Behind the Bastards - Part Two: How The Dilbert Guy Lost His Mind

Episode Date: July 13, 2023

Robert is joined again by cartoonist Randy Milholland to continue to discuss Scott Adams. See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

This is ICT. Over the years, I've compiled thousands of inspiring and thought-provoking quotes. And now, I'm passing that knowledge onto you and my new daily podcasts. ICT's Daily Game. In less than five minutes, I'll break down why these words matter and reveal personal stories that show them in action in my life. Listen to ICT's Daily Game every weekday on the I.Hard Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcast and start your morning with me. Hey, what's up y'all? This is Eric Andre, but I made a podcast called Bomming about absolutely tanking on stage. I tell gnarly stories and I talk to friends about the worst moments of bombing in all sorts of ways. Bomming on stage, bombing in public, bombing in life.

Like the time I stole a girl's phone during a set and she dumped on stage and threw a big A-maker punch to my nose. Listen to bombing with Aircon Drayon, Will Ferrell's big money players network on the I-Hart Radio app, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sonari Englinton.

This is Shattering the system. The podcast. Ed Buck is accused of doing horrible things that resulted in the deaths of two black men. We begin with the shocking crimes of Ed Buck. The accounts of the victims were truly shocking. When a federal prosecutor is shocked, you know you have a story. Listen to shattering the system on the iHeard Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, what is Dilling My Dogs? I'm Robert Evans and this is Behind the Bastards, a podcast about Scott Adams.

a podcast about Scott Adams. A man whose self-awareness is so minimal that he often his hands clip through his writing desk like he's a character in a video game from the N64 era. I don't know, how was that, Randy? That works. That's perfect. That is exactly what I would say. Okay, excellent.

All right, so we have Randy Mulholland, an artist behind something positive, a wonderful webcomic, and now the legally, the brain, at least the limbic system of Popeye, the Sailor Man. Randy, how are we feeling as we come into part two of this? I am just so grateful that you invited an episode that probably does not involve childhood of a section.

No child vivisection. We are he is he is going to buy his claim, kill a kid in this. So good, but it's I don't think he really did. I think he's just taking credit for it in a way that's kind of more upsetting than if he just killed a child. I don't know. Maybe that's not right. At least now there's not kids dead, but that's a weird fucking. Oh, there's a kid who's dead. Don't don't worry. Don't worry.

A kid dies in this episode. We're fine. It's all good. I mean, that is the responsibility of every episode of behind the best. Here's at least one. Oh, yeah. Let's die. No, as soon as I announce that a child is going to die in this episode, you know, like the last scene in Return of the Jedi, where it like goes around the galaxy as all of the people are celebrating and their different planets, it was that was that was that was the behind the bastards fans. They're terrible people.

That's the one that is just a flame. Yeah. Um, yeah, it's like it's Coruscant. It is just a flame. It's like it's Coruscant. It's the Coruscant of our, I don't know why I'm doing Star Wars. Everyone's tired of Star Wars. Think of another, imagine I did another one, a different star track thing. No, no, that feel like that one's pretty saturated too. What's one nobody knows about?

Far escape. Far escape, that's right. Far escape, that's the thing. I'm getting amazing. Yeah, imagine I about. Far escape. Far escape, that's right. Far escape, that's the thing. That's amazing. Yeah, imagine I did a far escape. There you go. God, okay, so back to Scott. Early in his career, Scott Adams started receiving requests for public speaking engagements.

And he realized that this could be a good side business for him. Colleges wanted him to talk. And also a lot of like corporations wanted him to come and like give speeches for their employees because they would, you know, you're some manager. You see people have like, Dilbert cartoons up over their cubicles.

And you're like, oh, well, let's pay this rich man money that could be going to races for our workers. So they can hear this weirdo talk about how he draws Dilbert. That'll make him happy. So Scott realizing that this was a thing that he might make some bank on enrolled in a Dale Carnegie course.

And this is while he was still working at Pacific Bell, but drawing Dilbert. His employer was kind of willing to foot the bill because they saw it as beneficial to them. And Scott didn't know how to do any public speaking. And so he felt like this would help him. Now, do you know anything about Dale Carnegie? That makes me familiar and it doesn't make me happy that it's familiar. You've all, like most people, you may not recognize his name, but everyone's heard of this guy's book. He's the guy who wrote how to win friends and influence people.

Oh, okay, yeah, my dad had that book. My dad had that book. Yeah, I'm gonna guess something approaching 100% of our listeners had one or more family members with this book in their house. It's one of the best selling books in the history of writing, Say what you will about it, that's undeniable. Dale Carnegie was born in 1888. He's an American writer and a lecturer. He got rich writing this book

at a Winfreyntz and Influence people. It is still a best selling book to this day. It is sold probably just an unbelievable number of copies. Whether or not this is a good thing kind of depends on your perspective, but as far as I can tell, I don't think Dale, you know, there's a lot you can say about him. He was kind of like, I would say like a lame man, but he was not like evil, right? He's not like, this is not one of those like, I'm subtly writing this book about like how to influence people so you can like sexually assault them. You talk about modern Andrew Tate types.

He's not that kind of guy. He's just sort of a little grifty, I guess, in kind of his, I don't think he is a grifter, but the way he talks is very appealing to them, and the things he's telling you how to do is kind of appealing to them. Who is going to want that book more? Yeah, it's definitely like, that's who the art, we'll talk about that in a little bit. Yeah, so Dale, he had been kind of a, like, he'd been like a salesman who kind of quits his

career midstream to become an actor and just sort of like in order to make ends meet, he starts out teaching public speaking classes, like while he's being a stage actor, and he finds out that he's like a lot better at that than the actual acting, there's a lot more money in it. During one session with a bunch of people trying to learn how to do public speaking better,

Dale started asking his students, while he was, again, he's trying to like coach them how to get up in front of a room of people and talk. He starts asking his students to talk about something that made them really angry And he noted that like people who are really reticent who had trouble getting up in front of people and talking when they Started talking about something that pissed them off. They were able to get over their fear of public speaking more easily Right, which makes a lot of sense. Yeah, that's not an like that's not, I mean, it's kind of worth noting, it's worth being the guy who writes that down,

and I'm not taking anything away from him, but that's not like for us today, and that's most of like Dale's actual good advice is stuff that today we're just like, well yeah, if you're pissed off, it's easier to like not think about the fact that you're nervous in front of a group of people or whatever.

Yeah. Yeah. So Dale kind of used this and some other revelations he had teaching these classes as the basis for a book that promised to improve self-confidence for the average reader and teach them how to change the behavior of others by altering their own behavior towards those people. There's nothing inherently wrong with this. Other than that, some of Dale's advice works pretty well.

And kind of more to the point, I think the actual problematic thing is that like it's, number one, it teaches this kind of overly ritualized rule based approach to how to like influence and talk and convince people of things, which can kind of, there's, you know, how D&D and stuff works, right? Where you got like, I played D&D and stuff works, right? Where you got like- Oh, yeah, I played D&D still. Yeah, yeah. Where you've got like, okay, you know, here's a character and this character gave to level and so I pick a feat

and this feat works with these other feats and it lets them do these other things. It's very, it's kind of a hierarchy in terms of how a lot of the skills work, right? Yeah. Where you get one skill and that allows you to get these other skills and then you can do these kind of like more complicated acts.

That's not really how like charisma works, but books like Dales, I think, can convince people that that's how it works, that if they just read these books and stack these tactics, then they'll gain these like, eventually they'll get to do sort of the speaking equivalent of like a whirlwind attack as a barbarian, right, right here. Finally, I have mobility. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly. And that's really not how this stuff works,

but I kind of, the fact that people start to believe that's how it works. Again, Dale's not like a pickup artist, but this is where we get pickup artistry, right? Like it all kind of descends from the way that Dale talks about how to win friends and influence people. And kind of getting Americans advice on how to be more confident and convincing is kind of like handing a loaded and chambered pistol to a drunken chimpanzee.

It's just not a great idea. Man, that's amazing. We are of all of the peoples of Earth. Americans are the ones who needed less self confidence Couple more hangout with me nice. Yes, and humility courses Maybe make us all yeah, I don't know we don't do so great when we're scared either. I don't know how to fix America, let's move on Yeah, we should probably just move on

I want to read a quote from his book or or about his book, from an article I found in the cut, which interview science writer Maria Connecova. And Maria is the author of a book on cons and con men called the Confidence Game. And here's Maria talking about Dale. Dale Carnegie's had a wind friends and influence people is kind of the unofficial con artists Bible because a lot of those tactics he talks about in terms of building relationships and being successful in business, are ideal for getting people to trust you. One of the really easy things is creating a feeling of familiarity. You're more likely to trust someone who feels more familiar to you.

It's even enough to exploit something called the mere exposure effect, where say you just go to the same coffee shop as someone every single day, and they may not consciously note you, but all of a sudden you feel more familiar. And a lot of Dale's advice is kind of stuff. Again, it's not like necessarily all that problematic. And in fact, it's kind of like the art of war and that if you like read it today because some of the things he wrote about have been so like spread so widely, you'll be really bored. It'll seem, it's like very basic stuff to a lot of people today.

It's all not necessarily like bad advice, but it's just kind of like basic as hell these days. Like people who obsess over this book today, like people who obsess over the art of war are kind of like, I don't know, man, there's like better stuff. Like it's been, it's been, it's been, it's 100 years. Like there's better books on convincing, yeah.

It's nice to know what, if you wanna like tell me to go back to the basics and see what's started. Yeah. I mean, now Scott's going to kind of religiously love this guy, right? Like he takes this on, this is kind of taking the place of religion for him. And this is going to build what sort of what does really in a lot ways, replace religion and any kind of like political sensibility as the thing at the core of Scott's understanding of reality and how it works. Like what I was just talking about, that sort of people take this book and they interpret it like it's a D&D manual, right, full of like feats and skills and as they level up, they can like stack these feats and skills.

Starting with this Dale Carnegie course, that's increasingly how Scott is going to view the world. I mean, I get it from a certain viewpoint of being with the awkward dirt kid. You're just like, why can't I have a cheat code? Why can't you just be a direct manual? But someone like him who's like, but I want to make sure I'm always the special boy. Yeah. Well, in an impulations, the other danger of this, like, there is some value. but I want to make sure I'm always the special boy. Yeah. In manipulation. The other danger of this, like there is some value

if you want to be a public speaker, public speaking is like a technical skill and like any other technical skill. If you want to do that for a living, it's not a bad idea to study it, to study what other people have written about it, to try to learn more about it. But when you have this kind of very engineer focused view of how something like public speaking

works, of how persuasion works, of how charisma works, then one thing you're not going to do is ever listen to other people, right? Yeah. Because they're just, they're the, again, they're like the CR five monster or whatever that you're trying to figure out how to drop before it can do any damage to you or something. They're not something to be. They're not something to be.

They're not something to be. They're not CR. Exactly. That's how you're going to look at the world. And that's not a great way to look at the world if you want to have humility or be capable of change and personal evolution. Anyway, I do think it's interesting that these Dale Carnegie teachings, humility or be capable of like change and personal evolution.

