Nordstahl @Nordstahl@qoto.org

A bit late to the party, but this is something I want to say.

One inevitable reaction to #ScottAdams' downfall has been a lot of people saying "#Dilbert was always crap anyway." Maybe some of them are even telling the truth, as they see it. But I bet a lot of them aren't.

My skepticism is based on long experience: it's truly remarkable how *every single time* a celebrity turns out to be a horrible person, suddenly they never had a fan base at all. How they became celebrities in the first place must be one of those great unsolved mysteries. Nobody ever watched Mel Gibson, nobody ever read JK Rowling ... you get the idea.

Dilbert was once a sharp, funny look at office life in a particular time and place and circumstance. If you were a tech worker in the '90s, you instantly recognized the characters and situations. The Pointy-Haired Boss, in particular, crystallized a concept everyone knew but didn't quite have a name for. Adams could have gone the Watterson or Larson route, retired from cartooning and from public life around the turn of the century, and left a sterling legacy.

Voiceover: he did not, in fact, retire.

As his fortune grew and he got further away from the world he was lampooning, the quality of the strip declined. The characters became a collection of tics, the jokes were recycled over and over, and Dilbert himself became a kind of superhero—no longer deflecting corporate inanity in an almost-believable way, but challenging it head-on and *winning*. That's not satire. That's embarrassing auctorial wish-fulfillment. Pure Gary Stu.

This is a common problem with long-running comic strips whose humor depends on the characters being in a particular situation. ("Sitcomics," perhaps?) Beetle Bailey was once a biting lampoon of military life. Andy Capp was once a whistling-past-the-graveyard depiction of poverty in a dying industrial town. Mort Walker and Reg Smythe lived in the same worlds as their characters ... and then they didn't. No one should criticize them for enjoying their success, but it came with a price.

Neither Walker nor Smythe, as far as I know, went completely off the rails as human beings.

Had Adams kept his mouth shut, Dilbert would have kept running forever, becoming even more clichéd and unfunny, the same jokes recycled until they passed even out of catchphrase territory, yet another of those odd ghosts haunting the decaying mansion of newsprint, until the mansion itself crumbled to dust. Goth as fuck, really, when you think about it—a description I suspect Adams would angrily reject, which brings me a certain amount of glee.

Really, there's no excuse for it taking this long. Adams has been running his mouth for years, getting more repulsive all the while. *Even if* his work had maintained its original quality—which I think is flat-out impossible; see above—he should still have been far too radioactive to appear in any paper aimed at a general audience. His sexism and racism and MAGAtry no doubt play very well in certain quarters, but those quarters are home to vermin. No mass media outlet should cater to them, and those that do richly deserve to fail.

Also he drove his stepson to suicide, then tried to turn the tragedy into part of his industry. So there's that.

I do not for a minute believe his current shtick is "dementia," or "satire," or any of the other excuses his die-hard fans are making. (That's almost as common as "I never liked ___ even a little bit," when idols show their feet of clay.) It's all him. This is who he is now, and who he chose to be.

But I do hope it's not who he *always* was, I really do. And if I'm wrong, if he's been a monster his whole life and just used to be better at hiding it ... I'm not going to pretend I knew. That's all.

On Feb 26, 2012: Trayvon Martin Fatally Shot in Sanford, Florida http://calendar.eji.org/racial-injustice/feb/26

Jack Smith has scored a major legal victory over a House Republican - Palmer Report

Scott Perry is appealing but most likely he will lose.

https://www.palmerreport.com/analysis/jack-smith-has-scored-a-major-legal-victory-over-a-house-republican/49117/

Listening to music I had a question I must get an answer to now....

Among professional musicians what sort of variation is there between the beats of the various players in a band.. in other words, just how good are the best humans at keeping in sync with each other.

It might have been answered before, and if so I hope I can find a study that explored this....

If books scare you, actual ideas completely terrify you.

RatpubLIEcans are disgusting hypocrites.🤬

🇺🇸🇺🇦U.S. to never recognize Crimea annexation attempt by Russia - State Dept (Hence the 9 year war anniversary) (more) https://www.ukrinform.net/rubric-polytics/3675483-us-to-never-recognize-crimea-annexation-attempt-by-russia-state-dept.html #Ukraine #News #Invasion #Russia #9yearsOfWarInUkraine

Sidney Powell is a traitor. She tried to push this country into Civil War by promoting election lies that a he, herself, knew to be untrue

She deserves worse than disbarment

But she avoided disbarment a after judge threw out the state bar's case…

…because the exhibits were misnumbered

…and it was a court in Texas.

One star. Would not recommend.

someone just pulled out chatGPT to try to argue with me about blockchains... i'm going to have an aneurysm

RT @BarakRavid: 1 \ Palestinians and Israelis met today in Aqaba with U.S., Jordanian and Egyptians officials for talks aimed at de-escalating tensions in the West Bank. My story on @axios https://t.co/HbUeYytOAz

Just finished setting my newly arrived talking watch under Baby Cat's supervision.

#AlwaysUseALT #BCatPix #ACuteSenseOfTime #CatsOfMastodon #CatsOnMastodon #cats #MastoCats

@mathowie I always think of this graph showing administrative bloat in our healthcare system anytime this comes up. Feels impossible to change sometimes.

nobody wants to hear about your problems

Dilbert "tribute."

#Donebert #RacistDilbert

Some #SilentSunday vibes from #AlbeeTheCat 😊
#Caturday #Cat #Cats #FediCat #FediCats #CatsOfMastodon #Katze #BritishShortHair

But then, Scott Adams was always a huge Trumpist. He's not a child. He knew damned well when he said what he said that it would do what it did to his career.

He literally chose being visibly racist to having a career.

Caveat emptor.

https://mediastodon.com/@BBCWorld/109932112916070895

when you really need your toddler to stop asking questions for just two goddamn minutes

Weaver near an Open Window, 1884 #vangogh #realism https://www.wikiart.org/en/vincent-van-gogh/weaver-near-an-open-window-1884

Scott Adams has been openly racist, sexist, and fascist for many years. I recall some absolute bigoted nonsense written about Hillary Clinton before the 2016 USA presidential elections. It’s not new.

Remember that when you congratulate newspapers for cancelling Dilbert. He was always like this, he’s just not being polite about it any more.

Over 2,000 phonecalls by Russian troops in #Ukraine reveal they are despirited, confused, and wondering why they are there. Some are even shooting themselves (and each other) to get out of fighting & sent home. https://apnews.com/article/russia-ukraine-war-intercepts-2b14732d88b3f58d4a9d0b2b562bdb28