WEBVTT - Part Two: How The Dilbert Guy Lost His Mind 0:00:02.320 --> 0:00:06.119 Oh, what is dilling my dogs? 0:00:06.440 --> 0:00:09.800 I'm Robert Evans, and this is Behind the Bastards, a 0:00:09.880 --> 0:00:15.720 podcast about Scott Adams, a man whose self awareness is 0:00:15.800 --> 0:00:20.080 so minimal that he often his hands clipped through his 0:00:20.120 --> 0:00:23.200 writing desk like he's a character in a video game 0:00:23.560 --> 0:00:27.200 from the N sixty four era. I don't know, how 0:00:27.280 --> 0:00:28.080 was that, Randy? 0:00:28.280 --> 0:00:31.560 That's perfect, That is exactly what I would say. 0:00:31.760 --> 0:00:38.800 Okay, excellent, all right, So we have Randy Mulholland, artist 0:00:39.200 --> 0:00:45.320 behind Something Positive, a wonderful webcomic, and now the legally 0:00:45.600 --> 0:00:49.600 the Brain at least the limbic system of Popeye the 0:00:49.680 --> 0:00:52.360 Sailor Man. Randy, how are we feeling as we come 0:00:52.400 --> 0:00:53.639 into part two of this? 0:00:53.760 --> 0:00:56.600 I am just thankful that you invited me an episode 0:00:56.640 --> 0:01:01.760 that probably does not involve childhood a section no child vivisection. 0:01:01.840 --> 0:01:04.360 We are he is? He is going to buy his 0:01:04.480 --> 0:01:07.720 claim kill a kid in this so oh good, But 0:01:07.760 --> 0:01:10.040 it's I don't think he really did. I think he's 0:01:10.080 --> 0:01:13.000 just taking credit for it in a way that's kind 0:01:13.000 --> 0:01:15.440 of more upsetting than if he just killed a child. 0:01:15.520 --> 0:01:16.840 I don't know, maybe that's not right. 0:01:18.440 --> 0:01:20.880 At least now there's not a kid who's dead but 0:01:20.920 --> 0:01:21.600 that's a weird. 0:01:22.080 --> 0:01:24.680 Oh there's a kid who's dead. Don't don't worry. Don't worry. 0:01:24.800 --> 0:01:27.679 The kid dies in this episode. We're fine, it's all good. 0:01:28.720 --> 0:01:31.720 I mean, that isn't the responsibility of every episode behind 0:01:31.720 --> 0:01:34.200 the at least once? Yeah, must die. 0:01:34.480 --> 0:01:36.760 No, as soon as I announced that a child is 0:01:36.840 --> 0:01:38.400 going to die in this episode, you know, like the 0:01:38.480 --> 0:01:40.679 last scene in Return of the Jedi where it like 0:01:41.040 --> 0:01:43.360 goes around the galaxy as all of the people are 0:01:43.400 --> 0:01:46.000 celebrating in their different planets. It was it was that 0:01:46.400 --> 0:01:50.680 was that was the behind the bastards fans. They're terrible 0:01:50.680 --> 0:01:57.440 people a flame. Yeah, yeah, it's like it's choriscant. It's 0:01:57.480 --> 0:01:59.400 the choriscant of our I don't know why I'm doing 0:01:59.400 --> 0:02:02.400 Star Wars. Everyone's tired of Star Wars. Think of another. 0:02:02.640 --> 0:02:04.640 Imagine I did another one, a different. 0:02:04.880 --> 0:02:05.640 Story track thing. 0:02:06.360 --> 0:02:09.480 No, No, I feel like that one's pretty saturated too. 0:02:09.520 --> 0:02:15.000 What's one nobody knows about? Farscape? That's right, Yeah, I 0:02:15.000 --> 0:02:20.400 imagine I did a far Escape God. Okay, So back 0:02:20.400 --> 0:02:24.480 to Scott. Early in his career, Scott Adams started receiving 0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:27.760 requests for public speaking engagements, and he realized that this 0:02:27.800 --> 0:02:29.920 could be a good side business for him. You know, 0:02:30.000 --> 0:02:31.840 colleges wanted him to talk, and also a lot of 0:02:31.880 --> 0:02:34.600 like corporations wanted him to come and like give speeches 0:02:34.639 --> 0:02:36.080 for their employees because they would. 0:02:36.080 --> 0:02:37.240 You know, you're some manager. 0:02:37.280 --> 0:02:39.880 You see people have like Dilbert cartoons up over their cubicles, 0:02:39.880 --> 0:02:42.240 and you're like, oh, well, let's pay this rich man 0:02:42.800 --> 0:02:45.240 money that could be going to races for our workers 0:02:45.280 --> 0:02:47.240 so they can hear this weirdo talk about how he 0:02:47.360 --> 0:02:52.120 draws Dilbert. That'll make him happy. So Scott, realizing that 0:02:52.160 --> 0:02:53.919 this was a thing that he might make some bank on, 0:02:54.240 --> 0:02:57.560 enrolled in a Dale Carnegie course and this is while 0:02:57.600 --> 0:03:00.520 he was still working at Pacific Bell. But drawing Gilbert. 0:03:00.600 --> 0:03:02.440 His employer was kind of willing to foot the bill 0:03:02.440 --> 0:03:05.840 because they saw it as beneficial to them. And Scott 0:03:06.000 --> 0:03:08.120 didn't know how to do any public speaking, and so 0:03:08.160 --> 0:03:09.679 he felt like this would help him. Now, do you 0:03:09.720 --> 0:03:11.320 know anything about Dale Carnegie. 0:03:11.680 --> 0:03:14.280 That name sounds familiar and it doesn't make me h, 0:03:14.600 --> 0:03:15.320 But that's familiar. 0:03:15.919 --> 0:03:18.520 You've all, like most people, you may not recognize his name, 0:03:18.520 --> 0:03:20.440 but everyone's heard of this guy's book. He's the guy 0:03:20.440 --> 0:03:22.640 who wrote How to Win Friends and Influence people. 0:03:22.680 --> 0:03:26.239 Okay, yeah, my dad had yeah book, my dad, yeah yeah. 0:03:26.280 --> 0:03:28.560 I'm going to guess something approaching one hundred percent of 0:03:28.600 --> 0:03:30.960 our listeners had one or more family members with this 0:03:31.000 --> 0:03:33.000 book in their house. It's an incredit. It's one of 0:03:33.000 --> 0:03:35.880 the best selling books in the history of like writing. 0:03:36.640 --> 0:03:39.680 You know, say what you will about it. That's undeniable. 0:03:40.640 --> 0:03:43.600 Dale Carnegie was born in eighteen eighty eight. He's an 0:03:43.600 --> 0:03:46.360 American writer and a lecturer. And yeah, he got rich 0:03:46.400 --> 0:03:48.520 writing this book How to Win Friends and Influence People. 0:03:49.000 --> 0:03:51.480 It is still a best selling book to this day. 0:03:52.440 --> 0:03:56.880 It is sold probably like just an unbelievable number of copies. 0:03:57.480 --> 0:03:59.360 Whether or not this is a good thing kind of 0:03:59.360 --> 0:04:01.240 depends on yourve But as far as I can tell, 0:04:01.240 --> 0:04:03.200 I don't think Dale. You know, there's a lot you 0:04:03.240 --> 0:04:05.120 can say about him. He was kind of like I 0:04:05.160 --> 0:04:07.280 would say, like a lame man. But he was not 0:04:07.360 --> 0:04:09.320 like evil, right, He's not like this is not one 0:04:09.320 --> 0:04:12.560 of those like I'm subtly writing this book about like 0:04:12.600 --> 0:04:15.160 how to influence people so you can like sexually assault them, 0:04:15.200 --> 0:04:17.159 like you know, you're talking about like modern you know, 0:04:17.279 --> 0:04:20.039 like Andrew Tait types. Like he's not that kind of guy. 0:04:21.040 --> 0:04:25.880 He's just sort of like a little griftie, I guess 0:04:25.920 --> 0:04:27.760 in kind of his his Like I don't think he 0:04:27.839 --> 0:04:30.039 is a grifter, but like the way he talks is 0:04:30.160 --> 0:04:32.000 very appealing to them, and the things he's telling you 0:04:32.040 --> 0:04:36.320 how to do is kind of appealing to more. Yeah, yeah, 0:04:36.360 --> 0:04:39.080 it's definitely like that's who the ought. We'll talk about 0:04:39.120 --> 0:04:41.360 that in a little bit. Yeah, So Dale he had 0:04:41.400 --> 0:04:45.440 been kind of a like he'd been like a salesman 0:04:46.200 --> 0:04:48.800 who kind of quits his career midstream to become an 0:04:48.839 --> 0:04:52.159 actor and just sort of like in order to make 0:04:52.320 --> 0:04:55.599 ends meet. He starts out teaching public speaking classes like 0:04:55.680 --> 0:04:58.640 while he's being a stage actor, and he finds out 0:04:58.640 --> 0:05:01.359 that he's like a lot better that than the actual 0:05:01.400 --> 0:05:03.200 acting and that there's a lot more money in it. 0:05:03.839 --> 0:05:05.919 During one session with a bunch of people trying to 0:05:05.960 --> 0:05:09.280 learn how to do public speaking better, Dale started asking 0:05:09.320 --> 0:05:11.359 his students while he was again he's trying to like 0:05:11.360 --> 0:05:12.719 coach them how to get up in front of a 0:05:12.760 --> 0:05:15.960 room of people and talk. He starts asking his students 0:05:16.000 --> 0:05:18.840 to talk about something that made them really angry, and 0:05:18.880 --> 0:05:21.480 he noted that like people who were really reticent who 0:05:21.520 --> 0:05:23.360 had trouble getting up in front of people and talking. 0:05:23.600 --> 0:05:25.960 When they started talking about something that pissed them off, 0:05:26.279 --> 0:05:28.160 they were able to get over their fear of public 0:05:28.200 --> 0:05:31.480 speaking more easily, right, Which makes a lot of sense. Yeah, 0:05:31.480 --> 0:05:34.200 that's not an like's not that I mean, it's kind 0:05:34.240 --> 0:05:36.760 of worth noting, it's worth being the guy who writes 0:05:36.760 --> 0:05:38.960 that down. I'm not taking anything away from him. But 0:05:38.960 --> 0:05:41.240 that's not like for us today. And that's most of 0:05:41.360 --> 0:05:44.560 like Dale's actual good advice is stuff that today we're 0:05:44.600 --> 0:05:46.360 just like, well, yeah, if you're pissed off, it's easier 0:05:46.360 --> 0:05:48.159 to like not think about the fact that you're nervous 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:49.520 in front of a group of people or whatever. 0:05:49.720 --> 0:05:50.760 Yeah. 0:05:51.080 --> 0:05:54.320 Yeah, So Dale kind of used this and some other 0:05:54.360 --> 0:05:57.479 revelations he had teaching these classes as the basis for 0:05:57.560 --> 0:05:59.920 a book that promised to improve self confidence for the 0:06:00.120 --> 0:06:02.839 average reader and teach them how to change the behavior 0:06:02.839 --> 0:06:05.800 of others by altering their own behavior towards those people. 0:06:06.320 --> 0:06:10.400 There's nothing inherently wrong with this other than that some 0:06:10.480 --> 0:06:15.039 of David's some of Dale's advice works pretty well, and 0:06:15.120 --> 0:06:16.960 kind of more to the point, I think the actual 0:06:17.040 --> 0:06:21.359 problematic thing is that, like it's number one, it teaches 0:06:21.400 --> 0:06:25.880 this kind of overly ritualized, rule based approach to how 0:06:25.880 --> 0:06:28.719 to like influence and talk and convince people of things, 0:06:29.080 --> 0:06:32.320 which can kind of there's you know how D and 0:06:32.400 --> 0:06:34.279 D and stuff works, right where. 