Anyway, I do think it's interesting that these Dale Carnegie teachings, how they may have influenced what I always considered to be one of Scott's more reasonable philosophical claims. And this is going to take us back into the weeds a little bit. So Lawrence Peter was a Canadian professor who eventually came to teach at the University of Southern California. His specialty on paper, he's a professor of education, but over the years Peter felt drawn to studying organizations and why they succeeded or failed in different circumstances.

And he came to believe that the best way to do that was to study hierarchies within organizations and how they functioned and how they became dysfunctional. He started to call himself a hierarchyologist, which is both a fun term. It doesn't spell well, but if you say it out to yourself, it kind of works pretty well. And yeah, he saw himself as someone who studies how different hierarchical systems function and don't function. Lawrence was also a funny guy. He was kind of renowned for peppering his different writings and essays and papers with witticisms like noblest of all dogs is the hot dog.

It feeds the hand that bites it. That's a that's a Lawrence Peter original. Oh, yeah, that's a fun little quote. I can see that. It's not a bad little, not a bad little little jape. In 1969, Lawrence co-wrote a book called The Peter Principle. The nut of the argument he made in the book was this, quote, In a hierarchy, every employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence. In time, every post tends to be occupied by an employee who is incompetent to carry out its duties. Work is accomplished by those employees who have not yet reached their level of incompetence.

Now, that is something number one. If you've ever worked in any kind of large corporation, you will be like, yeah, that shit works a lot of the time, right? It's pessimistic, but unfortunately it's accurate. It's going to be familiar to basically 100% of people who have worked in corporate America, right? Even if you don't believe that's how it always works, because obviously that's not how everything always works, but everyone encounters people who are in this position,

where they were good at something, and that's the whole premise of the office, of the American office. Michael Scott was a really good salesman who got promoted well past his level of competence. I'm never seen the American office, I'm sorry. Oh, well, that's the premise of the show. It's all based on the Peter Prince.

You're doing great, Robert. Thank you. Thank you. Thank you. People watch that. I think it should be noted that this is one of the few times he, like a pop culture reference of a man's podcast and the guests didn't get it, but Robert did. Brandy, you are very, very correct. Yeah.

Yeah. You know what? I'm sick of all of you. I'm going to go listen to my Ariana Grande records. Wow. You did it. Oh my gosh. That's gross.

Oh wait, I was trying to pronounce it wrong. Did I accidentally get it right? You got it right. Ah, son of a bitch. What a shameful moment for me. I'm gonna go read the name of some British towns to get my mojo back. There you go.

Oh my God. All I'm saying is I've infiltrated your mind. Yeah. No, today, you know what, the only way for me to get back on top, I'm gonna read Welsh Street Signs. See how that goes for me. Oh, geez.

Crazy. So small backwards Massachusetts town name. Welsh Street Signs. See how that goes for me. Jesus. Crazy. Small Backwoods Massachusetts town name. So, so yeah, Peter, Lawrence Peter, you know, writes this book about how people get, you know, people who are competent get promoted past their level of incompetence and that's how like higher hierarchies work. Now, Peter is not pretending to write a super serious book of psychology. He's not trying to write a business book, either. It's a satire, right?

Or at least at various points, he will say that it's a satire. And there's a lot of joking bits in it. For example, all of the evidence that he cites to support his argument comes from what he calls his hypothetical case file. So he's not like citing from like real things that happened. He's citing from like hypothetical stories, some of which are probably based on things he heard or things that happened to him. But it's like, it's very tongue in cheek this book, right? And he would later claim that the principal is the quote, key to understanding of the whole structure of civilization. That's kind of,

and again, he's like sort of joshing around a little bit, but he's also like, there's something deep there. Like, this is, I think, a valuable warning and a valuable observation about how hierarchy very often tends to work, right? Because this happens throughout government, throughout the business world in militaries, like this is just a thing. And it's- It's education, nonprofits. Yeah, and you can go back 10,000 years.

Looking at the best documentation we have of different rulers of different, and you'll find evidence of the Peter principle. It's all throughout human history. Yeah. So yeah, it's a bit of like he's taken the piss a little bit, but yeah, there's quite a bit there. Now, the business community almost instantly adopted Lawrence's idea, even though he

was kind of like joking with it. This is a hugely influential text for business people, for MBAs and shit. And today, the Peter Principle is taken very seriously by people who are like professionals at organizing corporate structures. In a few seconds Googling, I found a Harvard Business Review article on quote overcoming the Peter Principle, and a Forbes article titled New Evidence the Peter Principle is Real, and I'm going to read a relevant quote from that real quick. Three professors, Alan Benson of the University of Minnesota, Danielle Lee of MIT and Kelly Shoe of Yale, analyzed the performance of 53,035 sales employees

at 214 American companies from 2005 to 2011. During that time, 1,531 of those sales reps were promoted to become sales managers. The data show that the best sales people were more likely to A, B promoted and B, perform poorly as managers. So like, there's actual data behind this, obviously not a universal rule, but quite robust. So Scott Adams presumably learns about the Peter principle while he's getting his MBA,

right? He's kind of doing his MBA right at the time when the Peter principle is kind of going viral in corporate America. There's almost no way he wouldn't have read about this and probably listen to it was at like conferences and stuff where people talk about it. And in 1996, just as Dilbert was blowing up, he decided to put his own spin on the Peter principle in his first text-based book. So this is not like a book of cartoons. This is like a nonfiction book, the Dilbert principle. The Dilbert, that was the book.

It sure is, it sure is, which I read when I was like 10. What's it? 10 year old were you? I was a 10 year old who like I would go through, sometimes three or four books in a week. Like I always wanted stuff to read. I was like, that's like, well, you know, I got a lot. So my uncle who had all the comics was the guy also, he worked at a bookstore and he would I always wanted stuff to read. He's like that. Well, I got a lot. So my uncle, who had all the comics, was the guy also, he worked at a bookstore.

And he would bring back what were called strip cop books, which is like books that he had sold. I know exactly where it's on, but the ones that make little can't, yeah. Those are great. So everything I read either came from those books or from his library. And yeah, he had a lot of Delbert books. So I read a lot of Delbert books. Yeah. I just, I guess because also Delbert came out

when I was much older. Yeah. And when I think about like I was reading a 10 was like D&D novels. Yeah, I read a lot of those. A lot of drag and lands. That's a lot of white and red. A lot of white and red.

Scott Adams at that point. Like, oh, I read Hitchhiker's Guide to each 10. Yeah. Like, I remember trying to pick actually, I'm trying to pick up once my dad had a copy of how to win friends at influence people. Cause my father was a union president and he did a lot of these and I'm repeating up and he's like, you're too young for that. Don't read something fun. Yeah.

He did all my hands. Don't be. That's, that's honestly great parenting. Like, don't go, don't go, don't read this. This will turn you into one of these weirdos. Like, go read something that'll make you laugh. Now, I'm pretty sure at the time I read this, I was like veering between the Wheel of Time series

and Dobert books, so, you know. I was a weird whiplash. I was a weird kid, for sure. Anyway, at least we have a good book. That's all I care about. Yeah, yeah kid for sure. Anyway, at least we have in gorg books, that's all I care about. Yeah, yeah, for good God. That's another episode. We'll get to that one of these days.

So, So, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so, so conversion of the Peter principle. Instead of observing that hierarchies tend to elevate competent people past the level where they are good at what they do, Adams envisioned hierarchy in business as a defense mechanism to elevate incompetent people to positions of upper management where they don't actually have anything to do and thus are less likely to interfere with the people who

actually produce work. Right? Now, if you've probably, like, you've probably, I think this is less common for people in the Peter Principle because most of us have stories of upper management who have like fucked around in our shit. But like, if you've worked in a company, you've seen this too.

Both the Peter Principle and Scott's Dilbert Principle, these are things that you can observe in the world, right? These are not, like, yeah. And I think both principles can be useful observations about the way organizations work, and about pitfalls to avoid when creating organizations. The Peter principle, I believe, is a lot more durable. It describes a much more widespread,

I would say, nearly universal phenomenon. I can think back to my own career at Cracked, all of my friends and I started out writing funny articles and got promoted to managing teams and like doing a lot of work that we had absolutely no aptitude for because like we just wanted to make our funny little japes and suddenly we're like handling all of this like employment shit and you know that was there was a tough learning curve there. I think that's kind of hell like, I'm not going to tell you something. I'm not going to lie. There were, you know, it was good and it was bad. It worked better than it should have for a long time,

but like, I can definitely say, and it's not like comprehensive, right? Because we all still wrote articles and made videos and did the stuff we were good at. I think the thing that I would say, if I was going to like make a, maybe a more generalizable, you know, version of the Peter principle is that competent people get promoted to the point where they spend less and less of their time on the thing their best at, right? Yeah, I can see that. If you're not, you have to, or at least you have to be very careful to avoid that happening, right?

Because it's just kind of like naturally what hierarchical structures do to people who are good at shit. So yeah, I do think that Scott's Dilbert principle, while I have seen versions of this in my own life, is a lot less widely applicable. For one thing, upper management constantly makes decisions that impact the lives of people who actually produce shit and interfere with them getting stuff done. And like Scott knows this, he parodies this in a lot of his early strips, right? Like management making dumb decisions that fuck shit up, layoffs, you know, in order to drink stock prices that force out productive workers and business units, that kind of shit.

And it's one of those things where like, I will give Scott some credit because it's, there's in this book kind of some valuable observations. And I don't think most of it's like, I don't think they're valuable observations to like adults. I think this book is gonna be, is pretty basic for anybody who's been out and lived in the world. But it has like an 11 or 12 year old kid.

There were a couple of things that I found pretty influential. And in fact, one, I'm gonna read one passage that I encountered at a young age, that I think is a pretty healthy thing for one passage that I encountered at a young age that I think is a pretty healthy thing for a young man to encounter at a young age. Here's Scott, I proudly include myself in the idiot category. Idiot C in the modern age isn't an all-encompassing 24-hour situation for most people. It's a condition that everybody slips into many times a day.

Life is just too complicated to be smart all the time. The other day I brought my pager to the repair center because it wouldn't work after I changed the battery. The repairman took the pager out of my hand, flipped open the battery door, turned the battery around, and handed the now functional pager back to me in one well-practiced motion. This took much of the joy out of my righteous indignation over the quality of their product, but the repairman seemed quite amused and so did every other customer in the lobby. On that day, in that situation, I was a complete idiot, yet somehow I managed to operate

a motor vehicle to the repair shop and back. It is a wondrous human characteristic to be able to slip into and out of idiocy many times a day without noticing the change or accidentally killing innocent bystanders in the process. And I think that's actually a pretty good observation. I think it's also this um, this obsession that we have through media with like hyper competent protagonists, um, like isn't real, like there's nobody who's like that that I've ever met in my life. And if you kind of accept that you will be, if you're able to accept your incompetence and given situations, you're a lot less likely to,

for example, try to wire your own house and wind up electrocuting yourself to death, you know? Like, yeah, I'm scared. Yeah, that's, that's, I mean, I don't, it was a useful thing to come across as a kid. It's not a bad lesson, like the whole of some of us. You're the idiot. Yeah, and everyone is.

