sock puppetry. I think of it as anonymously correcting erroneous statements about perfect work produced by perfect people.
via Ottawa citizen on May 1 2011

Timeline

• 3 March 2011 (Scott Adams misogynist blog post)
• April 2011 (Scott Adams raises the ire of the internet)
• 26 April 2011 (lashes out at Gawker with a blog post saying it is wrong to judge him)
• 1 May 2011 (Ottawa Citizen editorial piece about Scott Adams using sockpuppets to make himself look good)

On rape

In mid-June of 2011, Adams equated men raping women being similar to lions eating zebras because it's "instinct." Uh-huh.

Famous Quote

Facts

• He often accuses people of taking him out of context.

Images

Even Dilbert's dog wants him off the Internet.

Related Pages

Chris-chan

David Tanny

Gawker

Godwin's Law

Jhonen Vasquez

Love-shy

External Links

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