Scott Adams, whose fashionable sketch “Dilbert” captured the frustration of beleaguered, white-collar cubicle staff and satirized the ridiculousness of contemporary workplace tradition till he was abruptly dropped from syndication in 2023 for racist remarks, has died. He was 68.
His first ex-wife, Shelly Miles, introduced the demise Tuesday on a livestream posted on Adams’ social media accounts. “He’s not with us right anymore,” she mentioned. Adams revealed in 2025 that he had prostate most cancers that had unfold to his bones. Miles had mentioned he was in hospice care in his northern California dwelling on Monday.
“I had an amazing life,” the assertion mentioned partially. “I gave it everything I had.”
At its peak, “Dilbert,” with its mouthless, bespectacled hero in a white short-sleeved shirt and a perpetually curled crimson tie, appeared in 2,000 newspapers worldwide in not less than 70 nations and 25 languages.
Adams was the 1997 recipient of the National Cartoonist Society’s Reuben Award, thought-about some of the prestigious awards for cartoonists. That similar 12 months, “Dilbert” grew to become the primary fictional character to make Time journal’s checklist of essentially the most influential Americans.
“We are rooting for him because he is our mouthpiece for the lessons we have accumulated — but are too afraid to express — in our effort to avoid cubicular homicide,” the journal mentioned.
“Dilbert” strips have been routinely photocopied, pinned up, emailed and posted on-line, a recognition that may spawn bestselling books, merchandise, commercials for Office Depot and an animated TV collection, with Daniel Stern voicing Dilbert.
It all collapsed shortly in 2023 when Adams, who was white, repeatedly referred to Black folks as members of a “hate group” and mentioned he would now not “help Black Americans.” He later mentioned he was being hyperbolic, but continued to defend his stance.
Almost instantly, newspapers dropped “Dilbert” and his distributor, Andrews McMeel Universal, severed ties with the cartoonist. The Sun Chronicle in Attleboro, Massachusetts, determined to maintain the “Dilbert” area clean for some time “as a reminder of the racism that pervades our society.” A deliberate ebook was scrapped.
“He’s not being canceled. He’s experiencing the consequences of expressing his views,” Bill Holbrook, the creator of the strip “On the Fastrack,” instructed The Associated Press on the time. “I am in full support with him saying anything he wants to, but then he has to own the consequences of saying them.”
Adams relaunched the identical every day sketch beneath the identify Dilbert Reborn through the video platform Rumble, fashionable with conservatives and far-right teams. He additionally hosted a podcast, “Real Coffee,” the place talked about numerous political and social points.
After Jimmy Kimmel’s late-night present on ABC was suspended in September within the wake of the host’s feedback on the homicide of conservative activist Charlie Kirk, Adams stood free of charge speech.
“Would I like some revenge?” Adams mentioned. “Yes. Yes, I would enjoy that. But that doesn’t mean I get it. That doesn’t mean I should pursue it. Doesn’t mean the world’s a better place if it happens.”
Adams, who earned a bachelor’s diploma from Hartwick College and an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley, was working a company job on the Pacific Bell phone firm within the Eighties, sharing his cartoons to amuse co-workers. He drew Dilbert as a pc programmer and engineer for a high-tech firm and mailed a batch to cartoon syndicators.
“The take on office life was new and on target and insightful,” Sarah Gillespie, who helped uncover “Dilbert” within the Eighties at United Media, instructed The Washington Post. “I looked first for humor and only secondarily for art, which with ‘Dilbert’ was a good thing, as the art is universally acknowledged to be… not great.”
The first “Dilbert” sketch formally appeared April 16, 1989, lengthy earlier than such office comedies as “Office Space” and “The Office.” It portrayed company tradition as a “Severance”-like, Kafkaesque world of heavy forms and pointless benchmarks, the place worker effort and ability have been underappreciated.
The strip would introduce the “Dilbert Principle”: The most ineffective staff shall be systematically moved to the place the place they will do the least injury — administration.
“Throughout history, there have always been times when it’s very clear that the managers have all the power and the workers have none,” Adams instructed Time. “Through ‘Dilbert,’ I would think the balance of power has slightly changed.”
Other strip characters included Dilbert’s pointy-haired boss; Asok, a younger, naive intern; Wally, a middle-aged slacker; and Alice, a employee so annoyed that she was vulnerable to frequent outbursts of rage. Then there was Dilbert’s pet, Dogbert, a megalomaniac.
“There’s a certain amount of anger you need to draw ‘Dilbert’ comics,” Adams instructed the Contra Costa Times in 2009.
In 1993, Adams grew to become the primary syndicated cartoonist to incorporate his e-mail tackle in his strip. That triggered a dialogue between the artist and his followers, giving Adams a fountain of concepts for the strip.
“Dilbert” was additionally identified for producing aphorisms, like “All rumors are true — especially if your boss denies them” and “OK, let’s get this preliminary pre-meeting going.”
“If you can come to peace with the fact that you’re surrounded by idiots, you’ll realize that resistance is futile, your tension will dissipate, and you can sit back and have a good laugh at the expense of others,” Adams wrote in his 1996 ebook “The Dilbert Principle.”
In one real-life case, an Iowa employee was fired from the Catfish Bend Casino in 2007 for posting a “Dilbert” sketch on the workplace bulletin board. In the strip, Adams wrote: “Why does it seem as if most of the decisions in my workplace are made by drunken lemurs?” A choose later sided with the employee; Adams helped discover him a brand new job.
While Adams’ profession fall appeared swift, cautious readers of “Dilbert” noticed a gradual darkening of the strip’s tone and its creator’s descent into misogyny, anti-immigration and racism.
He attracted consideration for controversial feedback, together with saying in 2011 that girls are handled in a different way by society for a similar cause as youngsters and the mentally disabled — “it’s just easier this way for everyone.” In a weblog put up from 2006, he questioned the demise toll of the Holocaust.
In June 2020, Adams tweeted that when the “Dilbert” TV present resulted in 2000 after simply two seasons, it was “the third job I lost for being white.” But, on the time, he blamed it on decrease viewership and time slot adjustments.
Adams’ beliefs started bleeding into his strips. In one in 2022, a boss says that conventional efficiency critiques would get replaced by a “wokeness” rating. When an worker complains that might be subjective, the boss mentioned, “That’ll cost you two points off your wokeness score, bigot.”
Adams put a courageous face on his fall from grace, tweeting in 2023: “Only the dying leftist Fake News industry canceled me (for out-of-context news of course). Social media and banking unaffected. Personal life improved. Never been more popular in my life. Zero pushback in person. Black and White conservatives solidly supporting me.”
On Tuesday, President Donald Trump remembered Adams as a “Great Influencer.”
“He was a fantastic guy, who liked and respected me when it wasn’t fashionable to do so. He bravely fought a long battle against a terrible disease,” the president posted on his social media platform Truth Social.
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