The world is too complicated for you to know how to, like, you can be, you can know how to like, from the ground up, how like, Android or iPhone is coded, right? You can be an engineer at Apple or Google, and know everything about like, how the actual software and your phone works. But like, you probably don't know how to

solder the entire thing together, and you certainly don't know how to like, mine thing together. And you certainly don't know how to like mine the rare earth minerals and like put together the, we're all out of our depth. If you really think about it, all the time, it's other people around us who know what they're doing and who have figured things out and that that keeps shit going, right?

Like I don't know how to operate a power plant, but thankfully there are people who do. That's the, it's humbling and valuable to think that way. I thought you were gonna say, I don't know how to run a podcast, and I was gonna be like, yep. I'm Sophie Williams. Wow. Wow, wow.

Hurtful, hurtful, but yes, I have no idea what I'm doing. I don't even know what a podcast is. Like, I've been trained to shout at this blinking light when the box in my cage turns on. And that's what all of this is. Let's say you get the food pellets. Yeah. Did you see that it's now blinking blue,

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on Will Ferrell's Big Money players network on the IHR radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. We're back! So I've just said, I think that Scott's got a good observation here, a useful thing for certainly a young person to encounter. The caveat to this is, I don't believe Scott believes a word that he's written there. Or at least if he did at one point believe it, he no longer does, but I don't think he ever really did. For one thing, this book, the Dobrett

Principle, sells a million copies, which causes his ego to mistast cancer, cancer into our, his mind. I kind of think the more I've learned about him and the more I've learned about the stuff that he read and that's influenced him, I think his like, we're all idiots, especially me, I'm dumb a lot of the time, kind of stuff, this kind of self-deprecating thing he does, I think it's a calculated stick,

rather than evidence of humility. And I think part of why I believe this is, this line I came across in that interview with Maria Conacova, and here she is again describing a strategy from Dale Carnegie's book that is really popular with con artists. There's also the Mark Antony Gambit,

which comes from Shakespeare, where Mark Antony begins a speech by saying, I come to Barry's Caesar, not to praise him. He says the opposite of what he then goes on to do, but he primes people to think that he's on their side. And I kind of think that's, there's a version of like Scott's doing a version of that with this, right?

Like he's saying like, we're all idiots, you know, especially me, I'm dumb most of the time. But he's also, that's being packed, just like, and look at how smart I am for realizing this and delivering this to you, you know, like there's a little bit of, we could call it like K-Fave there, right? So Scott's books get increasingly popular from here on out. The next year he publishes the Dilbert Future, which of course I also read as a small child.

The subtitle of the book was Thriving on Stupidity in the 21st century. It's a pretty forgettable book. You would call it like a pop futurist text about how technological development will impact people in the future. Again, pretty forgettable. It does include the prediction technology and homeliness will combine to form a powerful type of birth control, which is a joke in the book, but I think Scott's going to kind of wind up pseudo-insel in a lot of like his ideology and a lot of the things he says.

I think you could see this as like a precursor to that. He is currently like this week as we talk chatting with Andrew Tate about how nobody like sex really, like it's not that good. Um, wow. Yeah, I'm on yourself there, buddy. Yeah, you might be telling yourself a little bit there, Scott. We always just see a screen capture of someone like say women don't actually orgasm. I've got six women that have never it like a buddy.

No. You know what I'll say for like the women don't enjoy sex guys. Like that's fucked up, but they generally do enjoy sex. They just don't think women do. Scots like boy, we all actually hate sex, right? And it's like, for one thing, Scott, you know, there's like, if you want to like explore this, you might learn some stuff about yourself and come do accept some things, but it would take having kind of a more nuanced and plastic view of human intimacy that I think you're

capable of having. But I don't know. If you were more of a self reflective guy, well, learning he was ace. Yeah, I don't know that he is, but some of the stuff he says is like, well, Scott, if you think that you've never, maybe, yeah, I don't know, a more thoughtful person might like come to some conclusions about himself through that. Scott just decides that everybody feels the same way, and we're all lying about enjoying sex for some reason. Which, I don't know, feel about that however you want. So the weird part of the book of the Dilbert Future comes near the end when Scott starts writing about his habit of making affirmations for the first time. He gives a couple of examples of times

that affirmations worked for him, and both repeatedly gives a caveat that he's not saying there's anything supernatural happening here. And also kind of leaving the impression that he thinks he's discovered some kind of magical reality hack over time and far too many books. Scott's feelings on the Dobrett principle and affirmation. Do you know what affirmations are? Yeah, that's a whole like speaker truth and the universe will. Yeah, and the way secret, isn't it?

Basically, it's the secret, right? You have to ask if you tell the universe what you're going to get or what you want, like it'll provide it for you. There's some rules to it generally, like the way Scott sees it, he has to like write it down a certain number of times a day. You have to be really specific about the thing that you're going to do. So it's not just like, I want to do well in this class, but I'm going to improve my score on this, you know, exam from this to this or something like that.

You have to be very, and like, you know, I don't think there's actually anything wrong with this idea. Like if affirmations help you focus your mind, focus on building skill and something, it's a, it's, you know, I can, I see, I think for reasonable people, this thing can be kind of a version of like meditation, right? Where you, I think for most people, this thing can be kind of a version of meditation, right? I think for most people, the worst thing to be is the harmless thing you did. Yeah. It's a personal ritual, and even that can be still calming. Yeah, it can be calming.

It can help you get up in the morning and you write your affirmations. That helps you focus on the things that you're going to work on. That's perfectly healthy. If that works for you, that's a great thing to do. Scott is, I think, kind of inherently hardwired to go really dogmatic about this stuff. He presents himself as very much like an atheist and a rationalist, but he builds these kind of like labyrinthine rule systems about this stuff. Rather than being like, oh, you know, affirmations really help me focus my mind. And I did well on that test.

He has to like set up these kind of increasingly arcane rule systems. He's the kind of guy again. If he was a little more open-minded, a little cooler, he would have been like in the 1800s, like one of these guys writing books about magic, you know, he would have like convinced himself he was a wizard.

And probably would have been a healthier, happier person. Become a wizard, Scott Adams. You'll like it more than being, I don't know, a weird racist on YouTube. I look for a new book, Dilbert Mansie. Yeah, Dilbert Mansie. Come on, Scott. At least give us that. You know, we're owed it.

The pointy hair. That is candle. Yeah, exactly. Yeah. The pointy hair. That is candle. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, break, come on. So over time, kind of the, this Scott's feelings on the Dilbert principle and affirmations will evolve into this kind of

labyrinthine scientific or religious ideology with one goal. And that goal is explaining why Scott Adams deserved his fame and incredible wealth, right? And that's the really problematic thing about Scott here is that he's focusing all of this stuff. He's not just using it as like, you know, how you can improve your life. He's using it to kind of a priori justify like why he's earned everything. Like why luck didn't play into his life as much as it really did.

But why does he care? Like, there's no one else is like asking. I think there's no money, like no one, that never comes up. I think it's simple, which is that if you are really successful in a field where the odds are long and against you has got off in notes and you suddenly make a shitload of money and become famous. It's pretty natural to be terrified that it might end because you

never fully understand why it happened, right? There's always people around you who are just as talented, who work just as hard, and shit doesn't work out for. And the fact that some people make it and some people don't is kind of scary, right? And I think again, the mentally healthy thing to do is kind of embrace the humility that that should engender in you and have that influence how you treat other people and how you try to give other people opportunities and try to level the playing field and try to provide options for people who benefit from luck less than you. The unhealthy way to do it is to find justification.

Some people use religion, Scott's, weirder about it for why you deserve, and it's because in Scott's case, I discovered the secret rules of the universe and hacked my way into being an influencer. My master persuader. This is really in that egg he found was a child, not just $2, the secrets. The secret a child that's $2 the secrets the secret

and that's kind of the the the primary immorality at the center of Scott Adams in a lot of ways I think so before Scott sort of degenerates to a Trump reply guy which is where this is building towards he got the chance to make his own television show. On January 25, 1999, Dilbert launched as an adult animated sitcom on UPN, the network where I watched Star Trek Voyager is a little kid. It was the highest rated comedy series premiere in network history, but very few people watched UPN, so that's not much praise. The show had quite a lot going for it though. Larry Charles, who was a sign-feld writer, was on the development team.

Danny Elfman, as we've talked about, was like the theme music. And it's got some great voices in it. Daniel Stern, who's Marv from Home Alone, did a lot of the voices. Kathy Griffin does a voice. Jason Alexander is up in there, you know, from again, a lot of like sign-feld.

I'm really the actor who did the boss, because he's a really good guy. I think it's some. Larry Sustin. Yeah, yeah, yeah, I forget. You like play the really good smoke asshole in the 80s and 90s? The voices are pretty good.

It's not like an incompetent show. Like it's not bad. Whenever it comes online now, people who like watch it as kids are like, well, the show is actually really good. I did rewatch a lot of it recently. I wouldn't say it's really good, but for an adult animated series in 1999,

it's perfectly fine, right? It was different. It was something that wasn't trying to be the Simpsons, which would be rare at that point. And it wasn't trying to go the opposite direction of like family guy, let's be as edgy and weird as we can. No, it's just, it gave what it promised. It was Dilbert at the show.

It sure was. And that's, there's nothing wrong with that. Chris Elliott was Doug Brute, I didn't do that. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I learned he can't. He was a boss. Yeah, it all, like the voices are all pretty competent. So here's all Scott says about it in his 2002 book,

published a year or so after the show's second season in cancellation. In 1998, I started working on what would become the Dilvert TV show that ran on UPN during 1999 and 2000. We had a tiny operating budget, so I found myself doing more of the writing than I had expected.

Now, I don't actually know what went on in that writer's room and how much of the good parts of the show were the Seinfeld guy and the other writers, how much of it was Scott, but he does, you get a taste of Scott Adams in this series, his voice shines through, and when it does, it's often in uncomfortable ways. And I'm going to play you a clip now from an episode, and this is one where Dilbert's antagonist in this episode is a bad guy whose name is literally Bob Bastard. And Bob is trying to unfairly sabotage an invention that Dilbert made. And as a result of Bob being an asshole, all of everyone and especially like the female engineer Alice loves him, right? And Alice falls madly in love with him,

even though he's nothing but a dick to her. This is a very uncomfortable scene, but like it's not hard to see what Scott's trying to say here. You get another little glimpse of that sort of attitude. Oh, damn it. I'm already freezing. What are you doing? I'm not doing anything. Why are you dressed like that?

I'm not dressed like that. You're trying to look like him. Don't be ridiculous. It's just that all my non-Bobbestered imitation clothes are in the laundry. This is all I have left. What has happened to you? Are you with Bobbester's camp now? He has a camp?

Cool. Why do I try? I think we make a terrific couple, Alice. You really think so? No, I'm just toyin' with your emotions. Since I caught you in such a good mood, can I borrow another 50 bucks? Another 50? Oh, forget it!

If you're gonna lay some kind of trip on me, I'll see you around! No wait! Okay, here. Make that a hundred bucks. I'm saving up for a new mask. What do you mean you're changing your name? Seriously, don't you think it sounds good? Wally Bastard. Have you lost your...