0:06:34.080 --> 0:06:38.200 You got yeah, yeah, where you've got like, Okay, you know, 0:06:38.279 --> 0:06:40.800 here's a character and this character game to level, and 0:06:40.800 --> 0:06:42.520 so I pick a feet and this feat works with 0:06:42.600 --> 0:06:44.680 these other feats and it lets them do these other things. 0:06:44.680 --> 0:06:47.680 It's very there's kind of a hierarchy in terms of 0:06:47.680 --> 0:06:49.839 how a lot of the skills work, right where you 0:06:49.880 --> 0:06:51.440 get one skill and that allows you to get these 0:06:51.480 --> 0:06:53.160 other skills and then you can do these kind of 0:06:53.160 --> 0:06:59.640 like more complicated acts. That's not really how like charisma works. 0:07:00.160 --> 0:07:03.200 But books like Dale's, I think, can convince people that 0:07:03.200 --> 0:07:04.960 that's how it works. That if they just read these 0:07:04.960 --> 0:07:08.919 books and stack these tactics, then they'll gain these like 0:07:09.200 --> 0:07:12.120 eventually they'll get to do sort of the speaking equivalent 0:07:12.160 --> 0:07:16.200 of like a whirlwind attack as a barbarian. Right, we're here, fine, 0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:21.400 we have mobility, Yeah exactly, yeah exactly, And that's that's 0:07:21.480 --> 0:07:25.320 really not how this stuff works. But I kind of 0:07:25.880 --> 0:07:29.160 the fact that people start to believe that's how it works. Again, 0:07:29.280 --> 0:07:31.440 Dale's not like a pick up artist, but this is 0:07:31.480 --> 0:07:33.320 where we get pick up artistry, right, Like it all 0:07:33.400 --> 0:07:35.760 kind of descends from the way that Dale talks about 0:07:35.760 --> 0:07:38.520 how to win friends and influence people, and kind of 0:07:38.640 --> 0:07:41.400 getting Americans advice on how to be more confident and 0:07:41.480 --> 0:07:44.440 convincing is kind of like handing a loaded and chambered 0:07:44.440 --> 0:07:47.560 pistol to a drunken chimpanzee. It's just not a great idea. 0:07:48.360 --> 0:07:52.200 And yeah, we are. Of all of the peoples of Earth, 0:07:52.280 --> 0:07:57.000 Americans are the ones who needed less self confidence. A 0:07:57.000 --> 0:08:00.640 couple more hangaruts would be nice. Yeah, some humility courses 0:08:01.400 --> 0:08:03.640 maybe make us. I don't know, we don't do so 0:08:03.680 --> 0:08:05.280 great when we're scared either. I don't know how to 0:08:05.280 --> 0:08:09.400 fix Themerica. Let's move on. Yeah, yeah, we should probably 0:08:09.440 --> 0:08:13.440 just move on. I want to read a quote from 0:08:13.480 --> 0:08:16.440 his book about his book from an article I found 0:08:16.480 --> 0:08:20.400 in The Cut, which interviews science writer Maria Konikova, and 0:08:20.520 --> 0:08:22.680 Maria is the author of a book on CON's and 0:08:22.760 --> 0:08:27.000 conman called The Confidence Game. And here's Maria talking about Dale. 0:08:27.640 --> 0:08:30.040 Dale Carnegie's had to win friends and influence people is 0:08:30.120 --> 0:08:32.800 kind of the unofficial con artist's bible. Because a lot 0:08:32.840 --> 0:08:35.000 of those tactics he talks about in terms of building 0:08:35.000 --> 0:08:38.160 relationships and being successful in business are ideal for getting 0:08:38.160 --> 0:08:40.640 people to trust you. One of the really easy things 0:08:40.679 --> 0:08:43.319 is creating a feeling of familiarity. You're more likely to 0:08:43.360 --> 0:08:45.760 trust someone who feels more familiar to you. It's even 0:08:45.840 --> 0:08:48.920 enough to exploit something called the mere exposure effect, where 0:08:48.960 --> 0:08:50.880 say you just go to the same coffee shop as 0:08:50.880 --> 0:08:53.800 someone every single day, and they may not consciously note you, 0:08:53.840 --> 0:08:57.600 but all of a sudden you feel more familiar. And 0:08:57.679 --> 0:09:00.719 a lot of Dale's advice is kind of again, it's 0:09:00.760 --> 0:09:03.320 not like necessarily all that problematic, and in fact, it's 0:09:03.400 --> 0:09:04.920 kind of like the Art of War and that if 0:09:04.960 --> 0:09:07.319 you like read it today, because some of the things 0:09:07.360 --> 0:09:10.679 he wrote about have been so like spread so widely, 0:09:11.040 --> 0:09:14.040 you'll be really bored. It'll seem it's like very basic 0:09:14.080 --> 0:09:16.679 stuff to a lot of people today. It's all not 0:09:16.720 --> 0:09:19.840 necessarily like bad advice, but it's just kind of like 0:09:20.040 --> 0:09:22.679 basic as hell these days. Like people who obsess over 0:09:22.720 --> 0:09:24.839 this book today, like people who obsess over the Art 0:09:24.840 --> 0:09:27.439 of War are kind of like, I don't know, man, 0:09:27.480 --> 0:09:29.679 there's like better stuff like it's been it's been a 0:09:29.800 --> 0:09:32.360 one hundred years, Like there's better books on convince. 0:09:32.600 --> 0:09:34.679 Yeah, it's nice to know what if you want to 0:09:34.679 --> 0:09:36.840 try to go back to the basics and see what's started. 0:09:36.880 --> 0:09:38.480 But yeah, I mean. 0:09:40.240 --> 0:09:44.319 No, Scott's going to kind of religiously love this guy, right, 0:09:44.400 --> 0:09:47.200 like he takes this on. This is kind of taking 0:09:47.200 --> 0:09:49.560 the place of religion for him, and this is going 0:09:49.600 --> 0:09:52.160 to build what sort of what does really in a 0:09:52.200 --> 0:09:54.440 lot of ways replace religion in any kind of like 0:09:54.480 --> 0:09:58.000 political sensibility as the thing at the core of Scott's 0:09:58.120 --> 0:10:01.320 understanding of reality and how it works, Like what I 0:10:01.360 --> 0:10:03.720 was just talking about, that sort of people take this 0:10:03.800 --> 0:10:05.719 book and they interpret it like it's a D and 0:10:05.800 --> 0:10:08.480 D manual, right, full of like feats and skills, and 0:10:08.520 --> 0:10:10.520 as they level up, they can like stack these feats 0:10:10.520 --> 0:10:14.480 and skills starting with this Dale Carnegie chorus. That's increasingly 0:10:14.559 --> 0:10:16.640 how Scott is going to view the world. 0:10:17.400 --> 0:10:19.840 I mean I get it from a certain viewpoint of 0:10:19.840 --> 0:10:22.720 being with an awkward dirt kid, just like why can't 0:10:22.760 --> 0:10:25.120 I have a cheap code? Why can't just be a 0:10:25.240 --> 0:10:30.000 direct manual? But someone like him who's like, but I 0:10:30.000 --> 0:10:34.640 want to make sure I'm always a special boy. Yeah, Well, 0:10:34.679 --> 0:10:35.720 in manipulations. 0:10:36.960 --> 0:10:39.680 The other danger of this, like there is some value 0:10:39.720 --> 0:10:41.959 if you want to be a public speaker. Public speaking 0:10:42.080 --> 0:10:44.760 is like a technical skill, and like any other technical skill, 0:10:45.280 --> 0:10:47.199 if you want to do that for a living, it's 0:10:47.240 --> 0:10:49.720 not a bad idea to study it, to study what 0:10:49.800 --> 0:10:51.800 other people have written about it, to try to learn 0:10:51.880 --> 0:10:54.080 more about it. But when you have this kind of 0:10:54.240 --> 0:10:58.679 very engineer focused view of how something like public speaking works, 0:10:58.720 --> 0:11:02.600 of how persuasion, of how charisma works, then one thing 0:11:02.640 --> 0:11:07.240 you're not going to do is ever listen to other people, right, Yeah, 0:11:07.240 --> 0:11:10.360 because they they're just they're the they're the again, they're 0:11:10.400 --> 0:11:12.840 like the cr you know, five monster or whatever that 0:11:12.840 --> 0:11:15.680 you're trying to figure out how to like drop before 0:11:15.720 --> 0:11:17.720 it can you know, do any damage to you or 0:11:17.720 --> 0:11:18.160 something like. 0:11:18.160 --> 0:11:19.320 They're not to. 0:11:19.320 --> 0:11:23.640 See everyone is a cobalt. Yeah, yeah, last, yeah exactly. 0:11:23.720 --> 0:11:25.720 That's That's that's how you're going to look at the world. 0:11:25.800 --> 0:11:27.160 And that's not a great way to look at the 0:11:27.160 --> 0:11:28.760 world if you want to be if you want to 0:11:28.840 --> 0:11:32.959 like have humility or or be capable of like change 0:11:33.000 --> 0:11:37.319 and personal evolution. Anyway, I do think it's interesting that 0:11:37.559 --> 0:11:40.440 these Dale Carnegie teachings how they may have influenced what 0:11:40.480 --> 0:11:43.760 I always considered to be one of Scott's more reasonable 0:11:43.760 --> 0:11:46.480 philosophical claims. And this is going to take us back 0:11:46.480 --> 0:11:47.559 into the weeds a little bit. 0:11:47.640 --> 0:11:47.720 So. 0:11:48.520 --> 0:11:52.120 Lawrence Peter was a Canadian professor who eventually came to 0:11:52.160 --> 0:11:56.560 teach at the University of Southern California. His specialty on paper, 0:11:56.600 --> 0:11:59.760 he's a professor of education. But over the years, Peter 0:12:00.160 --> 0:12:04.520 felt drawn to studying organizations and why they succeeded or 0:12:04.640 --> 0:12:08.160 failed in different circumstances, and he came to believe that 0:12:08.160 --> 0:12:10.760 the best way to do that was to study hierarchies 0:12:10.800 --> 0:12:14.400 within organizations and how they functioned and how they became dysfunctional. 0:12:14.880 --> 0:12:19.400 He started to call himself a hierarchyologist, which is both 0:12:19.400 --> 0:12:22.120 a fun term. It doesn't spell well, but if you 0:12:22.200 --> 0:12:24.000 like say it out to yourself, it kind of works 0:12:24.000 --> 0:12:27.240 pretty well. And yeah, he saw himself as like someone 0:12:27.280 --> 0:12:30.520 who studies how different hierarchical systems function and don't function. 0:12:31.040 --> 0:12:33.640 Lawrence was also a funny guy. He was kind of 0:12:33.760 --> 0:12:36.880 renowned for peppering his different writings and essays and papers 0:12:37.360 --> 0:12:40.520 with witticisms, like noblest of all dogs is the hot dog. 0:12:40.679 --> 0:12:43.720 It feeds the hand that bites it. That's a Lawrence 0:12:43.720 --> 0:12:44.520 Peter original. 