Scott Adams Biography
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.
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. He has continued the strip as Dilbert Reborn on his locals.com website since March 2023.
Early life and education
Adams was born on June 8, 1957, in Windham, New York, the son of Paul and Virginia (née Vining) Adams. He has described himself as "about half German" and also has English, Irish, Welsh, Scottish, and Dutch ancestry. In 2016, Adams said he had a small amount of Native American ancestry, but later discovered via 23andme genetic testing that he does not have any detectable Native American genetic markers. He was a fan of Peanuts comics while growing up and started drawing comics at age 6. He won a drawing compe*ion at age 11.
Adams graduated from Windham-Ashland-Jewett Central School in 1975 and was the valedictorian of his cl* of 39 students. He earned a BA in economics from Hartwick College in Oneonta, New York in 1979. He then moved to California and started work. In 1986, he earned an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley. Adams took Dale Carnegie Training and called it "life changing".
Career
Office worker
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. His positions included management trainee, computer programmer, budget *yst, commercial lender, product manager, and supervisor.
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. The Dilbert name was suggested by his former boss, Mike Goodwin. Dogbert, originally named *g, was loosely based on his family's deceased pet beagle Lucy. 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. He worked at Pacific Bell between 1986 and June 30, 1995, and the personalities he encountered there inspired many of his Dilbert characters. 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. 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.
Full-time cartoonist and author
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.
In 1997, Adams won the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist and Best Newspaper Comic Strip. 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". His writing in San Jose Mercury News West Magazine regarding the incident earned him an Orwell Award. By 2000, the comic was in 2,000 newspapers in 57 countries and 19 languages.
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 *erted 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.
In addition to his cartoon work, Adams has written books in various other areas, including self-improvement and religion. 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. 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. 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.
Real Coffee with Scott Adams
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. Adams soon developed this as a daily video presentation called Real Coffee with Scott Adams, distributed to Periscope, YouTube, ScottAdamsSays.com, and Locals, where he covered topics such as current events, politics, persuasion, and routes to success.
Real Coffee with Scott Adams has featured guests such as Naval Ravikant, Ed Latimore, Dave Rubin, Erik Finman, Greg Gutfeld, Matt Gaetz, Ben Askren, Carpe Donktum, Mark Schneider, Steve Hsu, Michael Shellenberger, Carson Griffith, Shiva Ayyadurai, James Nortey, Clint Morgan, and Bjørn Lomborg. In 2018, Kanye West shared multiple clips on Twitter from a Coffee episode *led: "Scott Adams tells you how Kanye showed the way to The Golden Age. With Coffee." In 2020, President Trump retweeted an episode where Adams mocked Joe Biden.
Adams offers paid subscriptions for exclusive content on Locals. 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."
Other
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.
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". 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". As of 2024, the WhenHub website is inactive.
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. 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".
Adams has been a guest on podcasts including Making Sense with Sam Harris, The Tim Ferriss Show, The James Altucher Show, The Ben Shapiro Show, The Rubin Report, Real Talk with Zuby and The David Pakman Show. He has appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher, Commonwealth Club of California, Fox News and Berkeley Haas. Adams was interviewed for Mike Cernovich's do*entaries Silenced (2016) and Hoaxed (2019). In 2016, Adams contributed a chapter of life advice to Tim Ferriss's collection, Tools of *ans.
Views
Politics and social issues
Adams has often commented on political and social matters. In 2016, he wrote on his blog: "I don't vote and I am not a member of a political party." In 2007, he suggested that Michael Bloomberg would make a good presidential candidate. Before the 2008 presidential election, he said: "On social issues, I lean libertarian, minus the crazy stuff." In December 2011, he said that if he were president, he would do whatever Bill Clinton advised him to do because that "would lead to policies that are a sensible middle ground." On October 17, 2012, he wrote, "While I don't agree with Romney's positions on most topics, I'm endorsing him for president." In a blog post from September 2017, Adams described himself as being "left of Bernie Sanders, but with a preference for plans that can work." In April 2023, Adams announced via Twitter that he had registered with the Democratic Party, and that party affiliation will not determine who he supports.
In 2015 Adams stated that he would not endorse a candidate for the 2016 elections. He repeatedly praised Donald Trump's persuasion skills and extensively detailed what he called Trump's "talent stack", correctly predicting that Trump would win the Republican nomination and the general election. In 2018, Adams similarly praised the persuasion skills of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.
Of the 2016 Democratic National Convention, he said: "If you're an undecided voter, and male, you're seeing a celebration that your role in society is permanently diminished. And it's happening in an impressive venue that was, in all likelihood, designed and built mostly by men." Adams said that he temporarily endorsed Hillary Clinton out of fear for his own life, stating that he had received direct and indirect death threats ("Where I live, in California, it is not safe to be seen as supportive of anything Trump says or does. So I fixed that."). In late September, however, Adams switched his endor*t from Clinton to Trump. Among his stated primary reasons were his respect for Trump's persuasion skills, Clinton's proposal to raise the inheritance tax, and his concerns over Clinton's health. In mid-October, Adams predicted a Clinton victory would ensure that a male president would never again be elected. He has also stated that writing positively about Trump and supporting him ended his public speaking career and decreased his income by about 40% and number of friends by about 75%.
