Scott Adams
Scott Raymond Adams (born June 8, 1957) is an American author and cartoonist. He is the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, and the author of several nonfiction works of business, commentary, and satire. Adams worked in various clerical roles before he became a full-time cartoonist in 1995. While working at Pacific Bell in 1989, Adams created Dilbert; by the mid-1990s the strip had gained national prominence in America and began to reach a worldwide audience. Dilbert remained popular throughout the following decades, spawning several books written by Adams and becoming a cultural touchstone until it was dropped from syndication. It now runs as a webcomic.
For other people named Scott Adams, see Scott Adams (disambiguation).
Adams writes in a satirical way about the social and psychological landscape of white-collar workers in modern corporations. In addition, Adams has written books in various other areas, including the pandeistic spiritual novella God's Debris and books on political and management topics, including Loserthink.
In 2023, Dilbert was dropped by numerous newspapers and its distributor, Andrews McMeel Syndication, after Adams published a video in which he referred to black people as a "hate group" and advised white people to "get the hell away from black people." Adams later said this was a use of hyperbole.[2][3] He has continued the strip as Dilbert Reborn on his locals.com website since March 2023.
Early life and education[edit]
Adams was born on June 8, 1957,[4] in Windham, New York, the son of Paul and Virginia (née Vining) Adams.[5][6] He has described himself as "about half German"[7] and also has English, Irish, Welsh, Scottish, and Dutch ancestry.[8][9] In 2016, Adams said he had a small amount of Native American ancestry,[10] but later discovered via 23andme genetic testing that he does not have any detectable Native American genetic markers.[11] He was a fan of Peanuts comics while growing up and started drawing comics at age 6.[12] He won a drawing competition at age 11.[12]
Adams graduated from Windham-Ashland-Jewett Central School in 1975 and was the valedictorian of his class of 39 students. He earned a BA in economics from Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York in 1979.[13] He then moved to California and started work.[12] In 1986, he earned an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley.[14] Adams took Dale Carnegie Training and called it "life changing".[15]
Career[edit]
Office worker[edit]
Adams worked closely with telecommunications engineers at Crocker National Bank in San Francisco between 1979 and 1986. Upon joining the organization, he first worked as a teller. After four months in which he was twice held up at gunpoint, he entered a management training program.[12] His positions included management trainee, computer programmer, budget analyst, commercial lender, product manager, and supervisor.[12]
He later shifted to work at Pacific Bell. To devote time to developing a new career, he woke up every day at 4 a.m. and spent time at various endeavors; cartooning proved to be the most successful of them. Adams created Dilbert during this period of personal exploration.[16] The Dilbert name was suggested by his former boss, Mike Goodwin. Dogbert, originally named Dildog, was loosely based on his family's deceased pet beagle Lucy.[12] His submissions of Dilbert and other comic panels to various publications, including The New Yorker and Playboy, were not published, but an inspirational letter from a fan persuaded Adams to keep trying.[12] He worked at Pacific Bell between 1986 and June 30, 1995, and the personalities he encountered there inspired many of his Dilbert characters.[17] In 1989, while still employed at Pacific Bell, Adams launched Dilbert with United Media. To maintain his income, he continued to draw his cartoons during the early morning hours. His first payment for Dilbert was a monthly royalty check of $368.62.[12] Dilbert gradually became more popular. It was syndicated in 100 newspapers in 1991 and 400 by 1994. Adams attributed his success to his idea of including his email address in the panels, which resulted in feedback and suggestions from readers.[12]
Full-time cartoonist and author[edit]
