Dilbert loses newspapers, publishers, distributor, and possibly its website

[Buriedcode]

True, but she hasn't faced any real consequences. She still has her acting job. Had a pale male said something bad about black people, he would have been treated much more harshly, even if he didn't receive the same level of public criticism. Take historian David Starkey for example. This obvious double standard shows that black/minority privilege is real in many scenarios.

I don't think she should be cancelled. She should be free to make such silly, hateful comments if she likes and the same should be true for Scott Adams.

I'm not sure you can really compare Scott Adams, David Starkey, and the lady's remarks.  Scott Adams openly said he thought black were a "hate group", and said he thought whites should steer clear of them; David starkey said "The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture.".  What she said was pretty poor taste and frankly stupid, but nowhere near as racist as the other two.

Also, whenever I read about someone being "cancelled" it is because their employers recieve so many complaints it outweighs the benefits of employing them - so they are dismissed.  I'm not sure this is unfair since part of employment is not damaging the companies repuation/image - if an employee's actions create financial harm beyond any income that employee generates, why would they not fire them?

These people stated their opinions - and far from being silenced, had those opinions posted in TV shows and newspapers around the world.  But somehow the obvious consequences of sharing those opinions is "unfair" ?

[Zero999]

True, but she hasn't faced any real consequences. She still has her acting job. Had a pale male said something bad about black people, he would have been treated much more harshly, even if he didn't receive the same level of public criticism. Take historian David Starkey for example. This obvious double standard shows that black/minority privilege is real in many scenarios.

I don't think she should be cancelled. She should be free to make such silly, hateful comments if she likes and the same should be true for Scott Adams.

I'm not sure you can really compare Scott Adams, David Starkey, and the lady's remarks.  Scott Adams openly said he thought black were a "hate group", and said he thought whites should steer clear of them; David starkey said "The whites have become black. A particular sort of violent, destructive, nihilistic, gangster culture.".  What she said was pretty poor taste and frankly stupid, but nowhere near as racist as the other two.

Also, whenever I read about someone being "cancelled" it is because their employers recieve so many complaints it outweighs the benefits of employing them - so they are dismissed.  I'm not sure this is unfair since part of employment is not damaging the companies repuation/image - if an employee's actions create financial harm beyond any income that employee generates, why would they not fire them?

These people stated their opinions - and far from being silenced, had those opinions posted in TV shows and newspapers around the world.  But somehow the obvious consequences of sharing those opinions is "unfair" ?

It's subjective and open to interpretation to some degree. Not all black people find what Scott Adams said offensive. Some have interpreted as him referring specifically to blacks who hate whites and even agree with him.

I just chose a couple of examples currently in the news. It doesn't change the fact there are plenty of examples of black people saying nasty things about whites and getting away with it. I could talk about that nutty professor in the video linked above (skip to 9:13 for her racist rant) or Chicago Mayor Lori Lightfoot, who refused one on one interviews with white journalists. The double standard definitely exists and is plain to see.

[james_s]

It's subjective and open to interpretation to some degree. Not all black people find what Scott Adams said offensive. Some have interpreted as him referring specifically to blacks who hate whites and even agree with him.

I thought it was obvious that's what he was referring to, what else could he mean? It seems a significant segment of the population today simply does not grasp context in any form, nor implied things, ie if I were to complain about "rude Americans doing xyz" it should be obvious that I'm talking specifically about the rude variety of Americans and their behavior, not stating that all Americans are rude. The thought that all black people find someone or something offensive is in itself racist. Black people like any other people are individuals. We can make statistical generalizations but nobody can speak for all of them.

[.RC.]

There are a subset of individuals out there that only see what they want to see.   When someone says something they do not like they will zero in on something insignificant and use that to launch a personal attack on the poster.   It gets really absurd at times. Like EEVBlog #502, The $19 Hameg Oscillscope.  While testing, Dave brings up the ABC logo on the screen.  Obviously he is a raging left wing communist socialist pinko.   

In fact after my interactions on internet forums, it is more widespread then you think (not raging left wing communist socialist pinko's).

