He wasn't a hack, just a narcissist who couldn't talk for a year from a bizarre neuro problem and hasn't been sane since. "Creativity = theft + lack of talent" will stick with me despite his nonsense. His practical advice on doing creative projects instead of working while in the office is worth getting the pdf of joy of work for.

I remember him pissing and moaning that at AT&T, he could not rise higher in the company because he was not tall enough and didn't have enough hair. Seriously.

@@OtterSC2 So you're impressed that Scott Adams stole the phrase "Art Is Theft"?

The guy has merit; he can articulate ideas very well. His ideas are essentially hallucinated observations about the world through the lense of the self, but he can use words to describe it quite well

Who’s Scott Adams I’m watching them talk about the Dilbert guy

And the high school wasn't one of the ones in Taiwan where the failing worst students have 135 IQ's.

Well yeah, but when you insist he's a moron and walk away, he's going to be idiotically stubborn and insist he won the argument. So he's certainly persuaded himself. Bigly!

And lucky for Adam's, he lives in a world where there's no objective reality.

The preferred debate tactic of 15-year-old boys who just discovered Ayn Rand and Jordan Peterson last week.

@@dinosaysrawr15 year olds are discovering Ayn Rand? More likely they are discovering new 1st person shooter games! You make a valid point and it’s something I hadn’t thought of before! 👍👍👍

Like playing chess with a pigeon.

That's pure Dunning-Kruger. No wonder he likes Trump so much.

"Whatever in creation exists without my knowledge, exists without my consent." - Scott Adams.

*millions of small towns around the world phase out of existence to preserve his ego*

Harsh but very accurate.

Reminds me of how Adams simps in the comments section of the previous BTB podcast about him lamely tried to claim that he's a millionaire and we're not, so there! Yeah, well, Steve, imagine how much richer, happier, more famous, and more successful he'd be if he hadn't flown directly into the sun!

​@@dinosaysrawrits funnier if you assume those are just Dilbert guys alts... I cant imagine he has hardcore fans

Trump did exactly that and got to be president.

​@@dinosaysrawrolmmmmmmmmmmmmlmmmmmmmmmmmm0++q

Dude, punctuation.

Nah guy has talent...I think he just internalized the praise in a weird way as a kid/young adult AND THEN stopped being curious, etc. I'm very sure his parents and Jack Cassidy and every art teacher or co-worker who encouraged him NEVER intended to make...this.

This guy, no joke, literally believed he was a chosen one in some capacity because his life was so easy and convenient, he didn’t know how to rationalize the struggles of others.

As a family member of mine likes to say, "He was told he was clever as a child."

Lots of those in the media: Elon Musk, Mark Zuckerberg, Sam Bankman-Fried. Priviliged dudes who grew up in schools where 'kinda nerdy' was the same as 'smart', got convinced of their own brilliance, and surrounded themselves by yes-men and/or 4chan edgelords.

All I know is that you have to walk the line as a prez. You can’t be a low-energy Jeb, but you should also avoid being a Jacked Up Joe. Politics, politics.

would that supply be copium?

@@gepisar not sure if you meant that sarcastically, but yeah, you nailed it.

He loves the scent of his own brand.

@@gepisar More delusional narcissism with a dash of un-ironic (to him) victimhood.

"Liberal media" has created Trump from the ground up, from his earliest days to right now. That is a subject that few if any are both willing and able to discuss.

And also that 12 years of two Bushes in the White House made people not want to even bother, as well as "please clap."

That's wild. Do you think they were unsold, or had been bulk purchased by conservative orgs to try and get it on bestseller listings?

@@trevfindley5704 I have no idea, but I think it's most likely that some large retailer overestimated what their sales would be and ordered too many. I'm not sure if they would be counted as sales in a situation like that, but unfortunately I imagine he got paid for them :(

@@trevfindley5704 to clarify they were definitely unsold. They were all in boxes and shrink wrapped, not with random books, just probably 10k copies (as an estimate) of this single title.

this just brings a wide smile across my face

@@Lunar_Atronach it did mine too! I wanted to share that with someone so thanks for making my day haha

Meh, that's like predicting the sun will rise in the east tomorrow.

@@shaider1982 Yes, that's the point

It's really funny how often "The middle east will be in turmoil" is used as a punchline, and how often that is actually used as an example of someone being able to predict the future.

@@plantain.1739 well it's been in turmoil consistently for a long ass time and unfortunately really doesn't look like its gonna stop being in turmoil for a little while. Unless Africa becomes the new major imperialist theatre again then maybe the middle east might get a chance to chill out a bit.

Scott Adams is all about being divorced, as it turns out.

Ya know I'll still defend the Show, but honestly being reminded of the bob bastard episode kinda made me remember how weird Scott is. Also now that I think about it, the trashman character is 100% some of this master persuader bullshit.

@@plantain.1739 it's kind of like Star Wars ignore the idiot manchild who made it, appreciate the actual content

@@plantain.1739 The Garbageman is definitely some kind of self-insert.

Idk what it says about me that I thought for a second you were saying that Dilbert (the character) came out as gay.

What teenager doesn't feel that they're the smartest and/or specialest person in the room? But, most of us outgrow that attitude by our 30s at least!

It could totally become a thing

It's when you use metamagic on Vicious Mockery.

Honestly, it would be fantastic for Pillars of Eternity chanters dual wielding pistols.

Trump says what they wanna hear. He says all their private thoughts out loud and they eat that shit up.