Adams' success grew, and he became a full-time cartoonist as Dilbert reached 800 newspapers. In 1996, his first business book, The Dilbert Principle, was released. It expounded on his concept of the Dilbert principle.[12]
In 1997, Adams won the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist and Best Newspaper Comic Strip.[12] Logitech CEO Pierluigi Zappacosta invited Adams to impersonate a management consultant, which he did wearing a wig and false mustache. He tricked Logitech managers into adopting a mission statement that Adams described as "so impossibly complicated that it has no real content whatsoever".[18][19] His writing in San Jose Mercury News West Magazine regarding the incident earned him an Orwell Award.[20] By 2000, the comic was in 2,000 newspapers in 57 countries and 19 languages.[12]
His comic strips were adapted as a Dilbert TV series, which debuted in January 1999 and ran for two seasons on UPN. Adams served as executive producer and showrunner, along with Seinfeld writer Larry Charles. The show earned a Primetime Emmy Award in 1999. On June 28, 2020, Adams asserted to his followers on Twitter that the show had been canceled because he was white and UPN had made a decision to shift toward African-American viewers.[21]
In addition to his cartoon work, Adams has written books in various other areas, including self-improvement and religion.[22] His book God's Debris (2001) lays out a theory of pandeism, in which God blows itself up to see what will happen, which becomes the cause of our universe.[23] In The Religion War (2004), Adams suggests that followers of theistic religions such as Christianity and Islam are subconsciously aware that their religions are false, and that this awareness is reflected in their consistently acting as if these religions, and their threats of damnation for sinners, are false. In a 2017 interview, Adams said that his books on religion, not Dilbert, would be his ultimate legacy.[22] In 2023, Adams announced in a pinned tweet that he had re-published God's Debris for free for his subscribers, and would shortly publish an AI-voiced audiobook version.[24]
Real Coffee with Scott Adams[edit]
In 2015, Adams wrote blog posts predicting that Donald Trump had a 98 percent chance of winning the presidency based on his persuasion skills, and he started writing about Trump's persuasion techniques. His pieces on this topic grew popular, so he started writing about it regularly.[25] Adams soon developed this as a daily video presentation called Real Coffee with Scott Adams, distributed to Periscope, YouTube, ScottAdamsSays.com,[26] and Locals, where he covered topics such as current events, politics, persuasion, and routes to success.[27]
Real Coffee with Scott Adams has featured guests such as Naval Ravikant,[28] Ed Latimore,[29] Dave Rubin,[30] Erik Finman,[31] Greg Gutfeld,[32] Matt Gaetz,[33] Ben Askren,[34] Carpe Donktum,[35] Mark Schneider,[36] Steve Hsu,[37] Michael Shellenberger,[38][39] Carson Griffith,[40][41] Shiva Ayyadurai,[42] James Nortey,[43] Clint Morgan,[44] and Bjørn Lomborg.[45] In 2018, Kanye West shared multiple clips on Twitter from a Coffee episode titled: "Scott Adams tells you how Kanye showed the way to The Golden Age. With Coffee."[46] In 2020, President Trump retweeted an episode where Adams mocked Joe Biden.[47]
Adams offers paid subscriptions for exclusive content on Locals.[48] In 2020, Adams said: "For context, I expect my Dilbert income to largely disappear in the next year as newspapers close up forever. The coronavirus sped up that inevitable trend. Like many of you, I'm reinventing my life for a post-coronavirus world. The Locals platform is a big part of that."[49]
Other[edit]
Adams started Scott Adams Foods, Inc. in 1999, which made the Dilberito and Protein Chef. He sold off his intellectual property in this venture when the product failed in the marketplace in 2003. He was a restaurateur starting in 1997, but exited that business.[50][22]
Adams co-founded the service WhenHub, which has been described by Gizmodo as "similar to Cameo ... except instead of pre-recorded messages from movie stars and rappers, it offers live chats with a range of subject-matter experts".[51][52] In 2019, Adams briefly received negative media attention when during the Gilroy Garlic Festival shooting he posted a tweet suggesting that witnesses download the WhenHub app and "set your price to take calls". He later apologized, saying the message was "poorly worded".[53][54] As of 2024, the WhenHub website is inactive.[55]
