Scott Adams' revolution was to get users to give him plot lines.
He was the first to publish an open way to communicate with him in order to out the corporate crazies, and readers did in droves, explaining the inanity of their workplace and getting secret retribution for stuff they clearly couldn't complain about publicly.
A good percentage of youtubers and substackers today actively cultivate their readership as a source of new material. They're more of a refining prism or filter for an otherwise unstated concerns than a source of wisdom.
Doing this seems to require identifying with your readers and their concerns. That could be disturbing to the author if the tide turns, or to the readers if they find out their role model was gaming them or otherwise unreal, but I imagine it is pretty heady stuff.
I hope he (and anyone facing cancer) has people with whom he can share honestly, and has access to the best health care available.
Some of you cite your favorite strips. I will too.
Dilbert comes down to the caves where trolls (accountants) reside and gets a tour. The guide points to a troll sitting behind a desk, and mumbling in a stupor: "nine, nine, nine...".
Guide: And this is our random numbers generator.
Dilbert: Are you sure those are random?
Guide: That's the problem with randomness - you can never be sure.
> “I’d like to extend my respect and compassion and sympathy for the ex president and his family, because they’re going to be going through an especially tough time,” Adams added.
That in and of itself puts him above what I've come to expect from this low-bar dip in American culture. Good for him.
That would explain his rather obvious lack of energy these days.
Adams has become a controversial figure in recent years. Regardless of what you think of him, as someone who has worked in Corporate America for over a decade, there really isn't anything quite like Dilbert to describe the sort of white collar insanity I've had to learn to take in stride. My first workplace as a junior developer was straight out of Dilbert and Office Space. I have a gigantic collection of digitized Dilbert strips that best describe office situations I've run into in real life – many of them including the pointy haired boss.
He's expressed a lot of what I would consider... stupid opinions these days, but I would be sad to learn he's no longer with us.
I found it hard to reconcile his charming and witty comic strips with some of the ugly things he wrote elsewhere. I would never usually throw a book away, but I made an exception for one of his books, because I didn't want anyone to see it on my bookshelf and I didn't want to give to anyone else.
Adams did such a great job exposing the absurdities of the American white collar workplace, as seen by the underlings. So it is puzzling how he went over to the dark side of the pointy haired Boss. And the Boss's masters.
I hope some pharma underling might have cooked up some good meds for Adams, despite all the pharma bosses and their backers.
Oh no, I'm sorry to hear that. In the early 90s, my family didn't get the newspaper, so my friend who lived in town would save the comics page for me to read every week. Dilbert was one of the big ones! It was funny and subversive, and I'll remember all the laughs Scott Adams has given me.
My dad was diagnosed with stage 4 metastatic prostate cancer in late 2018. A few years before that, the medical community had switched away from PSA screening, as it was thought more harm than good was being done from early stage intervention.
My dad's still ok. He had some localized radiation to beat back the biggest tumors on his spine, then did a round of chemo. This past summer he did a fun immunotherapy treatment, not CAR-T... but something more like that than checkpoint inhibitors. Otherwise his tumors have been kept to almost nothing due to hormone therapy.
Unfortunately, what eventually happens is you accumulate enough hormone therapty resistant cancer cells that the tumors start growing again in a meaningful way, and then there's not much that can be done. I assume this is the stage that Scott Adams has had and that he's been battling it for many years by now. With President Biden, it seems likely that his prostate cancer will respond to treatment, and if this is the case then he will likely die of something else, as is usual now for old men who are diagnosed with prostate cancer.
I have to admit, I'm not up to speed on anything he's been up to lately, but I absolutely read and enjoyed Dilbert way back when. I'm sorry to hear he's not long for the world.
Every time I see someone kitted out in VR gear, I think about his prediction that the Star Trek holodeck will be humanity's last invention and I'm very glad they don't have a button that can beam the next person waiting for their turn into a concrete wall.
If he expects this summer to be his demise, then it must have mutated and spread to vital organs. Metastatic cancer is the true killer. Cancer in your bones can linger for years without progression.
I know this will sound dumb, but it's really hard to put into words how much I enjoyed Dilbert in its heyday. I mean at one time Dilbert was one of three web-comics that I read religiously. It was Dilbert, User Friendly, and Sluggy Freelance. The comics weren't just "comics", they mattered to me. Seriously.