All right, that's enough. You get it, right? Yep. We can fall for abusive jerks. Yeah, women fall for abusive jerks. The unsaid part is not like me, Scott Adams. Why don't they love me? I'm so much better than all of the guys who get the... It's very, you see this all over the internet now. Scott was a trailblazer ahead of his time with this sort of shit. He's a big, um, mini little piece of shit.

Yeah. You also kind of get signs of this, of kind of what is now for Scott and a biting hatred of all journalists who he seems to think are unethical by nature of doing their job. He thinks it's like uneth ethical to report on stuff that's happening in the world. This is now a pretty standard belief on the far right, but it is, was less common in 2002, and it's pretty clear in this clip. What makes you qualified to be a reporter? I'm willing to violate anyone's privacy for my personal gain and then claim with a straight

face that the public has a right to know. All right. So not subtle, right? And it's one of those things that people who are remembering this is a good show. Like it's not bad for the time, but like, there's not a, not a great density of comedy in these bits here, right? Like there's, it's got its moments, but um, yeah, a lot of it's like weird and off-putting. And I think most of the off-putting parts are Scott's voice just kind of shining through clear as a bell.

Anyway, the show gets canceled in 2002. Did it get picked up by a adult swim for a little bit, though? Didn't it like all the unions? It does like rerun and reruns and stuff. Yeah, we've got home movies, which is also a new pen show. Home movies, which was a much better show. Home movies had something to say about. One of those shows that I every watching every like,

once every other year, it's still good. It still holds the fuck up. I periodically find myself singing the Franz Kafka song. Yes. Scott show gets canceled. And now, if I were to ask you, why do you think Scott show got canceled? You know, what would your answer be?

And it was a very targeted product on a rarely watched network. Yeah, pretty reasonable. Yeah, yeah. Of course, yes. And Scott, to his credit, when he's interviewed about why the show failed in 2006, gives basically that answer. He says it was on UPN,

and network that few people watch. And because of some management screw-ups between the first and second seasons, the time slot kept changing and we lost our viewers. We were also scheduled to follow the worst TV show ever made, Shast and McNasty. On TV, your viewership is 75% determined by how many people watch the show before yours. That killed us.

Now, you probably do it. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know this got, I think you might be exaggerating a little bit some of that, but like, yeah, that's pretty reasonable, right? Not a lot of people watched it. You know, they moved around the time slot, so people didn't, like, that was more important back then

if you've only ever watched in the streaming era, you may not understand that, but this is not an unreasonable thing for him to believe. However, right? Yeah, he's not going to stick with that opinion as to why the show gets canceled forever, but we're building to that. So right in the middle of the period of the time

when the Dilbert TV show was on the air, when it's in fact, the comic is that kind of the height of its popularity. Scott decided to try to branch out into another business, the world of health food. And he's going to- I'm going to wait for this one. Yeah, he creates a product called the Dilberido, which he says is like, so Scott is like a vegetarian. And he's angry that there's not any kind of like good, fast,

like microwaveable food for vegetarians to eat that can fulfill all of their nutritional requirements. He wants something again, he has this kind of very mechanical at it, which is fine. A lot of people feel this way about food. I know people who, you know, particularly enjoy it. They're like, I just, this is why like, soy lense, a popular thing with some people. So you guys have heard of soy lense, which is like this, they're these meal replacement sort of like, now shake is a little bit of an odd term, but like it's, it's a drink, basically a drinkable meal,

fulfills all of the necessary caloric requirements, and you can do it quick. And I have, I know some people who do it because it makes weight loss easier for them. Some people, they just don't have a lot of time in the day, so it's good for, I know people who take soy milk because like when you're doing drugs for 36 hours with your friends, you might forget to eat. And it's easier to pound a soy milk than actually eat a meal when you're on so much ketamine that like the world is like melting all around you.

Scott wants this because he just wants like a simple thing people can microwave and get all of their nutrients. He describes it as something to want. It's a fine idea. Sure. I don't eat a lot of meat and I would love to have just simple make-up in five minutes. Of course. It's the most reasonable thing he's ever wanted to do. He does describe it as the blue jeans of food, which I find kind of funny, but like, there's appeal to that. So the problem is that Scott doesn't know how to do this. Like Scott has no idea how to make food.

You don't get the feeling he's a great cook. And he certainly does not have any experience in like the business of mass producing food. So he launches this product, which he calls the Dilburido. I would say not great branding either. It initially comes in Mexican, Indian, barbecue, garlic, and herb flavors. It's described as being a tortilla wrapped, comestible, consisting of vegetables, rice beans, and seasonings that contain all of the 23 vitamins and minerals that nutritionists say are essential. Now when you jam as much nutrients as he's like, he describes as like a vitamin pill wrapped

in a tortilla, and when you shove all of those vitamins and stuff into a single burrito, it can have some negative consequences on your gastrointestinal tract. As Scott would later say, because of the veggie and legume content, three bites of the deal burrito made you fart so hard your intestines form to tail. It is a disaster as a product. It millions of dollars gets just lit on fire by this thing. I've talked to people who apparently ate them and said that they were pretty fucking nasty.

And to be fair, Scott describes him as pretty bad, too. So there you go, the Dilburido. Kind of a funny little moment. But not evil, right? He probably caused, yeah, disaster. I have friends. I have a roommate, you know, who was a time who, have friends, I had a roommate, you weren't roomies of time, who, you know,

he was a tech guy, he was a vegetarian, border and vegan. And he hesitated because, well, I like the idea of fast food. I just don't know that I would trust a fellow nerd making my food. And then someone else, we knew it ate it and basically that I never try it because they basically thought and it's something else we knew, ate it, and basically that gets to never try it,

because they basically thought they were gonna shit their actual brain out. Like, they described you as dying, you're so bad, they could feel the capillaries moving out of their body. Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha,, what are we after the incredible food around, too? Like, there's a dangly restaurant chain in the Chimidots. That makes sense. Dagwin eats a lot. Yeah, if you're selling like the biggest sandwich

anyone's ever seen, absolutely. Yeah. And that's it. But this is like, and this is quite as bad as a Garfield restaurant that he attempted in Toronto. Yes. Well, didn't he, I was trying to do a restaurant at one point. Or was I just,

he did do a restaurant. We have so much to cover, I don't think we're gonna get into. He ran an unsuccessful kind of restaurant in the Bay area at one point in time. Jesus. Yeah, and it's very interesting. Like, it is kind of like going to Dilbert,

like using him as the mascot for fast food, is a little bit like, I don't know, trying to sell mace that's Calvin and Hobbs brand it. Like I just don't see much of a connection. And also I'm like, I don't know if I trust the Calvin and Hobbs guy to sell me mace. He doesn't seem like that's in his wheelhouse. It's Charlie Brown, brand, prophyllaptics.

Yeah, you have a Charlie Brown condom. It works as long as light Charlie Brown, you never have sex. We're diagonal like line around the shirts. Yeah, absolutely. Oh, no. Oh, God. Oh, God. Oh, God.

He's clipped. He's clipped. He's clipped. He's clipped. A brand off-roading tires. Like, why are we doing this? What's going on here? Clifth that might happen. That's how I'm just so fucking weird these days.

Yeah, it does go off the rails. So this is all fun. But by 2004, Scott, there's some signs of some problematic stuff. But he hasn't done anything fucked up yet, really, in a clear way. He's expressed some odd beliefs, but he's't done anything fucked up yet really in a clear way. He's expressed some odd beliefs, but he's not blaming diversity or black people for his failures publicly yet again, the book where that stuff that we talked about comes in from his published in 2008. But 2004 is the point at which things start to go really wrong in his life.

Because of the legitimate personal tragedy, he develops the symptoms of a rare neurological condition called spasmodic dysphonia. on the legitimate personal tragedy. He develops the symptoms of a rare neurological condition called spasmodic dysphonia. And I'm going to quote from an article in braininlife.org here. Adams' experience began in 2004 with what seemed like an extreme allergy related at Lerengitis. I used to get Lerengitis every May when my allergies were bad. Adams are calls. It would usually last a few days or a few weeks and go away, so I didn't think anything of this particular bout. That was the first of dozens of doctors' visits,

and an equal number of treatments over several years. I was diagnosed with respiratory problems, then I was tested to roll out strep throat and acid reflux. From there, I went to an ear, nose, and throat specialist to check for polyps in my vocal cords. Nothing made a distance. I had a wall. He tried a bunch of herbal remedies and it's one of those things where like, this starts out as laryngitis, but it doesn't go away and it gets worse and worse. And he continues, he starts having very basic trouble talking, right?

Like he's finding it harder and harder to speak. He's trying every scientific and also like herbal fringe remedy that he can come across because he's just increasingly desperate. You know, he's not able to go out and speak anymore. And first, his ability to kind of do public speaking goes away, but soon his ability just like talk to his wife to talk to his friends goes away.

He's unable to kind of communicate very well. He starts getting angry and lashing out at people because he'll try to talk and they won't understand him and he just gets like enraged at this. Eventually this is what he says kind of causes the collapse of his marriage. And it does seem like a nice responsibility for something. Yeah, he kind of does with it.

It does seem like this has to be like a terrifying sense. Oh, I have like that's horrible. I can't wish that long. Like that would probably be a legitimate tragedy. Like that is a nightmare world to be in. Yeah. And yeah, you probably are going to last, it doesn't make it right. You shouldn't be lashing out your spouse or anyone because something happened to you,

but I can get it. Yeah. People don't perform perfectly in situations where they're both frightened and like something fundamental about their nature has been physically compromised. As Scott later kind of described, I felt like I was a ghost in the room. It's hard to feel connected to others if you can't talk and they can't listen to you.

And yeah, again, sounds terrible. Obviously, this is the kind of thing that's gonna give you some fucking PTSD. And it's an ultra reality where he's like, so I decided to start investing into nonprofits that help people who are deaf, whatever. And that's what's gonna happen. I know why, because that's not about him.

Yeah, he doesn't dedicate his life to helping others as a result of this. It ends with him unable to talk entirely for like a couple of years. And he pushes everyone away. He basically lives alone in his home, not communicating with anybody for an extended period of time. He considers suicide,

but eventually he finds via Googling his symptoms enough that there is a rare condition that meets his experiences. He finds a doctor who specializes in it. He gets diagnosed finally, and the doctor offers him a risky pioneering surgery. And basically the way the surgery works is they cut the nerve that goes to the main muscle diagnosed finally, and the doctor offers him a risky pioneering surgery. And basically the way the surgery works is they cut the nerve that goes to the main muscle that's spasming, and then they graft a new nerve in its place to prevent the muscle from

atrophying and to stop the old nerve, which was like defective from growing back. That's kind of amazing. Yeah, it's a really interesting thing that they did. The treatment is about 85% effective, that the doctor who does it says that about 85% of the time it provides an improvement or complete cessation of symptoms. Which is not bad odds, but also a 15% chance that you never talk again is like that's scary.

That's not low enough to not be terrifying, right? That is a lot more than I would want to gamble on most things, much less. Yeah. I've always. Yeah. I, yeah. It's, it's scary, but like again, by this point, he can't talk already. So he doesn't have any other options.