[RJSV]

   If people enter that space, with pre-conceived notions about the so-called 'NEW' racism...then yes, they will see racism in that question, and answer in that context, that being that there is a new racist behind every tree, out there, and  of course, (wink wink) that statement being read for a survey is USING CODE.

   Give me a break, I say.  These days the main media behave (beneath), like a band of teenage gossipy kids, running for sophomore class president.  Reading second warmed 'news' regurgitated here, like compliant little robots.

   Try ask this (in a survey of 1000 random citizens):
   "Are you comfortable with the phrase: 'All white men are racist'..."
Stop dancing around the issue,  there are those (in media) who wish for a real race war, not some endless debate.

[EEVblog]

It's subjective and open to interpretation to some degree. Not all black people find what Scott Adams said offensive. Some have interpreted as him referring specifically to blacks who hate whites and even agree with him.

Most black people, and in particular black pundits did not find it offensive at all.
Show me one black pundit who was grossly offended and outraged by it and wanted him cancelled and I'll show you a dozen that were not. Adams has been on many black hosted shows and podcasts explaining it and they all agree with him.
Practically all the outrage came from the (white) media which were already against him and were looking for any excuse to take him out. Dumb move on Adam's part from a business point of view, but he did it deliberately to provoke the discussion.
Anyway, this is all just rehashing what's been discussed before.

[EEVblog]

Not sure why you say that. My understanding is they do have the choice, on multiple platforms.

That's not how the newspaper business works. No syndication company, no comic in newspapers.
And in this case said syndication company had the website and reader database.

Sure. So what? That doesn't conflict with what I wrote!
People do still have the choice of reading Adams' output, because Adams has arranged for it to be on other platforms.
Such free market choice and activities are just what libertarians love and promote.

You know very well this is about Adam's being cancelled and having the newspaper distribution taken away from him completely.
Countless millions of people can no longer read it in newspapers, like they have done for 30 years, it's not an option any more.
His website and database was also taken away from him, and that's were almost everyone else read it for free, including myself.

Now if we want it we have to pay for it direct from Adam's otherwise he doesn't get paid anything. Whereas before he got paid via newspaper syndication rights and by advertising revenue on the website email list (again, via the syndication company who controlled it).

[tggzzz]

Not sure why you say that. My understanding is they do have the choice, on multiple platforms.

That's not how the newspaper business works. No syndication company, no comic in newspapers.
And in this case said syndication company had the website and reader database.

Sure. So what? That doesn't conflict with what I wrote!
People do still have the choice of reading Adams' output, because Adams has arranged for it to be on other platforms.
Such free market choice and activities are just what libertarians love and promote.

You know very well this is about Adam's being cancelled and having the newspaper distribution taken away from him completely.

Not quite. This sub-thread is about something different, specifically a comment by Zero999, viz with my emphasis

...

There are plenty of others who would have been happy to continue to see [Adams'] content, in various publications, yet no longer have the choice.

Not sure why you say that. My understanding is they do have the choice, on multiple platforms.

That context has been "lost". (The ability to include multiple levels of quoting to preserve context is vital when having subtle conversations on a forum, and is one reason I ignore StackExchange EDABoard and similar.)

My point, which Zero999 has not contested, is that people do still have the choice. A different choice, but a choice nonetheless.

Countless millions of people can no longer read it in newspapers, like they have done for 30 years, it's not an option any more.
His website and database was also taken away from him, and that's were almost everyone else read it for free, including myself.

Now if we want it we have to pay for it direct from Adam's otherwise he doesn't get paid anything. Whereas before he got paid via newspaper syndication rights and by advertising revenue on the website email list (again, via the syndication company who controlled it).

Agreed. That is beyond doubt.

Creators losing control of their content is not a new phenomenon[1]. It is written into the contract between creators and distributors. Maybe that is/was a "Faustian bargain", but both parties did enter into it willingly.

Personally, like many others, I was happy to be a freeloader and I feel I have lost something by not being able to see new content in a newspaper/website. I - and the many others - will have to make our own minds up about how much we have lost. That is a personal choice which is open to everybody: money for access to content.