0:12:44.720 --> 0:12:46.520 Nice. I mean, that's a fun little quote. I can 0:12:46.520 --> 0:12:46.840 see that. 0:12:46.920 --> 0:12:49.600 Yes, not a bad little not a bad little little jape. 0:12:50.480 --> 0:12:53.720 In nineteen sixty nine, Lawrence co wrote a book called 0:12:53.880 --> 0:12:57.120 the Peter Principle. The nut of the argument he made 0:12:57.160 --> 0:13:00.200 in the book was this quote. In a hierarchy, every 0:13:00.240 --> 0:13:03.959 employee tends to rise to his level of incompetence in time. 0:13:04.080 --> 0:13:07.000 Every post tends to be occupied by an employee who 0:13:07.040 --> 0:13:10.280 was incompetent to carry out its duties. Work is accomplished 0:13:10.280 --> 0:13:12.880 by those employees who have not yet reached their level 0:13:12.920 --> 0:13:16.920 of incompetence. Now, that is something number one. If you've 0:13:16.920 --> 0:13:19.559 ever worked in any kind of large corporation, you will 0:13:19.600 --> 0:13:21.840 be like, yeah, that shit works a lot of the time. 0:13:21.960 --> 0:13:26.960 Right, it's pessimistic, but unfortunately it's yeah accurate. It is not. 0:13:27.160 --> 0:13:29.680 It's going to be familiar to basically one hundred percent 0:13:29.720 --> 0:13:32.200 of people who have worked in corporate America. Right, even 0:13:32.200 --> 0:13:34.360 if you don't believe that's how it always works, because 0:13:34.480 --> 0:13:37.439 obviously that's not how everything always works. But like everyone 0:13:37.600 --> 0:13:40.160 encounters people who are in this position right where they 0:13:40.160 --> 0:13:42.679 were good at something, and that's the whole premise of 0:13:42.720 --> 0:13:45.280 the office, right of the American Office. Michael Scott was 0:13:45.320 --> 0:13:48.440 a really good salesman who got promoted well past his 0:13:48.520 --> 0:13:50.520 level of competence, you know, and. 0:13:50.600 --> 0:13:52.360 You're receiving the American Office. I'm sorry. 0:13:52.600 --> 0:13:54.920 Oh well, that's the premise of the show. It's all 0:13:54.960 --> 0:13:58.199 based on the Peter principles. Right, they're doing great, Robert, 0:13:58.920 --> 0:14:01.240 thank you, Thank you. People watch that. 0:14:01.280 --> 0:14:03.040 I think you should be noted that this is one 0:14:03.080 --> 0:14:06.200 of the few times he like a pop culture reference 0:14:06.200 --> 0:14:08.680 to a man's podcast and the guests didn't get it. 0:14:08.720 --> 0:14:14.520 But Robert and you are very, very very correct. Yeah, 0:14:14.920 --> 0:14:17.200 you know what I'm I'm I'm sick of all of you. 0:14:17.200 --> 0:14:19.640 I'm going to go listen to my Ariana Grande records. 0:14:19.640 --> 0:14:20.960 Wow you did. 0:14:23.440 --> 0:14:25.400 Oh my gosh, that's growth. 0:14:25.600 --> 0:14:27.320 Oh wait, I was trying to pronounce it wrong. Did 0:14:27.360 --> 0:14:28.280 I accidentally get it right? 0:14:28.360 --> 0:14:29.120 You got it right? 0:14:29.720 --> 0:14:35.440 A son of a bitch? What a what a shameful 0:14:35.480 --> 0:14:38.040 moment for me. I'm going to go read the name 0:14:38.080 --> 0:14:40.760 of some British towns to get my mojo back there 0:14:40.760 --> 0:14:41.080 you go. 0:14:41.240 --> 0:14:42.000 Oh my god. 0:14:42.160 --> 0:14:45.479 All I'm saying is I've infiltrated your mind. 0:14:45.840 --> 0:14:47.640 Now today you know what, the only way for me 0:14:47.680 --> 0:14:49.800 to get back on top, I'm gonna I'm gonna read 0:14:49.840 --> 0:14:51.120 Welsh street signs. 0:14:51.240 --> 0:14:57.560 See how it goes for me. Small backwoods Massachusetts town 0:14:57.640 --> 0:15:04.200 name so so yeah. 0:15:04.240 --> 0:15:07.480 Peter Laurence, Peter, you know, writes this book about how 0:15:07.480 --> 0:15:09.880 people get you know, people who are competent get promoted 0:15:09.880 --> 0:15:14.560 past their level of incompetence. And that's how like hierarchies work. Now, 0:15:14.880 --> 0:15:17.640 this is not Peter is not pretending to write like 0:15:17.840 --> 0:15:21.640 a super serious book of psychology. He's not trying to 0:15:21.640 --> 0:15:24.040 write a business book. Either it's a satire, right like that, 0:15:24.360 --> 0:15:26.040 or at least at various points he will say that 0:15:26.120 --> 0:15:28.640 it's a satire and there's a lot of like joking 0:15:28.680 --> 0:15:30.800 bits in it. For example, all of the evidence that 0:15:30.840 --> 0:15:33.400 he cites to support his argument comes from what he 0:15:33.440 --> 0:15:36.680 calls his hypothetical case file. So he's not like citing 0:15:36.720 --> 0:15:39.080 from like real things that happened. He's citing from like 0:15:39.120 --> 0:15:42.120 hypothetical stories, some of which are probably based on things 0:15:42.160 --> 0:15:44.800 he heard or things that happened to him. But it's 0:15:44.840 --> 0:15:48.320 like it's very tongue in cheek this book, right, And 0:15:48.360 --> 0:15:50.840 he would later claim that the principle is the quote 0:15:50.960 --> 0:15:55.240 key to understanding of the whole structure of civilization. That's 0:15:55.320 --> 0:15:58.160 kind of and again he's like sort of joshing around 0:15:58.160 --> 0:16:00.720 a little bit, but he's also like there's there's something 0:16:00.760 --> 0:16:03.280 deep there, like that is this is like, I think, 0:16:03.280 --> 0:16:09.040 a valuable a valuable warning and a valuable observation about 0:16:09.080 --> 0:16:11.960 how hierarchy very often tends to work, right, because this 0:16:12.080 --> 0:16:15.640 happens throughout government, throughout company, you know, the business world 0:16:15.680 --> 0:16:16.800 in militaries, like. 0:16:16.760 --> 0:16:20.440 This is just a thing, and it's education nonprofits. 0:16:20.760 --> 0:16:23.800 Yeah, and you can you can go back ten thousand years, 0:16:24.080 --> 0:16:26.360 you know, looking at the best documentation we have of 0:16:26.400 --> 0:16:29.200 different rulers of different and you'll find evidence of the 0:16:29.200 --> 0:16:33.640 Peter principle. It's all throughout human history. So yeah, it's 0:16:33.680 --> 0:16:36.320 it's a bit of like he's taken the piss a 0:16:36.360 --> 0:16:39.160 little bit, but yeah, there's there's there's quite a bit there. Now, 0:16:39.240 --> 0:16:43.800 the business community almost instantly adopted Lawrence's idea, even though 0:16:43.840 --> 0:16:45.880 he was kind of like joking with it. This is 0:16:45.920 --> 0:16:50.240 a hugely influential text for business people, for MBAs and shit, 0:16:50.680 --> 0:16:54.520 and today the Peter principle is taken very seriously by 0:16:54.520 --> 0:16:59.560 people who are like professionals at organizing corporate structures. In 0:16:59.600 --> 0:17:02.320 a few seconds googling, I found a Harvard Business Review 0:17:02.400 --> 0:17:05.680 article on quote overcoming the Peter principle and a Forbes 0:17:05.760 --> 0:17:08.879 article titled new evidence that Peter principle is real and 0:17:08.880 --> 0:17:11.240 I'm going to read a relevant quote from that real quick. 0:17:11.760 --> 0:17:15.000 Three professors Alan Benson of the University of Minnesota, Danielle 0:17:15.080 --> 0:17:18.000 Lee of MIT, and Kelly Schue of Yale analyzed the 0:17:18.040 --> 0:17:21.119 performance of fifty three thousand and thirty five sales employees 0:17:21.119 --> 0:17:23.639 at two hundred and fourteen American companies from two thousand 0:17:23.680 --> 0:17:26.720 and five to twenty eleven. During that time, fifteen hundred 0:17:26.760 --> 0:17:28.600 and thirty one of those sales reps were promoted to 0:17:28.600 --> 0:17:32.000 become sales managers. The data show that the best salespeople 0:17:32.000 --> 0:17:35.520 were more likely to A be promoted and B perform 0:17:35.640 --> 0:17:36.920 poorly as managers. 0:17:37.560 --> 0:17:38.639 So like, there's. 0:17:38.560 --> 0:17:41.960 Actual data, you know behind this obviously not a universal rule, 0:17:41.960 --> 0:17:47.000 but quite robust. So Scott Adams presumably learns about the 0:17:47.000 --> 0:17:49.880 Peter principle while he's getting his MBA right, Like he's 0:17:49.960 --> 0:17:52.400 kind of doing his MBA right at the time when 0:17:52.400 --> 0:17:55.640 the Peter principle is kind of going viral in corporate America. 0:17:55.680 --> 0:17:57.760 There's almost no way he wouldn't have read about this 0:17:57.840 --> 0:18:00.240 and so probably listened to was at like conference and 0:18:00.240 --> 0:18:03.000 stuff where people talk about it. And in nineteen ninety six, 0:18:03.160 --> 0:18:05.480 just as Dilbert was blowing up, he decided to put 0:18:05.480 --> 0:18:08.600 his own spin on the Peter principle in his first 0:18:08.640 --> 0:18:10.760 text based book. So this is not like a book 0:18:10.800 --> 0:18:15.399 of cartoons. This is like a nonfiction book. The Dilbert principle. 0:18:15.520 --> 0:18:18.480 The delivery that was the book. Yeah, it sure is, 0:18:18.680 --> 0:18:20.520 it sure is, which I read when I was like 0:18:20.600 --> 0:18:25.240 ten several ten year old were you? I was a 0:18:25.280 --> 0:18:28.160 ten year old who, like I would go through sometimes 0:18:28.200 --> 0:18:30.600 three or four books in a week, like I always 0:18:30.600 --> 0:18:33.320 wanted to read like that. I was like, well, you know, 0:18:33.560 --> 0:18:35.439 I got a lot. So my my uncle, who had 0:18:35.440 --> 0:18:37.560 all the comics, was the guy. Also he worked at 0:18:37.560 --> 0:18:40.080 a bookstore, and he would bring back what were called 0:18:40.160 --> 0:18:42.960 strip cop books, which is like books that have sold 0:18:43.160 --> 0:18:44.760 I know exactly we're talking about the ones out there, 0:18:44.840 --> 0:18:46.920 Well we can't. Yeah, those are great. 0:18:47.320 --> 0:18:49.879 So everything I read either came from those books or 0:18:49.920 --> 0:18:52.840 from his library. And yeah, he had a lot of 0:18:52.880 --> 0:18:54.680 Dilbert books. So I read a lot of Dilbert books. 0:18:54.720 --> 0:18:59.080 Yeah, surprisingly, I guess because also Dilbert came out when 0:18:59.080 --> 0:19:01.680 I was much older. Yeah, And when I think about 0:19:01.680 --> 0:19:03.639 what I was reading at ten was like D and 0:19:03.720 --> 0:19:04.640 D novels. 0:19:04.920 --> 0:19:06.720 Yeah, I read a lot of those, a lot of 0:19:06.800 --> 0:19:07.480 dragon Lance. 0:19:07.760 --> 0:19:12.480 Yeahs Scott Adams at that point, like yeah, oh, I've 0:19:12.480 --> 0:19:16.320 read Hitching's Gut at each ten. Yeah, Like I remember 0:19:16.359 --> 0:19:19.160 trying to pick Actually I'm trying to pick up once 0:19:19.200 --> 0:19:20.880 my dad had a copy of How to Win Friends 0:19:20.880 --> 0:19:23.480 and Influence People because my father was a union president, 0:19:23.520 --> 0:19:25.399 and he and I remember pinging up and he's like, 0:19:25.400 --> 0:19:28.000 you're too young for that. Go read something fun and 0:19:28.320 --> 0:19:29.280 get out my hands. 