So he has the surgery in 2008, the same year that he publishes the book where he blames all of his life problems on black people. And after three years of enforced isolation and near endless silence, he starts being able to talk again. And the way Scott describes it, the surgery works perfectly and he's been fine ever since. Now, there is a theory and you might call it a conspiracy, I don't know, conspiracy is the wrong term because there's no conspiracy here, but there's a theory that you get among people who like follow Scott and have followed him really going insane on Twitter and stuff that something goes wrong in this surgery

and it damages his brain and that causes some of the behavioral changes that we see in him after this point. I don't have any evidence of this. I've never heard the doctor obviously, like say anything about this. I don't know, like it is true that after he has this surgery, 2008, this is the year where he becomes very rapidly. He becomes increasingly racist and aggressive online.

But also, number one, I think I can see signs of the stuff that he would do later. And number two, I'm not saying there's no chance to something like that happen. That's a possibility, but rather than something fucking shady happening during this surgery, I find it kind of likelier that three years of not being able to speak, of losing every close relationship

in his life of being completely isolated, is what causes the behavioral changes for the world. That sounds a lot more like it. And honestly, if nothing else, just like you came out of this situation, where you are facing a permanent life altering situation, you may be like, fuck it, I'm just gonna throw a caution to the end.

I'm a little bit like, oh, this is weird about that because They says, how can we know? Like that's, I don't see that by anybody. Who has surgery really. Yeah, I think that it's more, I mean, think about America. Think about the COVID lockdown. Think about for how many people

that period of isolation was the straw that broke the camel's back. That's in them spiraling and to get like Ashley Babet, you know? Like, it doesn't take, like we're all, a lot of us, most of us maybe are kind of fragile at any given moment. And like, this is an intense thing to deal with. I don't think I need much more than like,

yeah, he lost the ability to talk for several years and it blew up his marriage and he lost everyone who was close to him for a while and lived alone as a hermit, only was wrong with my. I can see that fucking you up. Even if like just like the everyone I care about left, or I push him away. No, that's what I'm like, yeah. Oh my god, like I just came in and found him like how that would be.

I can see you not becoming the best version of yourself after that, right? You're either going to do it on a meoculpator tour and try to do a face, or you're just going to say, well, shit. Yeah. Why not? Yeah. So, and in 2008, Scott publishes the book,

20 Years of Dilbert, which is what I've been quoting from several times. It's where he repeatedly blames diversity programs for the great failures of his life. And it's interesting because after this point, he also, like in this book, like he blames, you know, losing his job, not getting promoted on diversity programs. And he blames now, in 2008, he blames black people for the failure of his television show, saying, quote, the show started out well, but in the second season, the network made a strategic decision to focus on shows with African American actors. Dilbert lost its time slot and cancellation followed.

And that's very different from the reasonable answer that he gives in 2006. It's also definitely not true. For the next 15 years or so, Scott is going to bring these incidents up with increasing regularity. In 2017, he tweeted, I lost my TV show for being white when UPN decided it would focus on an African-American audience. That was the third job I lost for being white. The other two are in corporate America. They told me directly. Which is again different from the story he gives. Yeah, man, it's not because you're white.

Like, it was number one, UPN, not a great one. Red network, number two, your show didn't find an audience. Most shows don't kind of getting two seasons isn't super common, bro. Like, you've got actually more of a chance than most people. And it's like any reasonable person who gets to be worth hundreds of millions of dollars for drawing doodles would be like I have no complaints about this system, right? Yeah. Yeah, like this worked out perfect for me. Like, are you crazy? Scott, like you have been the luckiest anyone's ever been.

I've never been rich. I have supported myself. I've been able to support my spouse when they were going through grad school off doing comics. I'm proud of that. I feel I'm very fortunate because I have not gone into an office to work since 2004. I feel I'm so lucky. This motherfucker's millions. Yeah. He's like, black people took my TV.

No, the fucking didn't. They just didn't like it. No one else liked it either. We all took it from you. You have like $300 million in a mansion in California shaped like Dilbert's head because of the noise. Like the system has, oh yeah, his house is shaped like Dilbert's head.

Look at that. That is absurd. That is the dumbest fucking thing. Yeah. It's, it's, it's funny because again, he's like they canceled it because they wanted to focus on shows with black actors. Other people have pointed out, Dilbert had the second lowest ratings of any show on television at the time it was canceled.

No. And this is like when Scott made his big post, they can't, it was because I was white, like people brought this up and Scott goes ape shit. Just like he did with Norman Solomon, he is unable to disengage, replying days later to his Twitter trolls quote, I successfully stirred up a hornet's nest of unsuccessful artists. They don't know they're part of the show, don't tell them. Um, he was kind of preferring like, I mean, I'm a master. Yeah, I was really tell them. He was kind of preferring to like, I need a man. I'm a master.

Yeah, I was really manipulative. No, Scott, we're saying that like, you have seen tremendous success and the fact that not everything you did worked isn't something that black people did to you. Like, it's, most cartoons don't succeed. Everyone I know, I know more than most people of like people who have been very successful in Hollywood.

All of them have failures. All of them have more than one failure in their background. Scott McFarlane, who's made God knows how much money doing cartoon shows. His first show gets canceled after two or three seasons. He's out of the family guy. he's out of like the, he's out of like doing that for years when the show gets canceled, you know, like his got brought back because it developed a fan base, which the Dilbert show didn't like. That's one interesting thing you compare that because they both got brought back like Riran on the swim. But Stephanie Farles will shit if you're going to run it, I'm going to do these bumpers.

I'm going to lean into it. He actually built work on it. If I wonder if Scott at well, I mean, I'm glad he didn't, but like Scott has a put like effort behind it. Like that could have helped him too. He just, he wanted to work the way it was going to work and it didn't happen that way. And so, my suspicion, I'm not an expert on Seth McFarlane lore, but my suspicion is that like for Seth,

being doing that TV shows has been his whole motivating factor in life. And for Scott, Well, he's sort of an animator, but that's where he began. Yeah, he worked for Cartoon Network. He did shorts in the 90s. I think he worked on a season of Johnny Bravo, even.

Yeah, that makes sense. And I suspect the reason he put in all that extra work on those bumpers and stuff is that like, this is what he loved and wanted to do. Whereas for Scott, the Dobert TV show was like a side gig in between drawing cartoons and trying to make burritos. Burrito? Yes, cannons. Good, sir. It's such a weird thing to be like like my like third job didn't pan out. So

black people are engaged in conspiracy against me. It's it's it's it's it's it's it's it's not a evidence of great stuff. Yeah, it's the entire black community was going to rally around like we need to take one white man down. Why the fuck would it be Scott Alex? Yeah, to be fair, I think he's saying that like it was these vinyl Hollywood types who wanted to get the black, you know, viewer or whatever, but I also see no evidence of that. Like Hollywood, especially in the early 2000s, wouldn't have killed a successful show by a white guy to please the black community. It wasn't a successful show.

Scott, you know, like a, like a channel killing successful shows in the early 70s when CBS did like the rural purge where any show that took place or appealed to people in rural areas, Beverly Hill, Billies and he all got canceled despite having amazing ratings because they didn't want to appeal to more urban viewers. Again, it was a white people hurting white people. Yeah, yeah. Again, Scott, very silly man. So who knows why he suddenly starts to go down this road. But as he gets increasingly like obsessed with the ways in which he's been wronged by diversity, he also starts to get increasingly elaborate with like his lore as to why he thinks he's how he thinks he's uncovered the secrets to success in the universe. And the best example of this is his concept of talent stacking. In 2013, he writes a book called

How to Fail It Almost Everything and Still Win Big. And it's another, it's him kind of pretending to be humble where he's like, I was bad at all of this stuff and I still got super successful and I got successful because, you know, even though I wasn't great at any one thing, I had a bunch of little skills and they all synergized together

to allow me to be a big success, you know? I wasn't the best artist, but I understood kind of how to use the internet, and so I was able to take advantage of that to like promote my cartoon strip, and you know, that's why it was a big hit, right? Here's how he describes this concept more succinctly in his book, Wind Bigly, which he publishes

a few years later, you know, in the early Trump years. Well, a talent stack is a collection of skills that work well together and make the person with those skills unique and valuable. For example, a computer programmer her also knows how to do good user interface design would be more valuable than one who does not. The power of the talent stack idea is that you can

intelligently combine ordinary talents together to create extraordinary value. The key concept here is that the talents and the stack work well with one another. Now, that's not wrong, but Scott, that's not a discovery, right? Like, if you were to go up to a person on the street and be like, hey, do you think having more skills makes you more valuable? I'm going to guess 100% of people say, like, yeah. Yeah, that's how it works.

That's how work usually goes. Like, yeah. When you turn into resume, they're not like, oh, shit, he's got eight skills, opposed to two. Yeah. Yeah. Oh, he's got a great talent stack. No, it's learning things is good.

You're a more valuable coder if you know how to code more things. And just for like, when it comes to like the artistic field, this is something that writers have talked about for a long time. Oftentimes, if you, I mean, this goes back decades, you see like writers answering letters from fans, advice they'll give us, go out into the world, like experience things, meet people, you know? That will make you a better writer.

The more things you know about, the more things you can write about with versimilitude. Robert Heinlin, you know, had a great, has a great bit about like the creative value of having a broad base of skills, of knowing how to harvest crops and skin an animal and go fishing. And all these kind of different things that are unrelated skills, because as Heinland said, specialization is for insects.

Right? Again, what Scott is done here is he's taken a basic observation that is most people are aware of and that people have been talking about one way or another forever and has reframed it in kind of the gamified language of hustle culture. And I'm not sure if this is just Scott trying to work a grift and knowing that he's just repackaging very obvious shit. Or if he just hasn't read other people's writing, right? Like does he legitimately fail to be in this one? Revealation?

I mean, do it. It doesn't matter. Yeah. Yeah, but it is interesting like this. And I think that kind of the way he does this by sort of like treating it as such a dogmatic like a skill tree and an RPG. I think kind of makes it, it sets you into this very like crystallized mode of thought that I think is more brittle and might make you less likely to pick up useful skills.

If you can't sort of like figure out how that skill is going to work in a talent stack, because like the skills Scott talks about that synergized together, he didn't like go into learning those things because he knew they would hybridize well. It was more just like living a life where you have a wide base of experiences, makes you more versatile and more able to like adapt to the world and that's the only real meaning

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on Will Ferrell's Big Money Players Network on the I-Hard Radio App, Apple Podcast, or wherever you get your podcasts. Oh, we are back. So good stuff, good stuff. So focusing obviously on acquiring talents that you can combine is a good thing. But I think Scott's talent stacking is kind of, I think the way he's framing this is more likely,

more likely, more likely than making you talented. It's a very brittle way to interpret a phenomenon that like viewed properly can be liberatory, but I think looked at the way that Scott looks at it might lock you into a world where all you do is draw Dilbert and repackage old self-help books. But it works for Scott. He does get rich, which means he's never had to question the person that he's become, or the ultimate value of his conclusions about the world. As the years go on, his work loses any edge of humility, and he veers increasingly towards

megalomaniacal shit. His two novellas are the best example of this. He writes two fiction books, and kind of the early Aughts, one is called The Religion War, and one is called God's Debris. Have you read these books, Randy? I have definitely never heard of them. Oh, oh boy. So, a guy's little hesitant when I hear a cartoonist has written a novel.