Then UF quit publishing new episodes, and then Scott went all alt-right and Dilbert disappeared behind a paywall, and now only Sluggy is still standing. I guess. I have to admit, I quit reading regularly quite some time for reasons I can't even explain.
Anyway... not sure what the relevance of all of this is. Just reminiscing about a day when the 'Net felt a lot different I guess. At any rate, while I'd become less of a "Scott Adams fan" over the last few years, this news still makes me feel absolutely sick. I wouldn't wish prostate cancer on anyone. :-(
Scott Adam is the reason why I chose not to pursue a career in IT, despite my love for computers.
Today I am an on site high voltage test engineer. People respect what I do and let me do my work in peace, mostly.
Reading the horror stories I so often see coming from the IT world, I am grateful to use my computer skills mostly as a hobby. Although my computer and networking skills do come in useful in my profession, I’m glad it’s not the source of my income.
Once I became a software developer my mom gave me a Dilbert desk calendar every xmas. She had worked in tech startups since 1979 and loved Dilbert. She was the type of person to always try and bring the positive, never complain. I like to think that Dilbert gave he a chance to release some things/commiserate with me.
In the 2000s at least, many cubicles had at least one Dilbert up. If you worked there for a while, you probably knew the story and it could get a chuckle out of you. Some people had two. More than four visible Dilberts, however, was a terrible sign.
I was never really reading the strips, but I fell in love with the cartoon. It had a very unique tone with the same famous satire.
Thankfully with all the voice actors and other talent that went into the show, it's easier to disconnect it from the hateful person Adams ended up revealing himself to be.
Always was a fan of Dilbert, but I especially enjoyed a short story he wrote called God’s Debris when I discovered it as a young undergrad. Sad news indeed.
Scott Adams is basically a sort of older version of Chris Chan. A cartoonist whose unreliable narration of own life became part of the whole performance.
But thing is—boy who cried wolf—not sure if he actually has the prognosis of cancer he says he has? It sounds mean, I reckon he does have it, but his past descriptions of health problems were confusing enough that I wouldn't be surprised if he recovers next year and spins it into a story about how he found a cure.
A lot of comments here mention his comics or his controversial pro-Trump opinions in the last 10 years, but I would like to emphasize and point out his influence he had over the lifes of so many people with his life strategies and explanations, microlessons, memes and ways to look at the world. Like
* systems over goals: the theory that you shouldn't set yourself specific goals, but instead just find a system how to work towards your goals regularly
* talent stacks: the theory that, in order to succeed in life, you don't need to be the best in one skill, but good enough in a useful combination of several skills that can be used together
* the idea that managing your energy is more important than managing your time
* the Adams rule of slow moving disasters: any kind of disaster that takes many years to manifest can be overcome by humanity. Scary are those disasters that don't give you enough time to react.
* rewiring your brain: that by finding the right way to look at something, you can modify your own behavior. He wrote a whole book full of recipes to change your behavior and feelings.
* despite not listening to Rap, a long time ago when Kanye West had one of his first successful songs, someone sent Adams the lyrics to some song and by looking at the lyrics Adams recognized West as a unique genius
* you should never trust a video as proof of anything, if you can't see what happened before or after. It's most likely taken out of context. Just like most quotes are worthless without context.
* "perception is reality": that how someone perceives a fact is more important than what actually happened
* "simultaneous realities": realities are shaped by how people perceive them. And two people can disagree on something, while both are right at the same time, because they view the same thing through two different lenses and thus live in different realities.
* TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome): the observation that many people hate Trump so much that they lose the capability of rational thought and either just shut their brain down when talking about anything related to Trump, or want to do the opposite of what Trump wants
* "word-thinking": when someone find labels for things or people, and then forms opinions based on the label
* detecting cognitive dissonance: when someone just shuts down their brain because the experienced reality doesn't match their expectation
* "tells for lies", like analyzing people on TV and looking for clues that they lie
* coining the term "fine people hoax" for a video snippet that was constantly repeated on media to show Trump having one opinion, even though when watching the whole video it was clear that he meant the opposite.