0:19:29.440 --> 0:19:32.879 Don't be That's that's honestly great parenting. Like don' go donco, 0:19:33.040 --> 0:19:34.639 don't read this. This will turn you into one of 0:19:34.680 --> 0:19:38.720 these weirdos, Like go read something that'll make you laugh. Now, 0:19:38.720 --> 0:19:41.679 I'm pretty sure at the time I read this, I 0:19:41.800 --> 0:19:45.760 was like veering between the Wheel of Time series and 0:19:46.000 --> 0:19:46.800 Delbert books. 0:19:46.800 --> 0:19:49.480 So you know, I was kid whipping. 0:19:49.600 --> 0:19:49.760 Yeah. 0:19:50.000 --> 0:19:51.639 I was a weird kid for sure. 0:19:54.000 --> 0:19:57.680 Anyway, at least Gore books that's all I care about. Yeah, yeah, 0:19:58.080 --> 0:20:00.520 good god, we that's another episode. We'll get to that 0:20:00.560 --> 0:20:06.560 one of these days, Victorians. Yeah, this was basically the 0:20:06.600 --> 0:20:10.199 Dilbert principle. As Scott describes, it is basically an inversion 0:20:10.320 --> 0:20:13.879 of the Peter principle. Instead of observing that hierarchies tended 0:20:13.920 --> 0:20:16.720 to elevate competent people past the level where they are 0:20:16.760 --> 0:20:20.360 good at what they do, Adams envisioned hierarchy in business 0:20:20.400 --> 0:20:24.600 as a defense mechanism to elevate incompetent people to positions 0:20:24.640 --> 0:20:27.520 of upper management where they don't actually have anything to 0:20:27.600 --> 0:20:30.200 do and thus are less likely to interfere with the 0:20:30.240 --> 0:20:34.960 people who actually produce work. Right now, if you've also 0:20:35.160 --> 0:20:37.520 like you've probably I think this is less common for 0:20:37.600 --> 0:20:39.359 people in the Peter principle because I think most of 0:20:39.440 --> 0:20:41.520 us have stories of upper management who have like fucked 0:20:41.520 --> 0:20:43.879 around in our shit. But like, if you've worked in 0:20:43.920 --> 0:20:47.040 a company, you've seen this too. Both the Peter principle 0:20:47.119 --> 0:20:49.399 and Scott's Delbert principle, these are things that you can 0:20:49.440 --> 0:20:52.840 observe in the world, right, These are not like Yeah, 0:20:53.560 --> 0:20:56.520 and I think both principles can be useful observations about 0:20:56.520 --> 0:20:59.360 the way organizations work, get about pitfalls to avoid when 0:20:59.480 --> 0:21:02.919 when created organizations. The Peter principle, I believe is a 0:21:02.960 --> 0:21:06.600 lot more durable. It describes a much more widespread, I 0:21:06.600 --> 0:21:09.960 would say, nearly universal phenomenon. I can think back to 0:21:10.080 --> 0:21:12.600 like my own career at Cracked. All of my friends 0:21:12.640 --> 0:21:16.680 and I started out writing funny articles and got promoted 0:21:16.720 --> 0:21:19.840 to managing teams and like doing a lot of work 0:21:19.840 --> 0:21:23.200 that we had absolutely no aptitude for because like we 0:21:23.280 --> 0:21:25.479 just wanted to make our funny little japes and suddenly 0:21:25.600 --> 0:21:28.320 we're like handling all of this like employment shit. And 0:21:29.040 --> 0:21:31.040 you know that was that was There was a tough 0:21:31.119 --> 0:21:35.240 learning curve there. I think that I lie, there were 0:21:35.440 --> 0:21:38.439 you know, it was good and it was bad. It 0:21:38.480 --> 0:21:40.600 worked better than it should have for a long time. 0:21:40.640 --> 0:21:44.159 But like I can definitely say, and it's not like comprehensive, right, 0:21:44.200 --> 0:21:46.679 because we all still wrote articles and made videos and 0:21:46.720 --> 0:21:48.800 did the stuff we were good at. I think the 0:21:48.840 --> 0:21:50.440 thing that I would say if I was going to 0:21:50.560 --> 0:21:55.240 like make a maybe a more generalizable, you know, version 0:21:55.240 --> 0:21:58.359 of the Peter principle is that competent people get promoted 0:21:58.400 --> 0:21:59.879 to the point where they spend less and less of 0:22:00.160 --> 0:22:01.480 time on the thing they're best at. 0:22:01.760 --> 0:22:04.800 Right, Yeah, Yeah, if you're not you have to or 0:22:04.800 --> 0:22:06.720 at least you have to be very careful to avoid 0:22:06.840 --> 0:22:08.800 that happening, right, because it's just kind of like. 0:22:08.840 --> 0:22:11.800 Naturally what what hierarchical structures do to people who are 0:22:11.840 --> 0:22:16.160 good at shit? So yeah, I do think that Scott's 0:22:16.160 --> 0:22:18.919 Gilbert principle, while I have seen versions of this in 0:22:18.960 --> 0:22:22.879 my own life, is a lot less widely applicable. For 0:22:22.960 --> 0:22:26.560 one thing, upper management constantly makes decisions that impact the 0:22:26.600 --> 0:22:29.479 lives of people who actually produce shit and interfere with 0:22:29.520 --> 0:22:32.280 them getting stuff done, and like Scott knows this. He 0:22:32.359 --> 0:22:34.680 parodies this in a lot of his early strips, right, 0:22:34.720 --> 0:22:38.600 like management making dumbs, decisions that fuck shit up, layoffs, 0:22:38.640 --> 0:22:40.720 you know, in order to drink, stock prices that force 0:22:40.720 --> 0:22:43.280 out productive workers in business units, that kind of shit. 0:22:44.480 --> 0:22:46.800 And it's it's one of those things where like I 0:22:46.880 --> 0:22:51.520 will give Scott some credit because it's there's in this 0:22:51.560 --> 0:22:56.000 book kind of some valuable observations, and I don't think 0:22:56.040 --> 0:22:59.000 most of it's like, I don't think they're valuable observations 0:22:59.000 --> 0:23:01.600 to like a adults. I think this book is going 0:23:01.640 --> 0:23:04.239 to be is pretty basic for anybody who's been out 0:23:04.280 --> 0:23:06.520 and lived in the world, but as like an eleven 0:23:06.600 --> 0:23:08.280 or twelve year old kid. There were a couple of 0:23:08.280 --> 0:23:11.080 things that I found pretty influential, and in fact, one 0:23:11.320 --> 0:23:14.080 I'm going to read one passage that I encountered at 0:23:14.080 --> 0:23:16.240 a young age that I think is a pretty healthy 0:23:16.280 --> 0:23:18.959 thing for a young man to encounter at a young age. 0:23:20.400 --> 0:23:21.040 Here's Scott. 0:23:21.320 --> 0:23:24.480 I proudly include myself in the idiot category. Idiocy in 0:23:24.520 --> 0:23:27.120 the modern age isn't an all encompassing twenty four hour 0:23:27.200 --> 0:23:30.399 situation for most people. It's a condition that everybody slips 0:23:30.400 --> 0:23:33.680 into many times a day. Life is just too complicated 0:23:33.680 --> 0:23:35.800 to be smart all the time. The other day, I 0:23:35.800 --> 0:23:38.320 brought my pager to the repair center because it wouldn't work. 0:23:38.359 --> 0:23:41.040 After I changed the battery, the repairman took the pager 0:23:41.080 --> 0:23:43.320 out of my hand, flipped open the battery door, turned 0:23:43.359 --> 0:23:46.000 the battery around, and handed the now functional pager back 0:23:46.040 --> 0:23:48.760 to me in one well practiced motion. This took much 0:23:48.760 --> 0:23:50.800 of the joy out of my righteous indignation over the 0:23:50.880 --> 0:23:53.760 quality of their product, but the repairman seemed quite amused, 0:23:53.760 --> 0:23:56.040 and so did every other customer in the lobby on 0:23:56.119 --> 0:23:58.760 that day. In that situation, I was a complete idiot, 0:23:59.040 --> 0:24:01.359 Yet somehow I managed to operate a motor vehicle to 0:24:01.400 --> 0:24:03.760 the repair shop and back. It is a wondrous human 0:24:03.840 --> 0:24:05.760 characteristic to be able to slip into and out of 0:24:05.800 --> 0:24:09.159 idiocy many times a day without noting noticing the change, 0:24:09.240 --> 0:24:13.159 or accidentally killing innocent bystanders in the process. And I 0:24:13.160 --> 0:24:17.840 think that's actually a pretty good observation. I think it's 0:24:17.880 --> 0:24:21.760 also this this obsession that we have through media with 0:24:21.800 --> 0:24:27.160 like hypercompetent protagonists, like isn't real, Like, there's nobody who's 0:24:27.280 --> 0:24:30.120 like that that I've ever met in my life. And 0:24:30.200 --> 0:24:33.159 if you kind of accept that, you will be if 0:24:33.200 --> 0:24:36.200 you're able to accept your incompetence, and given situations, you're 0:24:36.200 --> 0:24:39.040 a lot less likely to, for example, try to wire 0:24:39.080 --> 0:24:42.200 your own house and wind up electrocuting yourself to death. 0:24:42.680 --> 0:24:48.439 You know, And I don't know, it was a useful 0:24:48.440 --> 0:24:53.000 thing to come across, as it's you're the idiot, yeah, 0:24:53.320 --> 0:24:57.040 and everyone is. The world is too complicated for you 0:24:57.080 --> 0:24:59.280 to know how to like you can be. You can 0:24:59.359 --> 0:25:02.280 know how to like from like from the ground up. 0:25:02.359 --> 0:25:05.119 How like the Android or iPhone is coded right. You 0:25:05.119 --> 0:25:08.000 could be an engineer at Apple or Google and know 0:25:08.080 --> 0:25:11.119 everything about like how the actual software on your phone works, 0:25:11.440 --> 0:25:13.600 But like you probably don't know how to solder the 0:25:13.760 --> 0:25:15.879 entire thing together, and you certainly don't know how to 0:25:15.880 --> 0:25:18.000 like mine the rare earth minerals and like put together 0:25:18.040 --> 0:25:20.480 that we're all out of our depth if you really 0:25:20.520 --> 0:25:24.560 think about it all the time. It's other people around 0:25:24.640 --> 0:25:26.679 us who know what they're doing and who have figured 0:25:26.720 --> 0:25:30.159 things out, and that that keep shit going right, Like 0:25:30.320 --> 0:25:33.600 I don't know how to operate a power plant, but 0:25:33.680 --> 0:25:37.560 thankfully there are people who do. You know, that's that's 0:25:37.640 --> 0:25:41.880 the it's it's like humbling and valuable to think that way. 0:25:42.000 --> 0:25:44.000 I thought you want to say, I don't know how 0:25:44.040 --> 0:25:47.080 to run a podcast, and I was going to be like, yep. 0:25:47.720 --> 0:25:49.560 I am Sophie Mellow. 0:25:49.960 --> 0:25:54.600 Wow, wow, wow, hurtful, hurtful, but yes, I have no 0:25:54.720 --> 0:25:58.080 idea what I'm doing. I don't even know what a 0:25:58.160 --> 0:26:01.560 podcast is. Like, I've been trained to shout at this 0:26:01.680 --> 0:26:04.679 blinking light when the box in my cage turns on, 0:26:05.760 --> 0:26:07.320 and that's that's what all of this is. 0:26:07.560 --> 0:26:08.800 Let's how you get the food pillots. 0:26:09.040 --> 0:26:12.040 Yeah, did you see that it's now blinking blue, which 0:26:12.040 --> 0:26:13.160 means ad break. 