[1] Taylor Swift is one recent well-publicised example. Another more surprising one is Arnold Schwarzenegger and his film "Pumping Iron"; he has become embarassed by it and has (allegedly) spent a lot of his money buying up copies so nobody can see them.

[tggzzz]

It's subjective and open to interpretation to some degree. Not all black people find what Scott Adams said offensive. Some have interpreted as him referring specifically to blacks who hate whites and even agree with him.

Most black people, and in particular black pundits did not find it offensive at all.
Show me one black pundit who was grossly offended and outraged by it and wanted him cancelled and I'll show you a dozen that were not. Adams has been on many black hosted shows and podcasts explaining it and they all agree with him.
Practically all the outrage came from the (white) media which were already against him and were looking for any excuse to take him out.

Yes, that kind of "proactive offence" being taken on behalf of others is a very destructive trend.

My favourite discussion of it is from the West Wing:


To save readers 2mins of their remaining life, the TLDR is:

• political aides worried that having a black kid being the President's bagcarrier is politically bad optics
• they ask the head of the armed services, a black man
• his response is "will you treat him with respect and pay him a fair wage?". "Yes". "Then should I care. I've got real life problems to deal with and can't be worried about cosmetic ones?"

I like that attitude.

Dumb move on Adam's part from a business point of view, but he did it deliberately to provoke the discussion.

Agreed.

A principal difference between adults and children is that adults are expected to take responsibility for their actions and accept the consequences. I presume Adams is doing that gracefully.

But are other people being "proactively offended" on his behalf?

[EEVblog]

A principal difference between adults and children is that adults are expected to take responsibility for their actions and accept the consequences. I presume Adams is doing that gracefully.
But are other people being "proactively offended" on his behalf?

The opposite. White SJW's are being proactively offended on behalf of black people. Nothing new there, that's how the modern world operates.
But yes, Adams is taking is gracefully. This not an off-handed remark on his part, he deliberately put his career on the line to steer the race issue in a different direction. That's not me guessing, he's admitted this.

[EEVblog]

Creators losing control of their content is not a new phenomenon[1]. It is written into the contract between creators and distributors. Maybe that is/was a "Faustian bargain", but both parties did enter into it willingly.

Yes. I've said it was a bad business decision on Adam's part. Classic example in fact.

[EEVblog]

My point, which Zero999 has not contested, is that people do still have the choice. A different choice, but a choice nonetheless.

It would be like me losing my website, my Youtube channels, all my alternative video channels, and every revenue stream I had. And my only remaining option would be to put new content behind a Patreon or Locals paywall.
Yes my content would still be technically available, and people would still have a choice, but it has totally changed the game for everyone.
He and practically all his readers got nuked. And in his case we are talking millions of people beign left with nothing unless they pony up $7/month on a platform they almost certainly don't use for anything else.

[tggzzz]

A principal difference between adults and children is that adults are expected to take responsibility for their actions and accept the consequences. I presume Adams is doing that gracefully.
But are other people being "proactively offended" on his behalf?

The opposite. White SJW's are being proactively offended on behalf of black people. Nothing new there, that's how the modern world operates.
But yes, Adams is taking is gracefully. This not an off-handed remark on his part, he deliberately put his career on the line to steer the race issue in a different direction. That's not me guessing, he's admitted this.

I don't think that's an opposite. It is a different and unrelated issue, in a related area.

Anyone choosing to challenge the status quo in a contentious area such as race (or religion, or...) has to do it with extreme grace, subtlety and pace. Without that, it is impossible to lead the middle ground. Very few have the personality to be successful in that way.

Examples of how to do it: in the 60s people like Martin Luther King Jr, Sidney Poitier, Harry Belafonte (and more passively Nichelle Nichols). President Obama was the 00s poster child.

Examples of how not to do it: SJWs and (apparently) Adams. There are too many others, in too many fields.