Yep. Well, Scott considers this his only, his real legacy, that like he will be remembered for these books. He said this, that like what I will be remembered for is my novels. He believes these are very deep and contain important truths about the human condition that no one else has elucidated before. Now, I have not read God's debris. I have read the religion war. These are both pretty short books.

You can find them for free online if you want to steal them. Like I don't like Scott put them up, but they're available, which is where I found them. Just Google them and Google the title and text if you want to read this shit. I have read the religious war. I would share the religion war. I would share itably describe it as an atheistic rant that manages to be racist on an almost unique level. The basic plot I will give Scott Credit for this

is summarized efficiently in the first paragraph of the prologue, and here's Scott's book. Here's how it opens. In the year 2007, a brilliant and charismatic leader named Al Z began his rise to power in the Palestinian territories. He was the architect of the 20 year plan for eliminating Israel, the success of which caught started a domino effect in the Middle East as one Arab dictatorship after another

fell, and their territories rolled into the Great Caliphate. Al-Zi subjects, he from an unbroken string of victories, demanded the spread of Islam to the rest of the world. Al-Zi understood that this was neither practical nor desirable, but to satisfy the appetite of his people, he began an unending war of minor terror against the Christian-dominated world. The attacks were calculated to be large enough to look like progress. Let's yet smell enough to avoid provoking all-out war. Publicly, he blamed renegade groups for the attacks.

The Christian-dominated country's new al-Z was behind the bombings, but they depended on him for their oil, and wanted to avoid a larger war that would cripple their economies, and in all likelihood increase the number of bombings. Now, there's a lot that's insane about that. For one thing, Scott doesn't seem to know that there are SUNY and Shia Muslims. And if they like disagree about a lot, neither of those words are in the book. SUNY doesn't show up, Shia doesn't show up, he doesn't mention Iran. Like, we don't know what the Sho world's supposed to be doing here.

Like he just is like all of the Muslims are in a caliphate now because this guy, and what, so, Al Z, his plan to destroy Israel, is like he organizes the Palestinians to demand democratic rights and like they become kind of quasi equal partners in society. And then one day they murder all the Jews. Like, it's pretty fucked up. This is probably a Christian novel that, my youth, it kind of does. Now, he doesn't portray the Christians,

particularly sympathetically either. Right, the big Christian general is also portrayed as a bad guy. It's more like an early internet atheist novel, but like you know how a lot of those guys, those like internet atheists from the 90s after 9-11, went like super hard anti-Muslim. Scott's doing the same thing here, right? It's pretty fucked up. It's very racist. It's really funny. Like Scott has convinced himself that his novel was prescient because it predicted the rise of ISIS. That's bullshit. That is not what Scott did.

All he did was use the word caliphate, which ISIS also used, but also a bunch of governments have called themselves caliphate. It's a very old term, though. It's a thing. It goes back like a thousand years. It's been a thing for a while. I'm pretty sure. And there's a more of my D&D books like for Al Qudin. Does that mean like, and green? No, he has started early 90s.

It's also like, Scott is like, once they start winning, the victories just number one, like the West is just kind of ignores their campaign of low level terror, which we didn't, we like bomb the crap out of them. And number two, he has this idea that like, well, once a caliphate is declared, all of the Muslims just start clamoring to join it and take over. No, you know who actually defeated ISIS? Because I was there for quite a bit of it.

It was Muslims, by the way. Like whenever like, I don't know, people shot at me, the folks who like through their bodies in front of me, Muslims, the people who were like at their day and night throwing like fucking, with like hand grenades and fucking combat knives, clearing buildings of ISIS fighters, were also Muslims. I watched him pray in the mornings

before they would go get fucking shot. Like, it very offensive to me. I'm the angry fucking guy. Yes, I am very frustrated by Scott Adams in his racist book and that he thinks he predicted ISIS. Um, like, go fuck yourself, Scott. I mean, are you surprised though, considering like nearly anything else he's taken credit

for at this point? No, no, not at all. It just is like particularly galling. So the way Scott writes about the caliphate, it shows his fundamental incuriosity about the world. He never expresses any understanding of the actual religious doctrine behind the strains of fundamentalist Islam most associated with terrorism.

Even if this book was anti-Muslim hate speech, it might have come from a position of understanding, you know, stuff like salafism, right? It'd be one thing, it would still be bad, but if this was like anti-Muslim and really gotten to the nitty gritty of like different really problematic beliefs among extremist Muslims, like, you know,

Salafi Islam and stuff, that would at least show that like, he was curious to an extent, you know? But he's, he simply is not. And the book itself does treat Christianity with a similarly broad brush. The American leader is this like general like the by the way the the the whole west is part of the Christian

alliance. That's what they call themselves with like I don't know man. I feel like so secular. So I feel like all of the religious terrorism is part of why people have become more secular in the 21st century as opposed to making everyone pick sides in a religion war. Like, it's just not what happens, Scott. You are not fucking out with the fuck. Yeah, it's offensive to, it should be offensive to anyone who reads it. Now, the conflict between these two big blocks is resolved when Scott's self-insert character, who is a guru called the avatar, who is, the Avatar is like a wizard, but he's a wizard, he's a wizard of smart, right?

He's so logical, he's so rational, that his ability to like talk to people and make rational arguments is effectively a superpower. And he solves the religion war because he finds an old lady who's like, he describes her as basically a super influencer, right? There's just this kind of mystical network of people who are really convincing. And if you find the right person,

they'll talk to, you know, 50 people and they'll convince all those people and those people will talk to another 50 people and then kind of stoke out or kind of like over, in a very short order, everyone will be convinced of something, right? If you find the right person, you're able to like, seed a thing in.

And this old lady comes up with, you're able to like, seed a thing in. And this old lady comes up with a joke where she's like, if God is so smart, why do people fart? And that revelation makes the entire world atheist more or less. That's the plot. That's the plot of Scott's book. I hate this. I hate this.

Yeah. By the way, if you're listening to this, you want to read an actual novels written by cartoonist Mel Lazarus, who did the comic mama and Miss Peach's class. Yeah, she wrote some. I'm told I read them, watch a Harley racism up, but like novels like, I think it was one of the bosses crazy too, which is based off his time working in a CD magazine. Like find something like that. That's meant to be fun and pulpy.

What the fuck? Yeah. Yeah. Or on these other end of the day. Great cartoonist Alan Moore wrote a book called Jerusalem and I'm going to be honest, I haven't read it. No one I know who loves Alan Moore has finished it, but you could put it on your book show and occasionally read pages and people will think you're very smart.

So it's Alan Moore. Sure, it's a great book. One of these days I'll read it. If it's Alan Moore, you probably of these days I'll read it. If it's Almore, you probably just like act thisolutely ending life with the things. Yeah, I keep it on my belt next to my handgun, in case, you know, there's a jam or something.

It's much more effective than a combat knife. And just wailing on some Nazi with a copy of Jerusalem. Yeah, that's my new masturbation material. Thank you. I will remember that. Sorry, Alan. I love you. Okay, I'm going to keep freaking out of this one.

Keep going. Keep going, please. It's terrible. So God's debris, which is the sequel, is even more out of the sequel. Oh, the sequel. Yeah, it's a sequel. The whole thing is like a pseudo-secretic dialogue between a delivery boy and the avatar from the first book. It is charity to call this freshman intro to psychology gobbledygook.

Like, most freshmen psych students would write a better and more insightful book than this. I'm not going to punish you all with too much detail, but you can get an idea of what we're looking at here with this passage. And this is, so this delivery boy comes to give an old man a passage, the old man is the avatar and he's, I guess going to like pass wisdom on to this kid. So like, here's the delivery boy talking to the avatar. It's for you, he said, that's, that's the delivery boy. What's for me?" the avatar replies. The package. I just delivered the packages, I said.

My job is to bring them to you. It's your package. No, it's yours. Um, okay, I said, planning my exit strategy. I figured I could leave the package in the hallway on the way out. The old man's caretaker would find it. What's in the package, I asked? I hope to get an awkward, to get past an awkward moment.

It's the answer to your question. I wasn't expecting any answers. I understand, said hope to get an awkward, to get past an awkward moment. It's the answer to your question. I wasn't expecting any answers. I understand, said the old man. I didn't know how to respond to that, so I didn't. He continued, let me ask you a simple question. Did you deliver the package? Or did the package deliver you? By then I was a little annoyed with his cleverness, but admittedly engaged.

I didn't know the old man's situation, but he wasn't as feeble minded as I'd first thought. I glanced at my watch, almost lunchtime, and decided to see where this was heading. I delivered the package, I answered. That seemed obvious enough. If the package had no address, would you have delivered it here? I said no. Then you would agree that delivering the package required the participation of the package. The package told you where to go.

I suppose that's true in a way, but it's the least important part of the delivery. I did the driving and lifting and moving. That's the important part. How can one part be more important if each part is completely necessary, he asked? Now, this is pointless, like there's no wisdom and to be revealed in this, but also like, it's like no delivery boy would be like,

well, I'm the person, I'm responsible for why the packet. No, the delivery boy be like, man, this is my job, I gotta make rent. Like, that's why I gave you this package. Someone told me to deliver a package here. I'm damn packing. Yeah, I have to do this to afford food and stuff. Like, that's why I'm here.

That's what drove me here is my need for food. Don't leave it in two minutes. Like, no, the package didn't make me come here. And like, we're not equally integral. The integral part of this is I need a job. And this is the job that I have. Will you please sign for the fucking package asshole? Oh my God, it's frustrating.

In general, I think Scott Adams is maybe the single person who handled the social media era the worst. There were signs that this was going to be the case with him from early on, having to filter his ideas through editors at comics, syndicates, and publishers, kept the most problematic stuff out of his work. When he was allowed to just vomit his thoughts to people, things got really dark, really fast. And an early sign that this was going to be the case came in, an early sign that this was going to be the case came in 2006 when he made a blog post about how he didn't vote because he was too ignorant, right? Now, I don't disagree with Scott

there. I don't want him voting either, but he immediately segues off of this into very wild territory, starting with the fact that like he's like, you know, I think that the news doesn't provide us with enough context to make a decision. So for example, I just learned recently that Iran is 25,000 Jewish citizens and everybody's talking about how anti-Semitic the president of Iran is, but there's all these Jewish people living in Iran. So does that mean that the president is anti-Semitic and that I'm going to kill people where? Or is he just kind of a bigot? You know, the media hasn't provided me with the context that I need here. And for one thing, like, you could look up life for Jewish people in Iran. Like, there's Jewish people who have left Iran or who still live

there probably, who you can like, you can find like, their feelings on the matter. You could look this up. Like there are media, there's newspapers that have written articles about this, Scott. The fact that every newspaper that talked about, this is during like when everyone was flipping out

over Mahmoud Ahmadina Jodh, the former president of Iran, because he made some statements about Israel. Um, the fact that like every news article on Amadena Jod didn't like go into detail about life for Jewish Iranians doesn't mean that like that context is not provided elsewhere by the media, you chose not to look into it. And for some reason, from that very strange statement,

we veer into Holocaust denial. So here's Scott again. Oh, good, good. I'd also like to know how the Holocaust death toll of 6 million was determined. Isn't this sort of number that's so well documented with actual names and perhaps a Nazi paper trail that no historian could document it down its accuracy, give or take 10,000? Or is it like every other LRN, large round number, that someone pulled out of his ass and it became true by repetition?