0:26:13.600 --> 0:26:17.600 Ah, speaking of shouting from your cage and a blinking light, 0:26:19.400 --> 0:26:20.080 here's ads. 0:26:26.040 --> 0:26:26.520 We're back. 0:26:27.200 --> 0:26:30.720 So I've just said, I think that Scott's got a 0:26:30.720 --> 0:26:33.440 good observation here, a useful thing for certainly a young 0:26:33.480 --> 0:26:36.560 person to encounter. The caveat to this is I don't 0:26:36.560 --> 0:26:39.600 believe Scott believes a word that he's written there, or 0:26:39.640 --> 0:26:41.679 at least if he did at one point believe it, 0:26:41.720 --> 0:26:43.600 he no longer does. But I don't think he ever 0:26:43.720 --> 0:26:47.560 really did. For one thing, this book, the debrit Principle, 0:26:47.640 --> 0:26:51.480 sells a million copies, which causes his ego to mistastasize 0:26:51.520 --> 0:26:56.040 like a cancer cancer and devour his mind. I kind 0:26:56.080 --> 0:26:57.920 of think the more I've learned about him, and the 0:26:57.960 --> 0:26:59.520 more I've learned about the stuff that he read and 0:26:59.560 --> 0:27:02.520 that's in fla, I think he's like, we're all idiots, 0:27:02.600 --> 0:27:05.639 especially me. You know, I'm dumb a lot of the time. 0:27:06.640 --> 0:27:09.240 Kind of stuff. This kind of self deprecating thing he does, 0:27:09.560 --> 0:27:13.520 I think it's a calculated shtick rather than evidence of humility. 0:27:13.840 --> 0:27:16.119 And I think part of why I believe this is 0:27:16.640 --> 0:27:19.959 this line I came across in that interview with Maria Konakhova, 0:27:20.480 --> 0:27:22.920 and here she is again describing a strategy from Dale 0:27:22.960 --> 0:27:26.600 Carnegie's book that is really popular with con artists. There's 0:27:26.640 --> 0:27:29.280 also the Mark Antony Gambit, which comes from Shakespeare where 0:27:29.320 --> 0:27:31.800 Mark Antony begins a speech by saying, I come to 0:27:31.840 --> 0:27:34.720 Barry Caesar not to praise him. He says the opposite 0:27:34.760 --> 0:27:36.119 of what he then goes on to do, but he 0:27:36.160 --> 0:27:39.040 primes people to think that he's on their side. And 0:27:39.240 --> 0:27:41.679 I kind of think that's there's a version of like 0:27:41.800 --> 0:27:44.240 Scott's doing a version of that with this, right, Like 0:27:44.320 --> 0:27:46.840 he's saying, like, we're all idiots, you know, especially me, 0:27:46.960 --> 0:27:49.400 I'm domb most of the time. But he's also that's 0:27:49.440 --> 0:27:51.639 being packaged, is like and look at how smart I 0:27:51.680 --> 0:27:54.879 am for realizing this and delivering this to you. You know, 0:27:55.119 --> 0:27:58.199 like there's there's a little bit of we can call 0:27:58.240 --> 0:28:02.040 it like kfe of there. Right, So Scott's books get 0:28:02.040 --> 0:28:04.639 increasingly popular from here on out. The next year he 0:28:04.680 --> 0:28:07.360 publishes The Delberate Future, which, of course I also read 0:28:07.359 --> 0:28:10.240 as a small child. The subtitle of the book was 0:28:10.320 --> 0:28:12.760 Thriving on Stupidity in the twenty first Century. It's a 0:28:12.760 --> 0:28:15.280 pretty forgettable book. You would call it like a pop 0:28:15.359 --> 0:28:19.080 futurist text about how technological development will impact people in 0:28:19.119 --> 0:28:23.200 the future. Again pretty forgettable. It does include the prediction 0:28:23.720 --> 0:28:27.320 technology and homeliness will combine to form a powerful type 0:28:27.320 --> 0:28:29.960 of birth control, which is a joke in the book. 0:28:30.040 --> 0:28:31.960 But I think Scott's going to kind of wind up 0:28:32.160 --> 0:28:35.520 pseudo in cell in a lot of like his ideology 0:28:35.560 --> 0:28:37.880 and a lot of the things he says. I think 0:28:37.880 --> 0:28:39.920 you could see this as like a precursor to that 0:28:40.200 --> 0:28:43.240 he is currently like this week as we talk chatting 0:28:43.240 --> 0:28:46.239 with Andrew Tait about how nobody likes sex really like 0:28:46.320 --> 0:28:47.120 it's not that good. 0:28:48.240 --> 0:28:50.680 Oh wow, yeah, on yourself there, buddy, Yeah, I tell 0:28:50.680 --> 0:28:52.600 you might be telling on yourself a little bit there, Scott. 0:28:54.840 --> 0:28:56.920 It's weird, as you'll see a screen camp for a 0:28:57.000 --> 0:29:01.280 someone late saying women don't actually orgasm. Women they never like, 0:29:01.640 --> 0:29:02.600 oh bloody no. 0:29:02.800 --> 0:29:05.040 And you know, you know what I'll say, for like, 0:29:05.120 --> 0:29:09.360 the women don't enjoy sex, guys, you like, that's fucked up, 0:29:09.480 --> 0:29:11.800 But they generally do enjoy sex. 0:29:11.840 --> 0:29:13.000 They just don't think women do. 0:29:13.320 --> 0:29:16.719 Scott's like, boy, we all actually hate sex, right, And 0:29:16.920 --> 0:29:18.880 it's like, for one thing, Scott, you know, there's like, 0:29:20.520 --> 0:29:22.720 if you want to like explore this, you might learn 0:29:22.760 --> 0:29:25.080 some stuff about yourself and come to accept some things. 0:29:25.080 --> 0:29:26.840 But it would it would take having kind of a 0:29:26.880 --> 0:29:31.600 more nuanced and plastic view of human intimacy that I 0:29:31.600 --> 0:29:33.480 think you're capable of having. 0:29:33.600 --> 0:29:36.200 But I don't know if you were more of a 0:29:36.240 --> 0:29:40.040 self reflective guy, well learning he was Ace. Yeah, I 0:29:40.040 --> 0:29:40.960 don't know that he is. 0:29:41.080 --> 0:29:43.680 But some of the stuff he says is like, well, Scott, 0:29:43.720 --> 0:29:46.840 if if you think that you've never maybe yeah, I 0:29:46.880 --> 0:29:50.080 don't know, A more thoughtful person might like come to 0:29:50.120 --> 0:29:53.040 some conclusions about himself through that. Scott just decides that 0:29:53.080 --> 0:29:56.080 everybody feels the same way, and we're all lying about 0:29:56.200 --> 0:30:00.160 enjoying sex for some reason, which I don't know. I 0:30:00.400 --> 0:30:03.520 feel about that however you want so. The weird part 0:30:03.560 --> 0:30:05.920 of the Book of the Delberate Future comes near the end, 0:30:06.000 --> 0:30:09.440 when Scott starts writing about his habit of making affirmations 0:30:09.480 --> 0:30:12.280 for the first time. He gives a couple of examples 0:30:12.280 --> 0:30:16.000 of times that affirmations worked for him, and both repeatedly 0:30:16.080 --> 0:30:19.160 gives a caveat that he's not saying there's anything supernatural 0:30:19.240 --> 0:30:22.000 happening here, and also kind of leaving the impression that 0:30:22.040 --> 0:30:24.960 he thinks he's discovered some kind of magical reality hack. 0:30:26.520 --> 0:30:29.760 Over time and far too many books, Scott's feelings on 0:30:29.800 --> 0:30:33.320 the Delbert principle and affirmation. Do you know what affirmations are? 0:30:34.080 --> 0:30:37.360 Yeah, as a whole like speaker truth in the universal world. Yeah, 0:30:37.680 --> 0:30:40.440 and the secret is basically it's the secret. 0:30:40.240 --> 0:30:42.160 Right you have to ask if you tell the universe 0:30:42.160 --> 0:30:43.960 what you're going to get or what you want, like, 0:30:44.040 --> 0:30:47.360 it'll provide it for you. There's some rules to it, generally, 0:30:47.440 --> 0:30:49.200 like the way Scott sees it, he has to like 0:30:49.240 --> 0:30:51.040 write it down a certain number of times a day. 0:30:51.120 --> 0:30:53.040 You have to be really specific about the thing that. 0:30:53.000 --> 0:30:53.760 You're going to do. 0:30:54.160 --> 0:30:55.760 So it's not just like I want to do well 0:30:55.760 --> 0:30:57.960 in this class, but I'm going to improve my score 0:30:58.160 --> 0:31:00.600 on this, you know, exam from this to this or 0:31:00.640 --> 0:31:02.320 something like that. You have to be very and like, 0:31:03.280 --> 0:31:05.479 you know, I don't think there's actually anything wrong with 0:31:05.560 --> 0:31:08.520 this idea, Like if affirmations help you focus your mind, 0:31:08.600 --> 0:31:11.920 focus on building skill in something, it's a it's you know, 0:31:12.000 --> 0:31:14.280 I can I see. I think for reasonable people this 0:31:14.320 --> 0:31:16.440 thing can be kind of a version of like meditation, 0:31:16.640 --> 0:31:17.080 right where you. 0:31:17.200 --> 0:31:18.760 Think for most people that work can be this is 0:31:18.760 --> 0:31:21.680 a harmless thing you did. Yeah, it's a personal ritual 0:31:22.080 --> 0:31:24.520 and even that that can be still calming. Yeah, it 0:31:24.520 --> 0:31:25.240 could be calming. 0:31:25.280 --> 0:31:26.520 It can help you kind of you get up in 0:31:26.560 --> 0:31:28.480 the morning and you kind of you write your affirmations. 0:31:28.520 --> 0:31:30.640 That helps you focus on like the things that you're. 0:31:30.440 --> 0:31:30.960 Going to work on. 0:31:31.040 --> 0:31:33.840 That's that's perfectly healthy if that works for you, Like, 0:31:33.880 --> 0:31:37.320 that's a great thing to do. Scott is I think 0:31:37.480 --> 0:31:42.479 kind of inherently hardwired to go really dogmatic about this stuff. 0:31:42.880 --> 0:31:45.600 Like he presents himself as as very much like an 0:31:45.640 --> 0:31:48.840 atheist and irrationalist, but he builds these kind of like 0:31:48.960 --> 0:31:52.720 labyrinthine rule systems about this stuff. Rather than being like, oh, 0:31:52.760 --> 0:31:55.000 you know, affirmations really helped me focus my mind and 0:31:55.040 --> 0:31:56.920 I did well on that test, he has to like 0:31:57.360 --> 0:32:01.360 set up these kind of increasingly arcane rule systems. He's 0:32:01.400 --> 0:32:04.120 the kind of guy again, if he was a little 0:32:04.200 --> 0:32:07.800 more open minded, a little cooler, he would have been, 0:32:07.880 --> 0:32:10.440 like in the eighteen hundreds, like one of these guys 0:32:11.040 --> 0:32:13.520 writing books about magic. You know, he would have convinced 0:32:13.560 --> 0:32:16.200 himself he was a wizard and probably would have been 0:32:16.240 --> 0:32:21.120 a healthier, happier person. Become a wizard, Scott Adams, You'll 0:32:21.280 --> 0:32:24.000 you'll like it more than being I don't know, a 0:32:24.040 --> 0:32:25.880 weird racist on YouTube. 0:32:26.440 --> 0:32:30.520 What his new book Dilbert Mancy. Yeah, Delbert Mancy, come on, Scott, 0:32:30.920 --> 0:32:33.080 at least give us that you know where owed it? 0:32:35.440 --> 0:32:40.760 Added Gandle Yeah exactly, Yeah, brit come on. So over 0:32:40.840 --> 0:32:44.520 time kind of this, Scott's feelings on the Dilbert principle 0:32:44.560 --> 0:32:48.200 and affirmations will evolve into this kind of labyrinthine scientifico 0:32:48.240 --> 0:32:52.240 religious ideology with one goal, and that goal is explaining 0:32:52.360 --> 0:32:56.160 why Scott Adams deserved his fame and incredible wealth, right. 