My dream is to have a double-feature on this show and Forbes‘ „30 under 30“ list

Dude is bragging about calling a coin flip 😂

Would have been worse if he’d been arguing that Trump was a Master Debater

Much Appreciated!

They should hang it in the Louvre

@@sirhenrymorgan1187 - That would be funny but it's actually about Scott Adams *should* be anti-vax but wasn't.

@@FTZPLTC Aw, then I totally misunderstood the comic? Well, maybe it's a good thing I didn't get: that would mean my mind works like his does!

​@@sirhenrymorgan1187 - Assuming we're looking at the same one, I think Ben's mad at Scott for not being anti-vax sooner, and not admitting that anti-vaxers were right all along? Honestly it was one of my favourite cartoons because there's just so many ways to replace words with "cum" in it.

​@@FTZPLTCOoooh, that's the CUM comic? I remember that one now.

Cheers - more books to read :)

my money is on him having a secret jeweled turban fetish

...especially when he gloms onto tools and philosophies that aren't designed for that purpose, like atheism.

It's sad, it's probably a side effect of how he was raised and he never quite got around to questioning it

As somebody who was mercilessly bullied as a kid, I approve this message.

Not saying this is what you are doing here but... Can we not talk about how we got here without talking up Trump and most other Right Wing demagogues' "ability" in terms of persuasion or public speaking. Because it's in no way true nor has it ever been. Whether it's Hitler or Mussolini or Louis Farrakhan or Wallace or Jim Jones the common denominator is neither deeply thought out philosophically coherence in terms of policies nor truly nimble and emotionally resonant rhetoric fueled from sincere first principles. The common denominator is just a lack of shame and zero ethics or morals. It's not genius or a deft political mind. It's an inability to feel any shame or remorse while lying your ass off to make big groups angry... This isn't hard. It's actually the lazy person's approach to any and all political questions.

This is the thing though: he's not persuading anyone to change their mind; he's just telling them that they're right about stuff. Anyone can do that. Also I feel like a master persuader wouldn't be facing as many sexual assault allegations as Trump.

@@miguelvelez7221 - I agree, I think most people would be able to lead a mob if they didn't care what they had to say in order to do it. I do think there's an element of people *admiring* someone who doesn't seem to feel constrained by ethics or social mores, but that's tragic more than anything.

@@FTZPLTC As always, Trump as bad as he is, isn't the root issue. It's the people willing to follow anyone like him. And let's remember how once defeated these types turn on the last Messiah and wait for the new vessel for their resentments and aggression. W. Bush was sent here by God according to his supporters circa 2003.

​@@miguelvelez7221- Absolutely, and I have to say, UK politics has mercifully avoided that trope of every Conservative candidate being depicted as either Christ or Christ-adjacent. I remember a GOP primary (I wanna say whichever one Michelle Bachmann was in?) where something like six of the candidates all said that God told them to run, which is like... either God really likes messing with people, or five of those people are lying! =D But yeah, we had a similar thing (albeit less so) with Boris Johnson, using the system to get himself into power, and absolutely everyone knew what a garbage person he was. So I have to conclude that at least some people *like* their leaders to be these shameless oafs who don't hide their failings and even brag about them. They can't be that in their own lives, but they wish they could, I guess?

Ironically, it's sort of at the top of fatal character flaws though

He really doesn't lmao

I prefer his earlier dilbert strips. They were more about absurdism with a bit of engineering humor. Like the 'end road construction now' strip, I quickly got bored of the office humor, though.

Thanks for listening!

Thank you for listening to the pod!

He really has imprinted in an adorable way

It's not a terribly difficult concept to grasp, he's not the only one who saw it coming.

@@TheGallantDrake oh yeah, I definitely was NOT saying the art of Futurism (inasmuch as that’s a real thing a person can do) is at all inherently difficult. It’s always been tied very closely to science fiction, which means it’s something nearly always done as an intellectual curiosity from positions of relative comfort. Like science fiction stories, predictions of the future will invariably fall somewhere in a spectrum between apocalyptic horror and optimistic bullshit. While not technically in this genre the book was written primarily as one big parody of it, meaning the stakes of inaccuracy and failure were totally nonexistent. A classic nothing to lose, everything to gain situation. If anything this just goes to show that how much this type of information can be profited on is more directly a matter of privilege and platform than accuracy… or phrased another even more cynical way… a person’s productive capacity is measured as the sum total of their actual work plus the appearance of work they can take credit for 😆 This absolutely includes things like generational wealth, wearing a nice suit, etc… but we’ve also seen how much of this performative keeping up of appearances are totally unnecessary post-Covid… like the idea of even needing to be physically present in an office building was a bit of a joke to Adams and well ahead of it’s time. And I acknowledge it’s only true for reasons he never could’ve guessed and in ways that obviously feel less funny living through. But I dunno man, just saying there WERE reasons people thought this dude was a closet socialist.

Hr didn't even persuade them, he just said things they already believed

nah standard chess is 2d. the pieces are 3d because they are physical pieces but the gameplay is in two dimensions - any chessboard state could be portrayed on a piece of paper

He's the man behind the Dilbert comic strip.

A guy who got fired from the cartoonist equivalent of tenure by being racist.

Indeed. Adams did the only actual "salaryman" comic in the US. "Salaryman" comics are very much a thing in Japan, and the US needed one. Adams stole defeat from the jaws of victory. He had tenure all right. The cartoon stopped being funny when he got rid of Ratbert though. @@GrimAxel

So it isn’t persuasion at all, it’s just… saying what people already know they want? So Scott is still dumb?