* "logic doesn't win arguments", the rules of persuasion, and the theory of 'master persuaders'
* he predicted Trump winning the 2016 election when Trump had just announced his campaign, long before the primaries, because he recognized a 'master persuader' in him.
And there are probably many more things I don't remember right now, but his books and blog shaped my way of thinking, and I am using his way of looking at the world every day.
I must admit I didn't really follow 'Coffee with Scott Adams' - I think he kind of jumped the shark when having to fill at least 30 minutes every day, and I am not that interested in politics. But that doesn't diminish his accomplishments.
I most enjoy his analysis of persuasion techniques and what works and doesn't work. When he first started writing about this, using Hillary v Trump as examples, Hillary suddenly changed her methods.
I remember his remark about Hillary's campaign logo looking like directions to the hospital.
Kinda wild how no comments here suggest that this person's disingenuous nature has made many believe that this is made up. It will be discouraging to find out.
damn . I wonder if it's possible for the cancer to spread fast enough that tests would not have helped, so from elevated PSA to metastatic cancer in the span of months, or a year? This could have been the case with Biden and Adams.
Dilbert creator Scott Adams says he will die soon from same cancer as Joe Biden
(thewrap.com)451 points by dale_huevo 19 May 2025 | 605 comments
Comments
He was the first to publish an open way to communicate with him in order to out the corporate crazies, and readers did in droves, explaining the inanity of their workplace and getting secret retribution for stuff they clearly couldn't complain about publicly.
A good percentage of youtubers and substackers today actively cultivate their readership as a source of new material. They're more of a refining prism or filter for an otherwise unstated concerns than a source of wisdom.
Doing this seems to require identifying with your readers and their concerns. That could be disturbing to the author if the tide turns, or to the readers if they find out their role model was gaming them or otherwise unreal, but I imagine it is pretty heady stuff.
I hope he (and anyone facing cancer) has people with whom he can share honestly, and has access to the best health care available.
Dilbert comes down to the caves where trolls (accountants) reside and gets a tour. The guide points to a troll sitting behind a desk, and mumbling in a stupor: "nine, nine, nine...".
Guide: And this is our random numbers generator.
Dilbert: Are you sure those are random?
Guide: That's the problem with randomness - you can never be sure.
Edit: Found it here: https://www.americanscientist.org/article/the-quest-for-rand....
And thank you, Scott - many laughs thanks to you.
<Dilbert looks back with a blank stare>
---
Godspeed Scott. Thank you for all the laughs.
That in and of itself puts him above what I've come to expect from this low-bar dip in American culture. Good for him.
Adams has become a controversial figure in recent years. Regardless of what you think of him, as someone who has worked in Corporate America for over a decade, there really isn't anything quite like Dilbert to describe the sort of white collar insanity I've had to learn to take in stride. My first workplace as a junior developer was straight out of Dilbert and Office Space. I have a gigantic collection of digitized Dilbert strips that best describe office situations I've run into in real life – many of them including the pointy haired boss.
He's expressed a lot of what I would consider... stupid opinions these days, but I would be sad to learn he's no longer with us.
I hope some pharma underling might have cooked up some good meds for Adams, despite all the pharma bosses and their backers.
My dad's still ok. He had some localized radiation to beat back the biggest tumors on his spine, then did a round of chemo. This past summer he did a fun immunotherapy treatment, not CAR-T... but something more like that than checkpoint inhibitors. Otherwise his tumors have been kept to almost nothing due to hormone therapy.
Unfortunately, what eventually happens is you accumulate enough hormone therapty resistant cancer cells that the tumors start growing again in a meaningful way, and then there's not much that can be done. I assume this is the stage that Scott Adams has had and that he's been battling it for many years by now. With President Biden, it seems likely that his prostate cancer will respond to treatment, and if this is the case then he will likely die of something else, as is usual now for old men who are diagnosed with prostate cancer.
Every time I see someone kitted out in VR gear, I think about his prediction that the Star Trek holodeck will be humanity's last invention and I'm very glad they don't have a button that can beam the next person waiting for their turn into a concrete wall.
https://www.yahoo.com/entertainment/dilbert-creator-scott-ad...
If the hypothesis turns out to be true, prostate cancer could be easily defeated before it has a chance to take a hold.