0:32:56.440 --> 0:32:59.320 And that's the really problematic thing about Scott here is 0:32:59.360 --> 0:33:02.440 that he's focusing all of this stuff. He's not just 0:33:02.560 --> 0:33:05.080 using it to as like, here's you know, how you 0:33:05.120 --> 0:33:07.719 can improve your life. He's using it to kind of 0:33:08.480 --> 0:33:13.520 a priori justify, like why he's earned everything, Like why 0:33:13.720 --> 0:33:16.719 luck didn't play into his, you know, life as much 0:33:16.760 --> 0:33:17.480 as it really did. 0:33:18.240 --> 0:33:20.360 Why does he care? Like because no one else is 0:33:20.360 --> 0:33:23.960 like asking I think God deserved money? No one never 0:33:24.000 --> 0:33:24.480 comes up. 0:33:24.800 --> 0:33:28.160 I think it's simple, which is that if you are 0:33:28.200 --> 0:33:32.280 really successful in a field where the odds are long 0:33:32.400 --> 0:33:36.720 and against you, as God often notes, and you suddenly 0:33:37.120 --> 0:33:40.920 make a shitload of money and become famous, it's pretty 0:33:41.000 --> 0:33:44.080 natural to be terrified that it might end because you 0:33:44.160 --> 0:33:47.680 never fully understand why it happened. Right, There's always people 0:33:47.760 --> 0:33:50.200 around you who are just as talented, who work just 0:33:50.240 --> 0:33:52.600 as hard, and shit doesn't work out for and the 0:33:52.640 --> 0:33:55.440 fact that some people make it and some people don't 0:33:55.920 --> 0:33:59.600 is kind of scary, right, And I think again the 0:33:59.640 --> 0:34:01.920 mental the healthy thing to do is kind of embrace 0:34:02.000 --> 0:34:05.800 the humility that that should engender in you and have 0:34:05.920 --> 0:34:09.520 that influence how you treat other people and how you 0:34:09.560 --> 0:34:12.319 try to give other people opportunities and try to level 0:34:12.360 --> 0:34:15.200 the playing field and try to provide options for people 0:34:15.200 --> 0:34:18.600 who benefit from luck less than you. The unhealthy way 0:34:18.600 --> 0:34:21.520 to do it is to find justifications. Some people use religion, 0:34:21.600 --> 0:34:25.600 Scott's weirder about it for why you deserve like and 0:34:25.640 --> 0:34:27.959 it's because in Scott's case, I discovered the secret rules 0:34:28.000 --> 0:34:30.520 of the universe, and you know, hacked my way into 0:34:30.520 --> 0:34:33.600 being an influencer. I'm a master persuading. Really, in that 0:34:33.680 --> 0:34:35.840 egg he found was a child, not just ten dollars. 0:34:36.000 --> 0:34:40.600 The secrets the secret and that's kind of the primary 0:34:40.640 --> 0:34:43.120 immorality at the center of Scott Adams in a lot 0:34:43.160 --> 0:34:48.120 of ways, I think. So before Scott sort of degenerates 0:34:48.239 --> 0:34:50.319 to a Trump reply guy, which is where this is 0:34:50.320 --> 0:34:53.480 building towards. He got the chance to make his own 0:34:53.600 --> 0:34:57.400 television show. On January twenty fifth, nineteen ninety nine, Gilbert 0:34:57.480 --> 0:35:00.719 launched as an adult animated sitcom on You Up the 0:35:00.760 --> 0:35:03.680 Network where I watched Star Trek Voyager as a little kid. 0:35:04.480 --> 0:35:08.040 It was the highest rated comedy series premiere in network history, 0:35:08.280 --> 0:35:11.480 but very few people watched UPN, so that's not much praise. 0:35:12.360 --> 0:35:14.520 The show had quite a lot going for it though. 0:35:14.920 --> 0:35:17.279 Larry Charles, who was a Seinfeld writer, was on the 0:35:17.320 --> 0:35:20.880 development team. Danny Elfman, as we've talked about, was like 0:35:21.000 --> 0:35:23.799 the theme music, and it's got some great voices in it. 0:35:23.920 --> 0:35:27.040 Daniel Stern, who's Marv from Home Alone, did a lot 0:35:27.080 --> 0:35:30.600 of the voices. Kathy Griffin does a voice. Jason Alexander 0:35:30.800 --> 0:35:32.960 is up in there, you know from again, a lot 0:35:33.000 --> 0:35:34.239 of like Seinfeld. 0:35:34.200 --> 0:35:36.799 After who did the Boss, because he's a really good time. 0:35:36.920 --> 0:35:42.640 I think it's Larry's yeah, yeah, yeah, I forget you 0:35:42.800 --> 0:35:45.040 like to play the really good smug asshole in the eighties 0:35:45.080 --> 0:35:45.919 and nineties. 0:35:46.080 --> 0:35:49.480 The voices are pretty good. It's not like an incompetent show. 0:35:49.600 --> 0:35:52.560 Like it's not bad whenever it comes online. Now, people 0:35:52.560 --> 0:35:54.360 who like watch it as kids are like, well, the 0:35:54.400 --> 0:35:56.960 show was actually really good. I did rewatch a lot 0:35:56.960 --> 0:35:59.680 of it recently. I wouldn't say it's really good, but 0:35:59.719 --> 0:36:02.480 for an adult animated series in nineteen ninety nine, it's 0:36:02.480 --> 0:36:03.720 perfectly fine, right. 0:36:04.320 --> 0:36:06.479 It was. It was different. It was something that wasn't 0:36:06.480 --> 0:36:09.839 trying to be the Simpsons, which was rare at that point. Yeah, 0:36:09.920 --> 0:36:13.439 was trying to go the opposite direction of like family guy, 0:36:13.520 --> 0:36:15.680 let's be as edgy and weird as we can. No, 0:36:15.719 --> 0:36:20.960 it's just it gave what it promised. It was dilvert show. 0:36:21.480 --> 0:36:24.080 It sure was, and that's there's nothing wrong with that. 0:36:25.200 --> 0:36:29.200 Chris Elliott was Dogbert. I didn't know that. Yeah, yeah, yeah, 0:36:29.719 --> 0:36:32.279 Kent was a boss. Yeah it all it all like, 0:36:32.360 --> 0:36:35.759 the voices are are all pretty competent. So here's all 0:36:35.880 --> 0:36:38.359 Scott says about it in his two thousand and two book, 0:36:38.440 --> 0:36:40.960 published a year or so after the show's second season 0:36:40.960 --> 0:36:43.960 in cancelation in nineteen ninety eight, I started working on 0:36:44.000 --> 0:36:46.120 what would become the Delver TV show that ran on 0:36:46.239 --> 0:36:49.040 UPN during nineteen ninety nine and two thousand. We had 0:36:49.040 --> 0:36:51.359 a tiny operating budget, so I found myself doing more 0:36:51.400 --> 0:36:53.919 of the writing than I had expected. Now, I don't 0:36:53.960 --> 0:36:56.960 actually know what went on in that writer's room and 0:36:57.000 --> 0:36:58.680 how much of the good parts of the show were 0:36:58.680 --> 0:37:00.880 the Seinfeld guy and the other writers, how much of 0:37:00.880 --> 0:37:01.480 it was Scott. 0:37:01.960 --> 0:37:05.160 But he does. You get a taste of Scott Adams 0:37:05.239 --> 0:37:08.719 in this series. His voice shines through, and when it does, 0:37:08.800 --> 0:37:11.279 it's often in uncomfortable ways. And I'm gonna play you 0:37:11.320 --> 0:37:13.560 a clip now from an episode, and this is one 0:37:13.600 --> 0:37:17.200 where Gilbert's antagonist in this episode is a bad guy 0:37:17.200 --> 0:37:20.920 whose name is literally Bob Bastard, and Bob is trying 0:37:20.920 --> 0:37:25.279 to unfairly sabotage and invention that Dilbert made. And as 0:37:25.320 --> 0:37:28.160 a result of Bob being an asshole, all of everyone, 0:37:28.239 --> 0:37:31.440 and especially like the female engineer Alice, loves him right 0:37:31.480 --> 0:37:34.359 and Alice falls madly in love with him, even though 0:37:34.400 --> 0:37:36.960 he's nothing but a dick to her. This is a 0:37:37.080 --> 0:37:40.120 very uncomfortable scene, but like, it's not hard to see 0:37:40.120 --> 0:37:42.640 what Scott's trying to say. Here you get another little 0:37:42.680 --> 0:37:44.200 glimpse of that sort of attitude. 0:37:46.320 --> 0:37:48.840 What are you doing, I'm not doing anything. Why are 0:37:48.880 --> 0:37:51.680 you dressed like that? I'm not dressed like that. You're 0:37:51.719 --> 0:37:54.279 trying to look like him don't be ridiculous. It's just 0:37:54.360 --> 0:37:57.360 that all my non Bob Bastard imitation closer in the laundry. 0:37:57.560 --> 0:38:00.000 This is all I have left. What has happened to you? 0:38:00.440 --> 0:38:04.480 Are you with Bob Bastard's camp? Now he has a camp? Cool? 0:38:06.440 --> 0:38:08.439 Why do I try? 0:38:08.680 --> 0:38:11.760 I think we make a terrific couple, Alice, you really 0:38:11.800 --> 0:38:16.319 think so? No, I'm just toying with your emotions since 0:38:16.320 --> 0:38:18.160 I caught you in such a good mood. Can I 0:38:18.200 --> 0:38:19.680 borrow another fifty bucks? 0:38:20.200 --> 0:38:22.520 Another fifty Oh, forget it. 0:38:22.560 --> 0:38:24.600 If you're gonna lay some kind of trip on me, 0:38:24.640 --> 0:38:25.600 I'll see you around. 0:38:25.800 --> 0:38:30.880 No. Wait, okay, here, make that a hundred bucks. 0:38:30.920 --> 0:38:32.960 I'm saving up for a new mask. 0:38:33.320 --> 0:38:36.319 What do you mean you're changing your name? Seriously, don't 0:38:36.320 --> 0:38:39.759 you think it sounds good? Wally Bastard? Have you lost 0:38:39.800 --> 0:38:40.560 your all? Right? 0:38:40.600 --> 0:38:43.000 That's so that's enough, you get it, right? 0:38:43.480 --> 0:38:43.800 Yep? 0:38:43.880 --> 0:38:44.000 Uh. 0:38:45.440 --> 0:38:47.239 Women fall for abusive jerky. 0:38:47.280 --> 0:38:50.640 Yeah, women fall for abusive jerks. The unsaid part is 0:38:50.680 --> 0:38:52.960 not like me, Scott Adams. Why don't they love me? 0:38:53.040 --> 0:38:54.719 I'm so much better than all of the guys who 0:38:54.800 --> 0:38:57.640 get the It's very you see this all of the internet. Now, 0:38:57.640 --> 0:39:00.399 Scott was a was a trailblazer ahead of his time 0:39:00.520 --> 0:39:01.200 with this sort of. 0:39:01.120 --> 0:39:03.439 Shit be a shit. 0:39:04.000 --> 0:39:07.200 Yeah, you also kind of get signs of this of 0:39:07.280 --> 0:39:09.840 kind of what is now for Scott, an abiting hatred 0:39:09.960 --> 0:39:12.560 of all journalists, who he seems to think are unethical 0:39:12.600 --> 0:39:14.719 by nature of doing their job. He thinks it's like 0:39:15.239 --> 0:39:18.400 unethical to report on stuff that's happening in the world. 0:39:19.160 --> 0:39:21.399 This is now a pretty standard belief on the far right, 0:39:21.440 --> 0:39:23.480 but it was less common in two thousand and two, 0:39:23.520 --> 0:39:25.719 and it's it's pretty clear in this clip. 0:39:26.200 --> 0:39:28.280 What makes you qualified to be a reporter? 