Adams predicted in March 2020 that Trump, Sanders and Joe Biden would all contract COVID-19 and that one of them would die from it by the end of the year; in December 2020, when all three men remained alive (although Trump did catch the virus), Politico named Adams's prediction one of "the most audacious, confident and spectacularly incorrect prognostications about the year." Adams received further attention in December 2021, in reference to his July 2020 predictions that if Biden were to win the 2020 presidential election, "there's a good chance you will be dead within the year", "Republicans will be hunted" and that "olice will stand down":– none of which ultimately occurred. On September 30, 2021, Adams had also tweeted "My worst prediction of all time was 'If Biden gets elected, there's a good chance you will be dead in a year.' It was closer to two years. I missed it by 100%."
Adams has compared women asking for equal pay to children demanding candy. After a 2022 m* shooting, Adams tweeted that society leaves parents of troubled teenage boys with only two options: to either watch people die, or murder their own son. He said his comments were inspired by his own stepson, who became addicted to drugs at the age of 14 and later died of a fentanyl overdose. Adams's comments were roundly criticized, including by James Gunn, who described himself as a former "violent teenager addicted to drugs entered recovery with the help & love of his family".
COVID-19 vaccination
In January 2023, Adams announced that he was considering taking legal action against political cartoonist Ben Garrison for an allegedly defamatory cartoon about his views on masking and COVID-19 vaccines. He later falsely suggested on a YouTube livestream that people unvaccinated against COVID-19 were better off than vaccinated people.
Race
On June 28, 2020, Adams said on Twitter that the Dilbert TV show was cancelled because he was white and UPN had decided to focus on an African-American audience, and that he had been "discriminated against".
In a series of comic strips in September 2022, Dilbert parodied environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) strategies. Part of the plotline involved a black character who "identif as white" and the company management asking him if he could also identify as gay. According to Adams, the week of September 19, Dilbert was pulled from 77 newspapers owned by Lee Enterprises. Adams also claimed that the cancellation was coincidental.
On February 22, 2023, Adams responded to a poll by Rasmussen Reports that asked respondents if they agreed with the statement "it's okay to be white"; a seemingly innocuous phrase that the Anti-Defamation League said was being used online in 2017 as part of an alt-right trolling campaign and is *ociated with the white supremacist movement. The poll showed 53% of black respondents agreed with the phrase, 26% disagreed, and 21% were not sure. On a YouTube livestream of his Real Coffee with Scott Adams program, Adams, who said he was upset that nearly half did not agree, characterized black people as a "hate group" and said, "the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people; just get the * away." His comments were widely characterized as racist. In response to these and other related comments, Dilbert was dropped by numerous newspapers across the country, including the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today-affiliated newspapers. Andrews McMeel Syndication, the distributor of Dilbert, announced on February 27, 2023 that it was severing all ties with Adams. Portfolio, his book publisher, announced it was dropping his non-Dilbert book that was scheduled for release in September 2023.
In response to the incident, Adams said his remarks were hyperbole and that the stories reported about them ignored the context; he conjectured that nobody would disagree with his main points and stated he disavowed racists. Adams announced that on March 13, 2023, the strip would return as Dilbert Reborn on the subscription website Locals.
Personal life
Since late 2004, Adams has had focal dystonia, which has affected his ability to draw for lengthy periods. 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, and his voice is now completely functional.
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. 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. Adams and Miles divorced in 2014, and Adams said the two remained friends, with Miles moving only one block away after their separation.
On Christmas Day in 2019, Adams announced on his podcast that he was engaged to Kristina Basham, 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. On March 10, 2022, Adams announced on his YouTube podcast that he and Basham were getting divorced.
Adams trained as a hypnotist. 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. 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. (This technique is used by Dogbert in a 1989 Dilbert strip.)
Adams continues to live in Pleasanton, California and is active in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Recognition
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, 27th in 2003, 12th in 2005, and 21st in 2007. He received the Orwell Award in 1998 for his participation in "Mission Impertinent" for San Jose Mercury News West Magazine.
In popular culture
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.
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." Jobs proudly emailed this around.
