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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsDilbert Creator’s Ever-worsening P.R. Crisis - Sexist Jerk's Been Trolling The Internet As A sock
BY MARY ELIZABETH WILLIAM
When commenters on MetaFilter started ragging on a recent Wall Street Journal story by Scott Adams, the Dilbert creator and sexist jackass who last month opined that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently, one user, plannedchaos, leapt to his defense. He has a certified genius I.Q., and thats hard to hide, noted plannedchaos, who went on to ask, Is it Adams enormous success at self-promotion that makes you jealous and angry?
Mr. Chaos has apparently long been a fan of Adams; Gawker noted Monday that early this year, he was posting on Reddit that Its fair to say you disagree with Adams. But you cant rule out the hypothesis that youre too dumb to understand what hes saying. And hes a certified genius. How fortunate for Adams there are people in the world not too dumb to understand the certified genius. It just happens that theyre all Scott Adams. On Friday, the cartoonist admitted on MetaFilter that he and plannedchaos are one and the same. My tie! Its curving upward in astonishment!
Adams didnt invent the art of defensively conversing with or about oneself on the Internet the practice of sock puppetry has a long and ignoble history. Five years ago, New Republic scribe Lee Siegel was suspended after the revelation that hed been posting on his blogs forums as sprezzatura, a fan who opined that Siegel is brave, brilliant, and wittier than (Jon) Stewart will ever be. Take that, you bunch of immature, abusive sheep, and told another poster whod questioned his identity flat out that Im not Lee Siegel, you imbecile. And in 2007, Whole Foods chief executive John Mackey, celebrated advocate of truth in labeling, was revealed to have spent eight years hiding behind a fake identity on Yahoo boards to disparage competitors, promote his companys stock, and even praise his own alleged good looks. His alter ego, Rahodeb, once took the time to note, I like Mackeys haircut. I think he looks cute!
In Adams case, his exposure as a self-aggrandizing Internet troll who enjoys talking about himself in the third person brought no apologies or admissions of shame. He instead rationalized his stunt, pouting to the MetaFilter community, Im sorry I peed in your cesspool, and adding, smart people were on to me after the first post. That made it funnier. Ah, yes, like when he posted, I hate Adams for his success too, when he really was that awesome, successful Scott Adams in disguise hilarious! Its like when Lois Lane gets all worked up about Superman, and Clark Kent is just standing around like, awww yeaaaah.
Adams further countered on Monday with a fabulously self-congratulatory blog post account of his actions, explaining, Conflict of interest is like a prison that locks in both the truth and the lies. One workaround for that problem is to change the messenger. Thats where an alias comes in handy. When you remove the appearance of conflict of interest, it allows others to listen to the evidence without judging. Oh, it was about the evidence! The evidence that, as plannedchaos wrote, Everyone on this page is talking about him, researching him, and obsessing about him especially plannedchaos. Adams also draws parallels between his situation and that of Orange County Republican Party central committee member Marilyn Davenport, who has been attacked for forwarding an email with Obamas head Photoshopped onto a chimp . (Both she and Adams, he argues, were victim of the Internets lack of context.)
Continues here (a couple of the links wouldn't embed but are available at Salon, sorry about that) : http://www.salon.com/2011/04/19/scott_adams_sock_puppetry_scandal/
Dorian Gray
(13,490 posts)who has nothing better to do. Sad life.
cyberswede
(26,117 posts)He should be embarrassed.
WinkyDink
(51,311 posts)leftyohiolib
(5,917 posts)Vinnie From Indy
(10,820 posts)He should change the name of his cartoon to Douchebag or Douchbert or something.
geek tragedy
(68,868 posts)Arugula Latte
(50,566 posts)Glad he's exposed.
haikugal
(6,476 posts)vi5
(13,305 posts)What's the reasoning for posting it now? I mean yeah the guy is a tool and was rightly ridiculed at the time. But am I missing some new found relevance on this?
Turborama
(22,109 posts)I did see April out of the corner of my eye but didn't notice the day or year. A link to it was in the "related stories" section at the bottom of this article I was reading and as that article is from today I assumed this was as well.
Rex
(65,616 posts)That is about as big a surprise as the 1000's of jokes he wrote that are so boring and unrealistic, even cube rats in a datacenter can't relate. I might have chuckled once or twice, ziggy is a hee haw laugh riot compared to dilbert.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)That's gonna leave a mark.
onehandle
(51,122 posts)freshwest
(53,661 posts)Jim Lane
(11,175 posts)No cartoonist or columnist hits 100%, but Dilbert is well above average in making me laugh.
So Adams is a tool? I think I've read that Robert Frost was a real monster to the people in his life. That doesn't matter to my assessment of his work.
And let's not even think about how much of the music I enjoy was created by drug abusers.
Warren DeMontague
(80,708 posts)ck4829
(35,042 posts)aandegoons
(473 posts)Smart is not a number.