0:39:28.800 --> 0:39:31.719 I'm willing to violate anyone's privacy for my personal gain 0:39:31.760 --> 0:39:33.640 and then claim with a straight face that the public 0:39:33.680 --> 0:39:36.560 has a right to know, all right, So. 0:39:37.239 --> 0:39:39.480 Not subtle, right, And it's one of those things that 0:39:39.600 --> 0:39:42.279 people who are remembering this is a good show, like 0:39:42.440 --> 0:39:45.279 it's not bad for the time, but like there's not 0:39:45.320 --> 0:39:49.359 a not a great density of comedy in these bits here, right, 0:39:49.560 --> 0:39:54.040 Like there's it's got its moments, but yeah, a lot 0:39:54.040 --> 0:39:58.600 of it's like weird and off putting, and I think 0:39:58.719 --> 0:40:01.280 most of the off putting part arts are Scott's voice 0:40:01.400 --> 0:40:04.360 just kind of shining through clear as a bell. Anyway, 0:40:04.719 --> 0:40:06.719 the show gets canceled in two thousand. 0:40:06.440 --> 0:40:10.319 And two by Adult Swim for a little bit, though 0:40:10.320 --> 0:40:14.160 didn't like it. Does like rerun and reruns and stuff. Yeah, 0:40:14.440 --> 0:40:16.560 they also got Home Movies which was also a you 0:40:16.760 --> 0:40:20.200 Pancho Home Movies, which was a much better show. Home 0:40:20.280 --> 0:40:25.920 Movies had something to that. Yeah, never watch it every well, 0:40:26.000 --> 0:40:27.040 so every other year. 0:40:26.920 --> 0:40:30.520 It's it still holds the fuck up. I I periodically 0:40:30.600 --> 0:40:35.719 find myself singing the Franz Kafka song. But Scott's show 0:40:35.760 --> 0:40:38.279 gets canceled. And now if I if I were to 0:40:38.320 --> 0:40:40.840 ask you, why do you think Scott's show got canceled? 0:40:41.080 --> 0:40:42.400 You know what would your answer. 0:40:42.080 --> 0:40:49.800 Based It was a very targeted product on a rarely 0:40:49.880 --> 0:40:51.239 watched network. 0:40:51.640 --> 0:40:57.280 Yeah pretty reasonable. Yeah, yeah, of course yes. And Scott, 0:40:57.360 --> 0:40:59.560 to his credit, when he's interviewed about why the show 0:40:59.560 --> 0:41:02.680 failed in two thousand and six, gives basically that answer. 0:41:02.719 --> 0:41:05.120 He says, it was on upn and network that few 0:41:05.120 --> 0:41:08.200 people watch, and because some because of some management screw 0:41:08.280 --> 0:41:10.800 ups between the first and second seasons, the time slot 0:41:10.880 --> 0:41:13.080 kept changing and we lost our viewers. We were also 0:41:13.120 --> 0:41:15.680 scheduled to follow the worst TV show ever made, Shasta 0:41:15.760 --> 0:41:19.200 McNasty on TV. Your viewership is seventy five percent determined 0:41:19.200 --> 0:41:21.240 by how many people watch the show before yours. 0:41:21.320 --> 0:41:24.759 That killed us, that would probably do it. Yeah, yeah, I. 0:41:24.719 --> 0:41:26.719 Don't know that Scott's I think he might be exaggerating 0:41:26.760 --> 0:41:28.560 a little bit some of that, but like, yeah, that's 0:41:28.560 --> 0:41:31.000 pretty reasonable, right. Not a lot of people watched it, 0:41:31.080 --> 0:41:33.000 you know, they moved around the time slot, so people 0:41:33.000 --> 0:41:35.399 didn't like that was more important back then. If you've 0:41:35.400 --> 0:41:37.520 only ever watched in the streaming era, you may not 0:41:37.640 --> 0:41:41.200 understand that. But this is not an unreasonable thing for 0:41:41.280 --> 0:41:45.400 him to believe, however, right, Yeah, he's not going to 0:41:45.480 --> 0:41:47.919 stick with that opinion as to why the show gets 0:41:48.000 --> 0:41:50.480 canceled for forever. But what we're building to that, So, 0:41:51.000 --> 0:41:52.319 right in the middle of the period of the time 0:41:52.360 --> 0:41:54.680 when the Dilbert TV Show is on the air, when 0:41:54.680 --> 0:41:56.600 it's in fact the comic is at kind of the 0:41:56.640 --> 0:41:59.680 height of its popularity, Scott decided to try to branch 0:41:59.760 --> 0:42:03.880 out into another business, the world of health food, and 0:42:03.920 --> 0:42:06.040 he's going to I've been waiting for this one. 0:42:06.600 --> 0:42:10.959 Yeah. He creates a product called the dil Burrito, which 0:42:10.960 --> 0:42:13.879 he says is like, so Scott is like a vegetarian 0:42:13.960 --> 0:42:17.440 and he's he's angry that there's not any kind of 0:42:17.480 --> 0:42:22.359 like good fast, like microwaveable food for vegetarians to eat 0:42:22.440 --> 0:42:26.560 that can fulfill all of their nutritional requirements. He wants 0:42:26.560 --> 0:42:29.960 something again. He has this kind of very mechanical ad 0:42:30.040 --> 0:42:31.920 which is fine. A lot of people feel this way 0:42:31.920 --> 0:42:34.719 about food. I know people who they don't particularly enjoy it. 0:42:34.719 --> 0:42:36.680 They're like, I just this is why, Like soilet's a 0:42:36.719 --> 0:42:39.560 popular thing with some people. So you guys have heard 0:42:39.600 --> 0:42:43.080 of soilet, which is like this, they're these meal replacements 0:42:43.160 --> 0:42:45.400 sort of like shake is a little bit of an 0:42:45.400 --> 0:42:47.320 odd term, but like it's it's a drink basically, a 0:42:47.400 --> 0:42:51.040 drinkable meal fulfills all of the necessary caloric requirements and 0:42:51.080 --> 0:42:53.120 you can do it quick. And I know some people 0:42:53.160 --> 0:42:55.680 who do it because it makes weight loss easier for him. 0:42:56.040 --> 0:42:57.560 Some people they just don't have a lot of time 0:42:57.600 --> 0:42:59.200 in the day, so it's good for I know people 0:42:59.239 --> 0:43:02.000 who take soilt because like when you're doing drugs for 0:43:02.000 --> 0:43:04.359 thirty six hours with your friends, you might forget to eat, 0:43:04.400 --> 0:43:06.560 and it's easier to like pound a soilent than actually 0:43:06.560 --> 0:43:09.120 like eat a meal when you're on so much ketamine. 0:43:09.160 --> 0:43:13.240 That like the world is like melting all around you. 0:43:13.280 --> 0:43:17.320 Scott wants this because he just wants like a simple 0:43:17.360 --> 0:43:19.920 thing people can microwave and get all of their nutrients. 0:43:20.040 --> 0:43:23.160 He describes it as only bad thing to want. It's 0:43:23.160 --> 0:43:25.520 a fine idea, like sure, sure, I don't eat a 0:43:25.560 --> 0:43:27.719 lot of meat, and I would love to have like 0:43:27.840 --> 0:43:32.279 just simple make it in five minutes. Of course, it's 0:43:32.320 --> 0:43:35.560 the most reasonable thing he's ever wanted to do. He 0:43:35.640 --> 0:43:38.200 does describe it as the blue jeans of food, which 0:43:38.239 --> 0:43:40.640 I find kind of funny, but like there's a peal 0:43:40.760 --> 0:43:44.480 to that. So the problem is that Scott doesn't know 0:43:44.520 --> 0:43:47.839 how to do this. Like Scott has no idea how 0:43:47.880 --> 0:43:49.560 to make food. You don't get the feeling he's a 0:43:49.560 --> 0:43:53.239 great cook, and he certainly does not have any experience 0:43:53.320 --> 0:43:58.160 in like the business of mass producing food. So he 0:43:58.280 --> 0:44:02.520 launches this product, which he calls the dil Burrito. I 0:44:02.520 --> 0:44:06.120 would say not great branding either. It initially comes in 0:44:06.239 --> 0:44:10.920 Mexican Indian barbecue, garlic and herb flavors. It's described as 0:44:10.960 --> 0:44:14.080 being a tortilla wrapped comestible consisting of vegetables, rice, beans, 0:44:14.120 --> 0:44:16.920 and seasonings that contain all of the twenty three vitamins 0:44:16.920 --> 0:44:21.640 and minerals that nutritionists say are essential. Now, when you 0:44:21.880 --> 0:44:26.960 jam as much nutrients as he's like, he describes as 0:44:27.000 --> 0:44:29.719 like a vitamin pill wrapped in a tortilla, and when 0:44:29.760 --> 0:44:32.560 you shove all of those vitamins and stuff into a 0:44:32.600 --> 0:44:37.040 single burrito, it can have some negative consequences on your 0:44:37.040 --> 0:44:40.920 gastrointestinal tract. As Scott would later say, because of the 0:44:41.000 --> 0:44:43.720 veggie and legume content, three bites of the dil burrito 0:44:43.800 --> 0:44:46.359 made you fart so hard your intestines formed a tail. 0:44:47.480 --> 0:44:52.000 It is a disaster as a product, millions of dollars. 0:44:52.680 --> 0:44:56.920 It gets just lit on fire by this thing. I've 0:44:57.000 --> 0:44:59.400 talked to people who apparently ate them and said that 0:44:59.440 --> 0:45:01.560 they were prett be fucking nasty, And to be fair, 0:45:01.800 --> 0:45:05.759 Scott describes him as pretty bad too. So there you go. 0:45:06.280 --> 0:45:09.880 The del burrito. Kind of a funny little moment, but 0:45:10.040 --> 0:45:14.520 not evil, right, He probably caused, yeah, disaster. 0:45:14.960 --> 0:45:17.600 I have friends, I have a roommate. We weren't a 0:45:17.680 --> 0:45:19.840 time who you know. He was a tech guy. He 0:45:20.000 --> 0:45:25.280 was a vegetarian, bordering vegan, and he hesitated because well, 0:45:25.760 --> 0:45:27.879 I like the idea of fast food. I just don't 0:45:27.920 --> 0:45:31.319 know that I would trust a fellow nerd making my 0:45:31.440 --> 0:45:34.239 food and then someone else we knew ate it and 0:45:34.480 --> 0:45:39.000 basic that to never try it because they they basically 0:45:39.040 --> 0:45:41.160 thought they were going to ship their actual brain out. 0:45:43.080 --> 0:45:46.439 Like they described it as so bad they could feel 0:45:46.480 --> 0:45:52.480 their capitillarities of moving out of their body. It's just like, Nope, 0:45:52.640 --> 0:45:57.120 don't mean that incredible. I mean indible food around too. 0:45:57.960 --> 0:46:01.400 It was like dad Wood restaurant chain in the adults, 0:46:01.480 --> 0:46:03.080 that makes sense. Dagwood eats a lot. 0:46:03.200 --> 0:46:05.920 Yeah, if you're if you're selling like the biggest sandwich 0:46:05.960 --> 0:46:06.919 anyone's ever seen. 0:46:07.000 --> 0:46:11.040 Absolutely, Yeah, and that's it. And this isn't quite as 0:46:11.080 --> 0:46:14.640 bad as a Garfield restaurant they attempted in Toronto, was well, 0:46:14.640 --> 0:46:17.359 did he as also trying to do a restaurant at 0:46:17.360 --> 0:46:18.799 one point or. 0:46:18.880 --> 0:46:21.160 Was I just he did do a restaurant. We have 0:46:21.320 --> 0:46:22.960 so much to cover. I don't think we're gonna get 0:46:22.960 --> 0:46:25.680 into it. He ran an unsuccessful kind of restaurant in 0:46:25.719 --> 0:46:27.719 the Bay Area at one point in time. 0:46:28.040 --> 0:46:29.839 Jesus. Yeah. 0:46:29.840 --> 0:46:33.520 And it's it's it's very interesting, like it is kind 0:46:33.520 --> 0:46:36.400 of like going to Dilbert, Like using him as the 0:46:36.440 --> 0:46:39.759 mascot for for fast food is a little bit like 0:46:39.800 --> 0:46:42.360 I don't know trying to sell mace that's Calvin and 0:46:42.360 --> 0:46:45.120 Hobbes branded, Like, I just don't see much of a connection. 