[tggzzz]

My point, which Zero999 has not contested, is that people do still have the choice. A different choice, but a choice nonetheless.

It would be like me losing my website, my Youtube channels, all my alternative video channels, and every revenue stream I had. And my only remaining option would be to put new content behind a Patreon or Locals paywall.
Yes my content would still be technically available, and people would still have a choice, but it has totally changed the game for everyone.
He and practically all his readers got nuked. And in his case we are talking millions of people beign left with nothing unless they pony up $7/month on a platform they almost certainly don't use for anything else.

Agreed; painful for all. But his readers do have a option: to stop being freeloaders. How many choose take that option will be some form of indication of how much they value his current and future work.

My own view... Adams' content was slowly becoming stale and repetitive and therefore less compelling. After 30 years, that's an unsurprising fate that has befallen many others, e.g. Peanuts, Andy Capp, Bristow, The Gambols, Fred Bassett, etc. Adams chose to counteract staleness by making his content more, um, contentious. We'll see how that turns out.

One "workplace strip comic" that is at least as good as Dilbert is the 35yo Alex cartoon. It has avoided becoming stale because it is inspired by current events, is sharply and viciously skewers its "subjects" - and they almost revel in it. (I've just noticed there is a "30 years ago" section, giving people a chance to relive their schadenfreude; excellent)

[EEVblog]

Agreed; painful for all. But his readers do have a option: to stop being freeloaders. How many choose take that option will be some form of indication of how much they value his current and future work.

I didn't consider myself a freeloader having gotten the "free" daily newsletter with the strip. The email was plastered with ads. Same for the newspaper, you bought the newspaper and at least some small fraction of that went to Adams.
Plus I have bought several Dilbert books over the years.
Same way my videos are "free", I made a fractional token amount per view, and it maybe leads to other sales of my stuff.

[madires]

Now if we want it we have to pay for it direct from Adam's otherwise he doesn't get paid anything. Whereas before he got paid via newspaper syndication rights and by advertising revenue on the website email list (again, via the syndication company who controlled it).

From what I've been told by artists, syndication companies keep a large part of the proft for their services unless you're a super star, i.e. you're in a strong position when negotiating. So some artists switched to promoting and selling their art/content directly and say that they make more money than with syndication. No free DIlbert for me anymore. However, we don't know if Adam might be even better off without syndication.

[EEVblog]

Examples of how to do it: in the 60s people like Martin Luther King Jr

Who is now ironically being or has been "cancelled".

[EEVblog]

However, we don't know if Adam might be even better off without syndication.

He should be.
He still owns all the rights, he just has to build up a reader base again.
He's just announced he is branching out onto twitter subscriptions for $2/month.
And there is no reason he can't build up a website and mailing list again supported by adsense ads just like before. Although I doubt he'll do that, as the new subscription model might work better financially.
IIRC he has 115k followers on Locals. i don't know how many of those pay $8/month though, or just follow, but it's a lot. Will be interestng to see how many subscriber twitter gets, although are those stats even available?

[tggzzz]

Examples of how to do it: in the 60s people like Martin Luther King Jr

Who is now ironically being or has been "cancelled".

Really? Why? The reasons matter.

One thing I do object to is judging past people by today's standards. If you do that, then you have to condemn Thomas Jefferson because he was a slave owner - and that obviously overrules everything else he did. Doesn't it?

In that vein there is always an MGM "family entertainment" film that won all 9 Oscars for which it was nominated (inc best film and director), and has been preserved in the United States National Film Registry by the Library of Congress as being "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant". The whole film is about grooming a girl to be a prostitute. Family entertainment?! 

The film? Gigi, of course - containing the famous Maurice Chevalier song "Thank heaven for little girls" (For little girls get bigger every day). Even as a kid I thought that was yucky. Attitudes do change, sometimes for the better.

[tszaboo]

Examples of how to do it: in the 60s people like Martin Luther King Jr

Who is now ironically being or has been "cancelled".

Really? Why? The reasons matter.