Does the figure include resistance fighters and civilians who died in the normal course of war or just the Jews rounded up and killed systematically? No reasonable person doubts that the Holocaust happened, but wouldn't you like to know how the exact number was calculated just for context? Without that context, I don't know if I should lump the people who think the Holocaust might have been exaggerated for political purposes in with the Holocaust deniers. If they are equally nuts, then I'd like to know that. I want context.

You know what Scott? You can get context, because there's libraries full of books. People have written calculating the death toll of the Holocaust. All of these questions have been answered numerous times by both journalists and historians. You chose not to seek that out. It's not a problem that every article that talks about mentions the Holocaust and its death toll doesn't go into detail about how that death toll was calculated because that's not good article writing. You don't like, it would be like every time I talk about fucking climate change, I discuss like how fucking internal combustion engines work.

Like, it's simply not necessary context every single time. But it's super easy to learn about how the Holocaust death toll was calculated. And if you were to just have typed into Google in this period of time, how was the Holocaust death toll calculated? You would find answers to this question. And if people at Homer Curious, the Holocaust Encyclopedia operated by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum has a page titled Documenting Numbers of Victims in the Holocaust and Nazi Persecution, which you and Scott Adams

can peruse at your leisure if you want. This is not hard stuff, it's easy to find. You do not have to be a historian to learn the basic answers to the questions that Scott is asking here. It's so blatant. The whole thing is like, no one's covered this means I didn't have the curiosity to go find out.

No, man, you didn't look. Why isn't the media telling me about this? Well, they did. You didn't read those articles. There's a lot of articles. And you didn't want to know about it. Like, yeah, I can hand, I can hand mine toddler evidence that if she cleans her room up, she will not trip over her toys. She's not going to read that. She doesn't give a shit. She's going to keep her toys out. It's like, if I bought a car that didn't

have a manual in it, and then I drove it and never changed the oil until like the engine broke and then I was like they didn't give me the contact. Yeah, man, you like you can look up. How do I maintain a car? What is this light on my dashboard mean? What are these noises from my car mean? It's not hard to get that answer. Like it is not the fault of the fucking car manufacturer

that you chose to act like a helpless babe. This is all a really perfect example of the kind of dumb that Scott gives us. He thinks that like, saying this, that being like, well, I just want context. What about this? What about that? Oh, look at you, look at what I'm going to say.

I'm going to say it didn't have. Yeah. Dot, dot, dot. Yeah. Like, he thinks that this makes him look not just deep and wise, but like kind of the cynical prankster wise man, like the avatar and his books, like you just accepted that number without thinking. Maybe now you'll think more about the things you accept without thinking.

No, you should actually like try to learn the answers to the questions that you're asking because they're very readily available, Scott Adams. It's like, I don't know, very frustrating. It's like, I think his attitude is that like when we talk about, for example, Holocaust deniers shooting up synagogues and murdering Jewish people, every article about that should included aggression about like the estimated kill rate during Acton Reinhardt and how it compares to the rate of killing in Rwanda. Like that's literally what I think he's saying, which is nuts and stupid and he should feel

bad. And also, somebody should throw pee at him. Anyway, for the sake of fairness, I should note that at this point, Scott's ill-considered political rants are not always entirely on the wrong side, although there's always an element of wrongness to them. And may of 2008, he wrote a blog post making fun of people who complained about illegal immigrants. And that's a noble cause. There are some cringe-worthy lines in the post like Mexicans have great-looking skin that

resists sunburn. I have skin that looks like tapioca spilled on canvas. It's like the skin Mexican people. Look at what I got. Scott, you don't need to get into that. Scott continued posting, though, and he eventually started to draw criticism when other people realized that the unfiltered Dilbert guy was a dick. This happened first in a big way when he made this 2011 post complaining about the unfair treatment of women. The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that

children in the mentally handicapped are treated differently. Why? It's just easier for this way for everyone. You don't argue with a four-year-old about why you 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 woman 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.

So let's go post this stupid thing because he's a dumb asshole. And he gets made fun of on a blog called Feminist. And so he jumps, again, he can't handle people not agreeing with him or not thinking he's smart. So he leaps into the comments section to defend himself and argue against everybody. And immediately, because he's not good at arguing,

he just kind of gives that up and starts insulting people for their poor reading comprehension. He also suggests that they all secretly agree with him and know he's right and are just arguing with him for the sake of their own egos. Then he makes a blog post a few days later reiterating all the points that had made everyone mad, but insisting that everyone like just gotten him wrong and that like, Dilbert readers are smart enough, you know, but other people didn't get it. I'm actually going to read a quote from EW dot com here, like summarizing the fallout. Adam's insisted that his post

was some sort of forensic exercise that his loyal readers, he presents them as sort of uber rational, delbert nation, understand, but he did eventually offer an apology. But the best of my knowledge, no one who understood the original poster, its context, was offended by it. But to the women who were offended by their own or someone else's interpretation of what I wrote, I apologize. Thank you for making me so interesting.

I'm sorry you chose to be offended by your own interpretation. What? Yeah, it was all just a game from me, the puppet master, but I'm sorry if it hurt you. Like Scott, just, if you want to believe shitty things, just like say them on your massive platform and ignore the people who argue with you. Say it with your chest. Yeah, don't be a little baby about this.

Like he's such a wimp. Is this the only way he made soft public accounts to defend himself or is that a joke? Oh boy, that's where we're heading to. So the attentioner, because this kind of goes viral, more and more people start to watch his blog posts because then they start to realize like, well, he says dumb shit all the time. Like, he's constantly saying bullshit without knowing anything about the shit he's talking about.

So in the mid-Auts, it kind of comes sport in a couple places online to make fun of bad Scott Adams posts. And Scott can't handle it. So he starts to make fake accounts on MetaFilter and Reddit under the pseudonym planned chaos. Where he, again, he's doing this puppet master thing and he pretends to be someone else defending himself because apparently his rational super fans aren't like good enough to

actually do the job for him. Here's, here's an example of a planned chaos post. If an idiot and a genius disagree, the idiot generally thinks the genius is wrong. He also has lots of idiot reasons to back his idiot belief. That's how the idiot mind is wired. It's fair to say you disagree with Adams, but you can't rule out the hypothesis that you're too dumb to understand what he's saying. And he's a certified genius. Just saying...

First of all, argument to authority. Like if you want to be like a big fucking rules D&D for real life guy, like that's the argument to authority. You're not actually defending yourself. Like that's evidence that you've kind of like that whatever argument you're making is completely hollow because you have to rely on like, well, he's a genius, so you just don't understand him. But also, that's just like such a sniffly little

worst thing to do. Like, say it under your own name, you fucking coward. Yeah, that's what bothered, like, one, let's not do the biggest thing that bothered you out, Scott Alms, but it's like, I have never understood making a sock of an account to define yourself. It's sad, It's sad.

It's weak. Anyway, whatever. Once Trump began his campaign for president, Scott's behavior accelerated. He predicted a Trump primary win. Fair enough, gets that one right. And then he takes back his endorsement of Trump, though, after the access Hollywood tape, and he endorses Gary Johnson, which he'll later come to like regret and try to explain away, but it is but it is very funny.

Once Trump wins, he publishes a book called Win Bigly, in which he argues that he and Trump are both master persuaders, and Trump was ushering humanity into a bold new world with his master persuader techniques. He becomes increasingly partisan during the Trump years, but also increasingly silly and deeply irresponsible would be fair to say. In 2019, you guys remember the Gilroy Garlic Festival mass shooting that was carried out by that kind of fascist guy? Yeah.

Real fucked up. Scott uses the tragedy as an excuse to publish a video app he's made called WinHub, which he's created as like a news gathering tool. And he's like, while like the shooting is going on, he's telling people to use this to like report on what's happening if they're, it's pretty fucked up.

Like, there's a lot of debate in our culture about like what it is and isn't appropriate to do in the wake of a mass shooting, but I think we can all agree trying to plug your app is not appropriate. Yeah, that's a bit off size. Yeah, yeah, that's just bad. That's just real fucked up Scott, a right up in MSN notes.

Adams didn't make major waves with a February 2021 comment that poked fun at those who received a coronavirus vaccine. But he did ruffle feathers when he espoused debunked claims that people who weren't vaccinated, fared better than those who were in a video shared by the Just Think podcast. In the 2020s, his political statements also started to focus more on race. At the beginning of 2022, he tweeted that he was going to self-identify as a black woman

until Biden picks his Supreme Court nominee, which the president had vowed would be a black woman. And then in June of 2020, Adams tweeted that when the Dilbert TV show ended in 2000 after just two seasons, it was the third job I lost for being white. So Scott's madness crescendos after the 2022 Highland Park mass shooting. This like so many mass shootings was carried out by a very young man, 21 years old. Rather than seeing this as perhaps a reason to explore more restrictive laws as to when

firearms can be purchased, or perhaps as a sign of deeply toxic, aspects of our culture and the things that young men in it are raised to believe, Scott posted one of the craziest things I've ever seen on Twitter, which is an app fueled entirely by mental breakdowns. Here's Scott, again in the wake of a mass shooting. The highland shooting in every fit in the lovardose death among the young are teaching us the same lesson and we refuse to learn it. It's difficult, but I'm qualified to give you this lesson, unfortunately.

That's amazing. This won't be easy to read. When a young male, let's say 14 to 19, is a danger to himself and others, society gives the supporting family two options. Number one, watch people die. And number two, kill your own son. Those for your to options. Number one, watch people die. And number two, kill your own son. Those are your only options. I chose one and watched my stepson die.

I was relieved he took no one else with him. If you think there is a third choice in which your wisdom and tough love, along with government services, fixes that broken young man, you are living in a delusion. There are no other options. You have to either murder your own son

or watch him die and maybe kill others. There is a sad reality behind this. So like, that's like fucked up. That's real bad. First off, not true. I mean, among other things, I did an interview when I was still working with Cracked at a young man who attempted to carry out a mass shooting at his school. This was back in the late 90s and got caught and stopped, thankfully, before he was able to shoot anybody. But he had the guns he was about to start.

He was penalized, obviously, like he was sent to, I think, a mental institution for a while. But like, he's like, it's been decades. He's like a normal person. He's got a life now. He's like, hasn't killed anyone. Like you can, in fact, intervene in people who are like going in killed anyone. Like you can in fact intervene in people who are like going in dark directions and they can be saved.

It happens all the time. Part of why it doesn't get more attention is that a guy shooting up a school obviously is a thing that people are gonna pay attention to. All the times every single day in which a mentor comes across a kid who's starting to head under a dark path and like reaches that convinces that person, you know, every time that a parent like sees that their child is starting to like embrace toxic aspects

of like belief and behavior and it starts to talk to them and you know starts to work with them and and tries to understand and counsel them. Every time people get pulled back from that brink, it doesn't like, you don't get a news story about that, right? Like, obviously. But that doesn't mean it's not happening. It's kind of fucked up to say that like, once people start to show that they have, that they're fetishizing violence,

that they're embracing racist or problematic beliefs or that they're starting toizing violence, that they're embracing racist or problematic beliefs or that they're starting to get addicted to drugs, that there's no way to save them. Like if you've lived a life, you know people who have been pulled away from all sorts of fucked up things. Or who have gone too far down a dark road and pulled themselves back, it happens all the time. Not that it's easy or simple,

these are terrible things to deal with as a kid, having a child who you think might shoot up a school, that's a terrifying position to be in, as a, but like, people get pulled away from that kind of stuff. Now, there is a sad, what are the three steps on? That is a, well, that's what we're about to talk about.