Adams was a fan of the science fiction TV series Babylon 5. He appeared in the season 4 episode "Moments of Transition" as a character named "Mr. Adams" who hires former head of security Michael Garibaldi to locate his megalomaniacal dog and cat.[56] He had a cameo in "Review", a third-season episode of the TV series NewsRadio, in which Matthew Brock (played by Andy Dick) becomes an obsessed Dilbert fan. Adams is credited as "Guy in line behind Dave and Joe in first scene".[57]
Adams has been a guest on podcasts including Making Sense with Sam Harris,[58] The Tim Ferriss Show,[59] The James Altucher Show,[60] The Ben Shapiro Show,[61] The Rubin Report,[62] Real Talk with Zuby[63] and The David Pakman Show.[64] He has appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher,[65] Commonwealth Club of California,[66] Fox News[67] and Berkeley Haas.[68] Adams was interviewed for Mike Cernovich's documentaries Silenced (2016)[69] and Hoaxed (2019).[70] In 2016, Adams contributed a chapter of life advice to Tim Ferriss's collection, Tools of Titans.[71]
Personal life[edit]
Since late 2004, Adams has had focal dystonia, which has affected his ability to draw for lengthy periods.[116] He now draws on a graphics tablet. He also had spasmodic dysphonia, a condition that causes the vocal cords to behave abnormally. In July 2008, he underwent surgery to reroute the nerve connections to his vocal cords,[117] and his voice is now completely functional.[118]
Adams married Shelly Miles aboard a yacht, the Galaxy Commodore, on July 22, 2006, in San Francisco Bay, in a ceremony conducted by the ship's captain.[119] The two had met at a gym in Pleasanton, California, where Miles was an employee and Adams was a customer. Adams was stepfather to Miles' two children, Savannah and Justin, the latter of whom died of a fentanyl overdose in 2018 at age 18.[120][121][122] Adams and Miles divorced in 2014, and Adams said the two remained friends, with Miles moving only one block away after their separation.[123]
On Christmas Day in 2019, Adams announced on his podcast that he was engaged to Kristina Basham,[124] and later revealed that they had married on July 11, 2020. Basham, a model and baker, has two daughters and is a vice president at WhenHub.[22] On March 10, 2022, Adams announced on his YouTube podcast that he and Basham were getting divorced.[125]
Adams trained as a hypnotist.[126] He credits affirmations for many of his achievements, including scoring in the ninety-fourth percentile on a difficult qualification exam for business school and creating Dilbert's success. He states that the affirmations give him focus.[6] He has described a method he has used that he says gave him success: he pictured in his mind what he wanted and wrote it down 15 times a day on a piece of paper.[127] (This technique is used by Dogbert in a 1989 Dilbert strip.[128])
Adams continues to live in Pleasanton, California and is active in the San Francisco Bay Area.[129][130]
Recognition[edit]
Adams has received recognition for his work, including the National Cartoonists Society Reuben Award and Newspaper Comic Strip Award for 1997 for his work on Dilbert. He climbed the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) rankings of the 50 most influential management thinkers, placing 31st in 2001,[131] 27th in 2003,[132] 12th in 2005,[133] and 21st in 2007.[134] He received the Orwell Award in 1998 for his participation in "Mission Impertinent" for San Jose Mercury News West Magazine.[20]
In popular culture[edit]
Adams has coined several words and phrases over the years, including Confusopoly (businesses that stay afloat only by intentionally misleading their customers), the Dilbert principle (a variant on the Peter principle), Elbonia as a term for non-specific overseas countries, and Pointy-Haired Boss (PHB) and Induhvidual as insults.[135]
Adams is quoted in the book Steve Jobs by Walter Isaacson. Adams wrote a blog post in 2010 about Steve Jobs' response to Antennagate, in which he says "Apple's response to the iPhone 4 problem didn't follow the public relations playbook, because Jobs decided to rewrite the playbook ... If you want to know what genius looks like, study Jobs' words."[136] Jobs proudly emailed this around.[137]