I know this will sound dumb, but it's really hard to put into words how much I enjoyed Dilbert in its heyday. I mean at one time Dilbert was one of three web-comics that I read religiously. It was Dilbert, User Friendly, and Sluggy Freelance. The comics weren't just "comics", they mattered to me. Seriously.
Then UF quit publishing new episodes, and then Scott went all alt-right and Dilbert disappeared behind a paywall, and now only Sluggy is still standing. I guess. I have to admit, I quit reading regularly quite some time for reasons I can't even explain.
Anyway... not sure what the relevance of all of this is. Just reminiscing about a day when the 'Net felt a lot different I guess. At any rate, while I'd become less of a "Scott Adams fan" over the last few years, this news still makes me feel absolutely sick. I wouldn't wish prostate cancer on anyone. :-(
Sad that this man is dying of cancer and letting his “enemies” live rent free in his head. I hope he can find some peace before he passes.
Today I am an on site high voltage test engineer. People respect what I do and let me do my work in peace, mostly.
Reading the horror stories I so often see coming from the IT world, I am grateful to use my computer skills mostly as a hobby. Although my computer and networking skills do come in useful in my profession, I’m glad it’s not the source of my income.
Thankfully with all the voice actors and other talent that went into the show, it's easier to disconnect it from the hateful person Adams ended up revealing himself to be.
I wonder what he has been up to the last couple years.
But thing is—boy who cried wolf—not sure if he actually has the prognosis of cancer he says he has? It sounds mean, I reckon he does have it, but his past descriptions of health problems were confusing enough that I wouldn't be surprised if he recovers next year and spins it into a story about how he found a cure.
* systems over goals: the theory that you shouldn't set yourself specific goals, but instead just find a system how to work towards your goals regularly
* talent stacks: the theory that, in order to succeed in life, you don't need to be the best in one skill, but good enough in a useful combination of several skills that can be used together
* the idea that managing your energy is more important than managing your time
* the Adams rule of slow moving disasters: any kind of disaster that takes many years to manifest can be overcome by humanity. Scary are those disasters that don't give you enough time to react.
* rewiring your brain: that by finding the right way to look at something, you can modify your own behavior. He wrote a whole book full of recipes to change your behavior and feelings.
* despite not listening to Rap, a long time ago when Kanye West had one of his first successful songs, someone sent Adams the lyrics to some song and by looking at the lyrics Adams recognized West as a unique genius
* you should never trust a video as proof of anything, if you can't see what happened before or after. It's most likely taken out of context. Just like most quotes are worthless without context.
* "perception is reality": that how someone perceives a fact is more important than what actually happened
* "simultaneous realities": realities are shaped by how people perceive them. And two people can disagree on something, while both are right at the same time, because they view the same thing through two different lenses and thus live in different realities.
* TDS (Trump Derangement Syndrome): the observation that many people hate Trump so much that they lose the capability of rational thought and either just shut their brain down when talking about anything related to Trump, or want to do the opposite of what Trump wants
* "word-thinking": when someone find labels for things or people, and then forms opinions based on the label
* detecting cognitive dissonance: when someone just shuts down their brain because the experienced reality doesn't match their expectation
* "tells for lies", like analyzing people on TV and looking for clues that they lie
* coining the term "fine people hoax" for a video snippet that was constantly repeated on media to show Trump having one opinion, even though when watching the whole video it was clear that he meant the opposite.
* "logic doesn't win arguments", the rules of persuasion, and the theory of 'master persuaders'
* he predicted Trump winning the 2016 election when Trump had just announced his campaign, long before the primaries, because he recognized a 'master persuader' in him.
And there are probably many more things I don't remember right now, but his books and blog shaped my way of thinking, and I am using his way of looking at the world every day.
I must admit I didn't really follow 'Coffee with Scott Adams' - I think he kind of jumped the shark when having to fill at least 30 minutes every day, and I am not that interested in politics. But that doesn't diminish his accomplishments.
Although I thought his comics growing up were quirky, I was probably too young to appreciate them (xkcd was more my thing anyway).
Knowing more about him and what he says / thinks turns me off Dilbert entirely.
I doubt he'll go as he says. Sounds like a plead for sympathy / attention.
I remember his remark about Hillary's campaign logo looking like directions to the hospital.
I'll miss him.