Oh no. It's a pretty sad story. Scott's stepson was involved in a serious bicycle accident at age 14. He suffered severe brain damage, which caused him to lose all impulse control. And he became terribly addicted to drugs and eventually died of a fentanyl overdose in 2018. This is a horrible story. There's a video in 2018 when Scott gets the news where he's

just like weeping to his audience and I have no doubt that it's genuine. Oh, yeah. I mean, it's yeah. Yeah. I don't want to brag on him for losing a child. No, I don't either. But like, number one, I think that 2018 video doesn't look to me like a man who like gave up on a child. It looks to me like a man who like gave up on a trial, that looks to me like a man who's sad because what he was doing didn't work. And I think it's very depressing that like the lesson he took out of this is that like, you can't save people when they start to have problems. Obviously, everyone can't be saved. Clearly Scott Stepson, whatever was going on, like was not something he was able to pull out of. And that's a tragedy.

I know multiple people who had serious addictions to like things like things that were going to kill them and stopped, you know, I have friends who like, I have a friend who survived shooting himself, like people come through terrible things and build lives afterwards. And the attitude that like when a young man is troubled, all you can do is let them die or murder them is... That is just... So that's such a bad thing to take out of this experience. That sounds sociopathic.

It is. And it's also... One of the things that's really problematic to me about this is that like he is breaking his stepson's death up in the context of a man who went on a mass shooting and murdered people. His stepson just had a drug addiction. Having a drug addiction and dying as a result of it is not in the same moral universe as shooting strangers to death with a fucking rifle. No.

Comparing those two things is insane. Well, I think it's the whole mentality of, oh, addiction is a moral failing, not a disease. Yeah, it's like, no, it's like number one, especially in this case, like this is a kid who's got like brain damage and he has no impulse control, which is sad and hard to deal with, but like, it's not the same as deciding to murder people. You shouldn't be talking about these things together. You're not even in the same realm. No, like, it's, um, and it's one of those things,

Scott, so obviously the culmination of this, where we are now, is that earlier this year, Scott made a number of super racist comments about black people and about how like white people just need to stop talking to and stop being, you know, associated with black people, stop living with black people. We just have to separate like it's pretty fucked up shit. And like everyone gets it. This is like the straw that finally breaks the camel's back.

He says something that like the normies take, you know take note of, and it leads to the collapse of his cartooning career. And like the space of a week, he gets dropped by, shit loads of newspapers, his syndicate, his publisher drop him, everybody drops him. And Scott, again, tries to do kind of the, I was really trying to make this very intelligent point, and all the really smart people got what I was trying to say in context, but the dumb people got what I was trying to say in context, but the dumb people got angry. My argument, Scott, is that a writer who repeatedly fails to get his point across to his audience

is bad at writing. Anyway, yep. It's one thing I remember from all that, because I do have people contact me and ask if I want to quote, it like, not really. Contact our students to color. That's what you should talk and do not me. But one thing I will always remember about it was feeling, I thought people like, you know, applauding the syndicate and Andrew's university. Yeah. And Andrew, and the real universal.

And I'm like, yeah, they did it, but like they took this. Yeah. This was like, they're way doggalistled before this. Like there was a, there countless points where they could have stood up and said, no, that's too far, dude. But like it literally got to a point

where newspapers had to say, oh, you're gonna lose this, this spot. And it finally hurt, and now they're like, oh, we're not gonna stand by it. Now you're not gonna stand by the fact that you're gonna lose this spot. And it finally hurt. And now they're like, oh, we're not gonna stand by it. Now, you're not gonna stand by the fact that you're losing money. If you had the morality, and again, I should point out, I'm saying this is myself not on behalf of King Features or Hearst Media, my syndicate, just my opinion.

If you really have any morality, he would have been dropped a long time ago. Yeah. Like this, like the bigotry has been there in display for a while. And now you're like, oh, now you have the morality because you're losing newspapers. Yeah. Now I will say, I am. Is that a comment I have now? Yeah, yeah, he's got, I am speaking on behalf of my corporation. Yeah, he's got his comic online. You can still read Dobert if you want to for some reason. It is now entirely focused on like weird cancel culture grievance shit.

But yeah, if you want that in your life, it's still available somewhere. And it's one of those things, you know, you are not speaking of the half of anyone else. I am speaking on behalf of a of my corporation. I am speaking on behalf of both Cools and Media and I Heart Radio. When I assure everyone, Scott Adams lives inside of a mansion shaped like Dilbert's head with a swimming pool out back also shaped like Dilbert's head, where he spends all of his recreational time. Right now, Scott is sitting in a swimming pool shaped like Dilbert's head, angry that people on the internet are making fun of him. And if you want to let Scott know that, let him know that you know that he lives in a house shaped like the head of Dilbert.

I think he'd appreciate that. Maybe it'll save him. I also remember, did he finally introduce a black character in his comic in the last year or so. Yeah, the first trip was literally using the black character to shit on trans people. Yeah, it's very, very Scott Adams. Everything he does is very Scott Adams. It's just, it's like that one shitty kid you went to school with, kind of like that one shitty kid you went to school with who this is the only attention geeking get and he's so proud of it and when people hate it's like I won't now you're just pathetic. Yeah you just kind of kind of sad bro.

And like you could really say you know I'm not talking to anybody I'm going to sit and join my money for the rest of my life. Yeah. Valid go for it And we have here. Again, there's not a single human being on the face of the Earth who has a bad opinion of Bill Waterson. Not, I mean, I'll probably send again, you used to deal with them.

Probably the syndicate, because he cost him a lot of money, but like, fucking A, you know, he was like, I made this for 10 years, I feel like if I keep making it, the quality will drop, I'm going to go paint landscapes somewhere in the rural Midwest for the rest of my life. And Jim Davis, again, you may not like Garfield.

You may think it's a shallow thump or whatever, but every cartoonist or every person is like, they were dumb. He's a sweetheart. He is very supportive. He is a nice man. He has never leapt into a fucking culture controversy. He knows that's not what we need from the Garfield man.

I don't need to know is a Garfield guy's opinion on any of this stuff. Like, It was at that comic Garfield minus Garfield when it came up. He could easily squash that instead. He's like, no, that's great idea. It's funny.

Yeah, keep doing it. Like, it's one of those, like, Jim Davis is never gonna like come in and be like, here's what everyone needs to know about, like, race mixing from Jim Davis. Oh, fuck. Like, he's never gonna give you that. And thank, like, that's again, earned his money.

Good for you, Jim Davis. And, you know what, Scott, just for some evidence of what you could be like, Jim Davis lives in a house shaped like Garfield's head. And we don't make fun of him for it because we respect Jim Davis. You do you Jim Davis, just keep on hating Mondays and telling us how fast need lasagna. And we're abuse of Odie and John creeping on the vet. That's sure. You've made it.

You've made it. Although, give us a better explanation what happened to fucking Lyman Davis it you've made it. Yeah, although give us a better explanation what happened to fucking Lyman Davis. Yeah, when I'm in alignment Davis. Yeah, that's some real deep Garfield lore for those of you who are real Garfield heads. Anyway, there's actually like a shocking amount of very deep and unsettling online Garfield lore. People should seek it out. There is a really terrifying. Seek it out on a dark night when you're alone in your house and really delve into the Garfield hole. But you know what other hole people should delve into. These ads and services? No, no, no. You're your

troubles. Oh, yes, my holes. My deep holes. Yes, yeah, yeah. Well, if you want to find me online, my comment online comic something positive has been going around for 21 years. It is something positive.net or if you want to read a new Popeye strip every Sunday that makes apparently certain uncles on Facebook mad go to comiskingdom.com slash pop-eye every Sunday. And thank you guys for having me. This has been, I mean, I was inifernacus or ever it's pronounced one of these. John awful human being who yeah, yeah, oh no Yeah, yeah, why not also a lot of a lot of great animator bastards out there, but

Again, I work in a field where like yeah, but we're left alone in dark rooms for hours on end Yeah, it's we're left alone in dark rooms for hours on end. Yeah, it's going to go one, two days. Yeah, yeah, a lot of people don't know this, but Gayhan Wilson helped build the Hiroshima bomb. Look it up. People, look it up. It's out there. Find the evidence.

I wanted, I almost made a joke about one of my predecessors on Popeye, but I'm pretty sure I would get a severe talking to it. So they were all help us lovely, lovely men. All of them. Just like everyone who's ever worked for Clear Channel Communications. Anyway, that's the podcast everybody. We're waiting. What about where they can find you? The internet. Oh, yeah, I have a book called After the Revolution. You can find it anywhere you find books.

Like type it at whatever wherever you get your books. Type it in. go to a bookstore, you know, with some sort of crude weapon, ideally a copy of Jerusalem by Alan Moore and threaten the teller until they buy a copy of my book after the revolution. That's how you do it. And if you, the listeners who do not enjoy ads about Reagan's gold coins would like to listen to this very podcast and all other cool zone media podcasts at free either coming soon or already out depending on when you're listening to this we have cooler zone media our ad free subscription channel exclusively on Apple podcasts is that right

Robert did I do it that is correct yeah sorry everybody it's it's just for people with iPhones but that is that is most of our listeners One day I will matter. We apologize to everyone else. Well, we'll figure it out. I'm an Android user too You know, we're all in this together, but sadly, it's harder than you'd think to work stuff like this out Anyway, we've requested in the zone media Apple podcasts Behind the bastards is a production of Cool Zone Media. For more from Cool Zone Media, visit our website CoolZoneMedia.com or check us out on the IHART Radio app, Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your podcasts. This is ICT.

Over the years, I've compiled thousands of inspiring and thought-provoking quotes. And now, I'm passing that knowledge onto you in my new daily podcast, Iced Tees Daily Game. In less than five minutes, I'll break down why these words matter and reveal personal stories that show them in action in my life. Listen to Iced Tees Daily Game every week day on the I Heart Radio app Apple Podcasts or wherever you get your

podcast and start your morning with me. Hey what's up y'all this is Eric Andre, but I made a podcast called Bomming about absolutely tanking on stage. I tell gnarly stories and I talk to friends about the worst moments of bombing and all sorts of ways. Bomming on stage, bombing in public, bombing in life, like the time I stole a girl's phone during a set and she dumped on stage and threw a big A-maker punch to my nose. Listen to bombing with Aircon Dray on Will Ferrell's big money players network on the I-Hart Radio app Apple Podcast or wherever you get your podcasts. I'm Sonari Englinton.

This is Shattering the System. The Podcast. Ed Buck is accused of doing horrible things that resulted in the deaths of two black men. We begin with the shocking crimes of Ed Buck. The accounts of the victims were truly shocking. When a federal prosecutor is shocked, you know you have a story.

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