It's because his idea is the polar opposite of the wokies. He said that merit matters and not your skin.
It's a stupid idea, obviously, since everyone knows that white people are just the source of all evil, and should be punished for things that happened 150 years ago (also the union ones that were fighting against it). 

[HuronKing]

Examples of how to do it: in the 60s people like Martin Luther King Jr

Who is now ironically being or has been "cancelled".

Really? Why? The reasons matter.

It's because his idea is the polar opposite of the wokies. He said that merit matters and not your skin.
It's a stupid idea, obviously, since everyone knows that white people are just the source of all evil, and should be punished for things that happened 150 years ago (also the union ones that were fighting against it). 

I've only read silently this thread for a while now but come on y'all... please listen to what MLK actually said:
https://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2014/06/martin-luther-king-makes-the-case-for-reparations/372696/

https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/books/first/d/dyson-may.html

Now, when we come to Washington in this campaign, we are coming to get our check.

MLK Jr.

MLK was 'cancelled' (i.e. actually f**king assassinated) because he believed in reparations for blacks and was a very profoundly outspoken socialist.

It's a cruel jest to say to a bootless man that he ought to lift himself by his own bootstraps. Many negroes have been left bootless as a result of all these years of oppression and as a result of a society that deliberately made his color a stigma and something worthless and degrading.

MLK Jr.

So... yea... he did say white people are the source of evil and oppression for blacks in America. You can think he's wrong or that it is stupid - but he said it. 

PS
The whole interview is here. This was filmed 11 months before he was murdered.

[Sal Ammoniac]

Unless you're a black man actually living in the U.S. I don't think you have any idea of how bad the systemic racism is. Sure, it's not as bad as in the days of slavery and Jim Crow, but it's still pretty bad.

[EEVblog]

Examples of how to do it: in the 60s people like Martin Luther King Jr

Who is now ironically being or has been "cancelled".

Really? Why? The reasons matter.

One thing I do object to is judging past people by today's standards. If you do that, then you have to condemn Thomas Jefferson because he was a slave owner - and that obviously overrules everything else he did. Doesn't it?

Correct. Welcome to the madness of 2020's culture wars.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/10/canceling-thomas-jefferson/

[tszaboo]

Unless you're a black man actually living in the U.S. I don't think you have any idea of how bad the systemic racism is. Sure, it's not as bad as in the days of slavery and Jim Crow, but it's still pretty bad.

And yet it's still better than the situation of minority groups in almost any country. And how it was over 100% of history. And how it happens to any group of people, regardless skin color or anything. You all act like there is some sort of monopoly on this stuff. Have you seen Borat? That was a Romani ethnic village in Romania. Do you see what's going on in SA? Have you heard a Chinese term gweilo?
Pick up a history book and maybe travel somewhere not to just make a picture of a famous building, and actually realize what is going on.
I can tell you whenever you point at a group of people, and say "these people" are responsible, thats always some third reich level hatred, creating the perpetual misery.

[tggzzz]

Examples of how to do it: in the 60s people like Martin Luther King Jr

Who is now ironically being or has been "cancelled".

Really? Why? The reasons matter.

One thing I do object to is judging past people by today's standards. If you do that, then you have to condemn Thomas Jefferson because he was a slave owner - and that obviously overrules everything else he did. Doesn't it?

Correct. Welcome to the madness of 2020's culture wars.
https://www.nationalreview.com/2021/10/canceling-thomas-jefferson/

People have always taken good ideas beyond the boundaries of good sense and into extremist territory. That's true for all subjects, technical and non-technical.

One example is "Post Modern Literary Criticism". A couple of software engineers went and found out what that is about, and wrote a wryly amusing essay that I remember 30 years later. http://www.fudco.com/chip/deconstr.html Basically it is good to think about what's behind a statement and what isn't being said (e.g. in datasheets). But the PoMo LitCrit mob took that to ridiculous and unjustifiable extremes.

Currently the people over here going into extremist territory are (re)branding themselves "National Conservatives". We need of a good essay comparing-and-contrasting that with "National Socialists". So far as I can see, there is far too much overlap for comfort, and little "clear blue water".