Publications
Dilbert compilations
- Always Postpone Meetings with Time-Wasting Morons (1992)
- Shave the Whales (1994)
- Bring Me the Head of Willy the Mailboy! (1995)
- It's Obvious You Won't Survive by Your Wits Alone (1995)
- Still Pumped from Using the Mouse (1996)
- Fugitive from the Cubicle Police (1996)
- Casual Day Has Gone Too Far (1997)
- I'm Not Anti-Business, I'm Anti-Idiot (1998)
- Journey to Cubeville (1998)
- Don't Step in the Leadership (1999)
- Random Acts of Management (2000)
- Excuse Me While I Wag (2001)
- When Did Ignorance Become a Point of View? (2001)
- Another Day in Cubicle Paradise (2002)
- All Dressed Down and Nowhere to Go (2002) (Still Pumped from Using the Mouse, Casual Day Has Gone Too Far, and I'm Not Anti-Business, I'm Anti-Idiot combined)
- When Body Language Goes Bad (2003)
- Words You Don't Want to Hear During Your Annual Performance Review (2003)
- Don't Stand Where the Comet Is *umed to Strike Oil (2004)
- The Fluorescent Light Glistens Off Your Head (2005)
- Thriving on Vague Objectives (2005)
- Try Rebooting Yourself (2006)
- Positive At*ude (2007)
- This Is the Part Where You Pretend to Add Value (2008)
- Dilbert 2.0: 20 Years of Dilbert (2008)
- Freedom's Just Another Word for People Finding Out You're Useless (2009)
- 14 Years of Loyal Service in a Fabric-Covered Box (2009)
- I'm Tempted to Stop Acting Randomly (2010)
- How's That Underling Thing Working Out for You? (2011)
- Teamwork Means You Can't Pick the Side that's Right (2012)
- Your New Job *le Is "Accomplice" (2013)
- I Sense a Coldness to Your Mentoring (2013)
- Go Add Value Someplace Else (2014)
- Optimism Sounds Exhausting (2015)
- I'm No Scientist, But I Think Feng Shui Is Part of the Answer (2016)
- Dilbert Gets Re-accommodated (2017)
- Cubicles That Make You Envy the Dead (2018)
- Dilbert Turns 30 (2019)
Special compilations (annotated, favorites, etc.)
- Build a Better Life by Stealing Office Supplies: Dogbert's Big Book of Business (1991)
- Dogbert's Clues for the Clueless (1993)
- Seven Years of Highly Defective People (1997)
- Dilbert Gives You the Business (1999)
- A Treasury of Sunday Strips: Version 00 (2000)
- What Do You Call a Sociopath in a Cubicle? Answer: A Coworker (2002)
- It's Not Funny If I Have to Explain It (2004)
- What Would Wally Do? (2006)
- Cubes and Punishment (2007)
- Problem Identified: And You're Probably Not Part of the Solution (2010)
- Your Accomplishments Are Suspiciously Hard to Verify (2011)
- I Can't Remember If We're Cheap or Smart (2012)
Other Dilbert books
- Telling It Like It Isn't (1996)
- You Don't Need Experience If You've Got At*ude (1996)
- Access Denied: Dilbert's Quest for Love in the Nineties (1996)
- Conversations With Dogbert (1996)
- Work Is a Contact Sport (1997)
- The Boss: Nameless, Blameless and Shameless (1997)
- The Dilbert Bunch (1997)
- No You'd Better Watch Out (1997)
- Please Don't Feed the Egos (1997)
- Random Acts of Catness (1998)
- You Can't Schedule Stupidity (1998)
- Dilbert Meeting Book Exceeding Tech Limits (1998)
- Trapped in a Dilbert World: Book Of Days (1998)
- Work—The Wally Way (1999)
- Alice in Blunderland (1999)
- Dilbert Sudoku Comic Digest: 200 Puzzles Plus 50 Cl*ic Dilbert Cartoons (2008)
Dilbert-related business publications
- Dilbert Newsletter (since 1994)
- The Dilbert Principle (1996)
- Dogbert's Top Secret Management Handbook (1996)
- The Dilbert Future (1997)
- The Joy of Work (1998)
- Dilbert and the Way of the Weasel (2002)
- Slapped Together: The Dilbert Business Anthology (2002) (The Dilbert Principle, The Dilbert Future, and The Joy of Work, published together in one book)
- Dilbert's Guide to the Rest of Your Life: Dispatches from Cubicleland (2007)
Non-Dilbert publications
- God's Debris (2001)
- The Religion War (2004)
- Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain! (2007)
- How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big (2013)
- Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter (2017)
- Loserthink: How Untrained Brains Are Ruining America (2019)
- Reframe Your Brain: The User Interface for Happiness and Success (2023)
References
External links
Wikiquote has quotations related to Scott Adams.- Official website
- Scott Adams Says at Periscope
- Scott Adams on Charlie Rose
- "Review". NewsRadio (S3E2:ed.). September 25, 1996. Archived from the original on September 3, 2019. Retrieved November 7, 2016. featuring Scott Adams
- Adams, Scott (February 2006). "Answers to Your Questions". Dilbert blog. Archived from the original on February 21, 2006.
- PR efforts for the October 2013 release of How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big
- Rosen, Gary (October 12, 2013). "Scott Adams' Secret of Success: Failure" (video). Saturday Essay. Adam's essay and a video interview with Rosen
- Adams, Scott (October 23, 2013). "I Created Dilbert. Ask Me Anything". Reddit AMA. Reddit.
