Scott Adams

Scott Adams, the creator of the hilarious Dilbert comic strip who turned into a repellent, racist conservative and nut case, died four days ago on January 13, 2026. I was a big fan of the Dilbert comic strip since it resonated with many of my experiences in the corporate world, and my coworkers and I had several of our favorite Dilbert strips pinned to our cubicle walls.

Adams branched into writing books about business culture. These books were not very good, other than the included Dilbert strips. I listened to the audiobook of How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big, originally published by Portfolio in 2013, and I found it wretchedly bad. The second edition is published by Scott Adams, Inc. I don’t recommend it.

Scott Alexander at Astral Codex Ten has written a long and brilliant post about Scott Adams and other topics called The Dilbert Afterlife. Alexander succinctly describes Scott Adams’s fundamental problem:

Adams knew, deep in his bones, that he was cleverer than other people. God always punishes this impulse, especially in nerds. His usual strategy is straightforward enough: let them reach the advanced physics classes, where there will always be someone smarter than them, then beat them on the head with their own intellectual inferiority so many times that they cry uncle and admit they’re nothing special.

For Adams, God took a more creative and — dare I say, crueler — route. He created him only-slightly-above-average at everything except for a world-historical, Mozart-tier, absolutely Leonardo-level skill at making silly comics about hating work.

Scott Adams never forgave this. Too self-aware to deny it, too narcissistic to accept it, he spent his life searching for a loophole.

For more perspective on Scott Adams and his antics, read Nitish Pahwa’s post at Slate, Scott Adams’ Life and Death Is a Cautionary Tale for the MAGA Age.