Previously on Comics: On Dilbert and Coincidences

Good morning! We’re nearly to the end of September, can you believe it? Pretty soon it’s spooky season.

Fittingly, we have a tale of terror: Scott Adams is running his mouth again. After vaguely tweeting that Dilbert had been canceled in 77 newspapers last week, Adams followed it up with a tweet stating that cancellation was ‘probably’ a coincidence, juxtaposed against a screenshot of a Bloomberg headline labeling his comic strip as the ‘voice of ESG opposition’.

Screen capture of a tweet by Scott Adams, creator of Dilbert, in which he states his strips' cancellation in 77 newspapers is probably a coincidence.
ESG stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance principles, a set of principles companies use to implement sustainability practices, among other things.

Bloomberg is the creation of Mike Bloomberg, three-term mayor of New York and recent Democratic presidential candidate. The subtext is, of course, that Adams is being silenced for his views. Adams does include, as a parenthetical here and as a footnote to his original tweet, that the cancellations are all from one large chain of newspapers, but he notably doesn’t include the greater context of that. Probably a coincidence.

That context is that Lee Enterprises, the owner of those 77 newspapers, has drastically restructured its newspaper comic strip offerings. In a decision to offer a “uniform set of offerings,” Lee Enterprises has streamlined what comics are delivered through its papers, which has resulted in the removal of Dilbert, yes, but also in the removal of such newspaper mainstays as Blondie and Family Circus. Adams doesn’t have any obligation to include the names of those other strips in his announcement of Dilbert’s cancelation, but his decision to frame the issue the way he did implies that the move is an attack on just his strip and no other. This is not true, but that doesn’t particularly matter.

For all of his faults (and he has many), Adams has been playing this game for a long time, and he knows how to present information in just the right way. When he says that his strip is canceled, when he says that it’s probably a coincidence and includes a headline in which his strip is said to take on an inflammatory stance, he is aware of the ways those implications will be received. When his followers blame “the liberals” for such things, he doesn’t correct them—it doesn’t serve him to do so. He has, of course, included the detail that the cancellation is part of a move by one large chain, which he knows alters the story, and so even this he’s included in the most inflammatory way possible, associating that with the implications of a conspiratorial move to silence him. Adams does not accuse Bloomberg, either the organization or the man, of silencing him, because that would open him up to a response. He does, however, make sure that his increasingly radicalized fanbase is aware of Bloomberg, even as he paints himself and his work a victim.

This kind of tactic is not unique to Adams, of course—it’s very common with a certain sect of conspiratorial fear-mongering. Fortunately, it’s also easy to spot once you know how to look for it. It’s even easy to replicate! For instance, did you know that two days after Adams tweeted out Dilbert’s cancellation in 77 newspapers across the United States, the BBC reported an increase in barn owl chicks in the UK, resulting in improved biodiversity?

This is probably a coincidence.

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Nola Pfau

Nola Pfau

Nola is a bad influence. She can be found on twitter at @nolapfau, where she's usually making bad (really, absolutely terrible) jokes and occasionally sharing adorable pictures of her dog.

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