0:46:46.280 --> 0:46:47.960 And also I'm like, I don't know if I don't 0:46:48.000 --> 0:46:50.040 know if I trust the Calvin and Hobbs guy to 0:46:50.080 --> 0:46:50.760 sell me mace. 0:46:50.800 --> 0:46:54.520 He doesn't seem like that's in his wheelhouse. Charlie Brown brand. 0:46:54.640 --> 0:46:57.960 Yeah, prophylactics, Yeah, yeah, the Charlie Brown condom. 0:46:58.640 --> 0:47:01.759 It works as long as life. Charlie Brown. You never 0:47:01.880 --> 0:47:09.359 have sex. Weird diagonal line around the shirts? Yeah, absolutely? 0:47:12.640 --> 0:47:14.600 Oh god, oh god. 0:47:15.400 --> 0:47:19.120 Cliff Heathcliffe brand off roading tires, Like, why are we 0:47:19.200 --> 0:47:19.600 doing this? 0:47:19.680 --> 0:47:22.319 What's going on? Cliff? That might happen? That comic is 0:47:22.360 --> 0:47:23.399 so fucking weird these. 0:47:23.360 --> 0:47:28.239 Days it does go off the rails. So this is 0:47:28.280 --> 0:47:30.879 all fun. But by two thousand and four, Scott there's 0:47:30.880 --> 0:47:33.800 some signs of some problematic stuff, but he's he hasn't 0:47:33.800 --> 0:47:36.720 done anything fucked up yet really in a clear way. 0:47:37.040 --> 0:47:40.560 He's expressed some odd beliefs, but he's not blaming diversity 0:47:40.640 --> 0:47:43.360 or black people for his failures publicly yet again. The 0:47:43.400 --> 0:47:45.719 book Where that stuff that we talked about comes in 0:47:45.760 --> 0:47:47.799 from is published in two thousand and eight, but two 0:47:47.840 --> 0:47:49.640 thousand and four is the point at which things start 0:47:49.680 --> 0:47:51.840 to go really wrong in his life. Because of a 0:47:52.000 --> 0:47:55.799 legitimate personal tragedy, he develops the symptoms of a rare 0:47:55.920 --> 0:48:00.680 neurological condition called spasmodic dysphonia. I'm going to quote from 0:48:00.680 --> 0:48:02.239 an article in Braininlife dot org. 0:48:02.280 --> 0:48:02.480 Here. 0:48:03.080 --> 0:48:05.480 Adams's experience began in two thousand and four with what 0:48:05.560 --> 0:48:08.960 seemed like an extreme allergy related at laryngitis. I used 0:48:08.960 --> 0:48:11.439 to get laryngitis every May when my allergies were bad, 0:48:11.480 --> 0:48:13.600 adams are called. It would usually last a few days 0:48:13.680 --> 0:48:15.320 or a few weeks and go away, so I didn't 0:48:15.320 --> 0:48:18.520 think anything of this particular bout. That was the first 0:48:18.600 --> 0:48:20.680 of dozens of doctors' visits and an equal number of 0:48:20.680 --> 0:48:23.960 treatments over several years. I was diagnosed with respiratory problems 0:48:24.000 --> 0:48:26.120 that I was tested to roll out strep, throat and 0:48:26.160 --> 0:48:28.680 acid reflux. From there, I went to an ear nos 0:48:28.760 --> 0:48:31.440 and throat specialist to check for polyps in my vocal cords. 0:48:31.680 --> 0:48:34.600 Nothing made a distance. I hit a wall. He tried 0:48:34.600 --> 0:48:36.640 a bunch of herbal remedies, and it's one of those 0:48:36.680 --> 0:48:39.520 things where like this starts out as laryngitis, but it 0:48:39.520 --> 0:48:41.440 doesn't go away, and it gets worse and worse, and 0:48:41.480 --> 0:48:45.000 he continued, he starts having very basic trouble talking right, 0:48:45.400 --> 0:48:47.520 Like he's finding it harder and harder to speak. He's 0:48:47.560 --> 0:48:50.719 trying every scientific and also like herbal fringe remedy that 0:48:50.760 --> 0:48:54.239 he can come across, because he's just increasingly desperate. You know, 0:48:54.280 --> 0:48:57.000 he's not able to go out and speak anymore. And 0:48:57.160 --> 0:48:59.520 first his ability to kind of do public speaking goes away, 0:48:59.560 --> 0:49:01.760 but soon his ability to just like talk to his wife, 0:49:01.800 --> 0:49:04.640 to talk to his friends goes away. He's unable to 0:49:04.680 --> 0:49:08.360 kind of communicate very well. He starts getting angry and 0:49:08.440 --> 0:49:10.680 lashing out at people because he'll try to talk and 0:49:10.680 --> 0:49:13.280 they won't understand him, and he just gets like enraged 0:49:13.360 --> 0:49:16.600 at this. Eventually, this is what he says, kind of 0:49:16.640 --> 0:49:21.360 causes the collapse of his marriage. And this seems like 0:49:21.360 --> 0:49:25.160 a responsibility for something. Yeah, he kind of does with this, 0:49:25.360 --> 0:49:28.000 Like it does seem like like this has to be 0:49:28.160 --> 0:49:31.520 like a terrifying sense I have, Like that's horrible. 0:49:31.560 --> 0:49:33.600 Like I can't wish that on him, Like that would 0:49:33.600 --> 0:49:36.680 probably be a legitimate tragedy, Like that is a nightmare 0:49:36.719 --> 0:49:39.399 world to be in. Yeah, and yeah, you probably are 0:49:40.680 --> 0:49:42.440 going to last. It doesn't make it right. You shouldn't 0:49:42.440 --> 0:49:44.560 be lasting out of your spouse or anyone because something 0:49:44.600 --> 0:49:46.839 happened to you. But I can get it. 0:49:47.360 --> 0:49:51.600 Yeah, people don't perform perfectly in situations where they're both 0:49:51.680 --> 0:49:54.920 frightened and like something fundamental about their nature has been 0:49:54.960 --> 0:49:59.279 physically compromised. As Scott later kind of described, I felt 0:49:59.320 --> 0:50:01.200 like I was a ghoat in the room. It's hard 0:50:01.200 --> 0:50:03.719 to feel connected to others if you can't talk and 0:50:03.760 --> 0:50:07.680 they can't listen to you. And yeah, again, sounds terrible. Obviously, 0:50:07.719 --> 0:50:08.839 this is the kind of thing that's going to give 0:50:08.880 --> 0:50:09.920 you some fucking PTSD. 0:50:10.440 --> 0:50:12.480 An today is an altered reality where he's like, so 0:50:12.640 --> 0:50:16.359 I decided to start investing into nonprofits that help Yeah, 0:50:16.480 --> 0:50:18.640 if we worked out or whatever, I know if that's 0:50:18.640 --> 0:50:21.239 going to happen, I know why, because that's not about him. 0:50:21.760 --> 0:50:24.600 Yeah, he doesn't dedicate his life to helping others. As 0:50:24.600 --> 0:50:27.920 a result of this, it ends with him unable to 0:50:27.960 --> 0:50:32.360 talk entirely for like a couple of years, and he 0:50:32.920 --> 0:50:35.799 pushes everyone away. He basically lives alone in his home, 0:50:35.880 --> 0:50:39.600 not communicating with anybody for an extended period of time. 0:50:40.080 --> 0:50:44.239 He considers suicide, but eventually he finds via googling his 0:50:44.280 --> 0:50:47.280 symptoms enough that there is a rare condition that meets 0:50:47.320 --> 0:50:50.839 his experiences. He finds a doctor who specializes in it. 0:50:51.080 --> 0:50:54.520 He gets diagnosed finally, and the doctor offers him a 0:50:54.600 --> 0:50:58.400 risky pioneering surgery. And basically the way the surgery works 0:50:58.480 --> 0:51:00.600 is they cut the nerve that goes to the main 0:51:00.719 --> 0:51:03.799 muscle that's spasming, and then they graft a new nerve 0:51:03.880 --> 0:51:07.200 in its place to prevent the muscle from atrophying and 0:51:07.280 --> 0:51:10.040 to stop the old nerve, which was like defective from 0:51:10.080 --> 0:51:10.759 growing back. 0:51:11.040 --> 0:51:12.080 That's amazing. 0:51:12.760 --> 0:51:16.200 Yeah, it's a it's a really interesting thing that they did. 0:51:16.280 --> 0:51:18.719 The treatment is about eighty five percent effective. That the 0:51:18.800 --> 0:51:20.919 doctor who does it says that about eighty five percent 0:51:20.960 --> 0:51:23.920 of the time it provides, you know, an improvement or 0:51:23.920 --> 0:51:27.040 complete cessation of symptoms, which is like not that's not 0:51:27.160 --> 0:51:29.960 bad odds, but also like a fifteen percent chance that 0:51:30.000 --> 0:51:32.440 you never talk again is like that's scary. 0:51:32.520 --> 0:51:35.560 You know, that's not low enough to not be terrifying, Right, 0:51:35.719 --> 0:51:38.280 that is a love Then I would want to gamble 0:51:38.360 --> 0:51:39.960 on most things much less. 0:51:40.120 --> 0:51:44.160 Yeah my voice, Yeah, I I Yeah, it's it's scary, 0:51:44.200 --> 0:51:46.360 but like again, by this point, he can't talk already, 0:51:46.400 --> 0:51:49.399 so he doesn't have any other options. So he has 0:51:49.440 --> 0:51:52.440 the surgery in two thousand and eight, the same year 0:51:52.480 --> 0:51:54.400 that he publishes the book where he blames all of 0:51:54.440 --> 0:51:57.799 his life problems on black people, and after three years 0:51:57.800 --> 0:52:00.920 of enforced isolation, in near endless silence, he starts being. 0:52:00.719 --> 0:52:01.719 Able to talk again. 0:52:01.840 --> 0:52:05.080 And the way Scott describes it, the surgery works perfectly 0:52:05.160 --> 0:52:09.360 and he's been fine ever since. Now there is a theory, 0:52:09.520 --> 0:52:11.200 and you might call it a conspiracy. 0:52:11.200 --> 0:52:11.520 I don't know. 0:52:11.560 --> 0:52:13.440 Conspiracy is the wrong term because there's a conspiracy. But 0:52:13.480 --> 0:52:15.960 there's a theory that you get among people who like 0:52:16.080 --> 0:52:18.759 follow Scott and have followed him really going insane on 0:52:18.800 --> 0:52:22.920 Twitter and stuff, that something goes wrong in this surgery 0:52:23.360 --> 0:52:25.880 and it damages his brain and that causes some of 0:52:25.920 --> 0:52:29.440 the behavioral changes that we see in him after this point. 0:52:29.960 --> 0:52:32.279 I don't have any evidence of this. I've never heard 0:52:32.280 --> 0:52:37.200 the doctor obviously, like say anything about this. I don't know, 0:52:37.320 --> 0:52:39.920 Like it is true that after the he has this 0:52:40.040 --> 0:52:42.799 surgery two thousand and eight, this is the year where 0:52:42.800 --> 0:52:46.600 he becomes like very rapidly, he becomes increasingly racist and 0:52:46.640 --> 0:52:51.960 aggressive online. But also number one, I think I can 0:52:52.000 --> 0:52:54.439 see signs of the stuff that he would do later. 0:52:54.440 --> 0:52:57.600 And number two, I'm not saying there's no chance to 0:52:57.640 --> 0:53:00.720 something like that happened. That's a possibility, but like rather 0:53:00.760 --> 0:53:05.319 than something fucking shady happening during the surgery, I find 0:53:05.320 --> 0:53:08.479 it kind of likelier that three years of not being 0:53:08.480 --> 0:53:12.160 able to speak of, losing every close relationship in his life, 0:53:12.160 --> 0:53:16.440 of being completely isolated is what causes the behavioral changes 0:53:16.440 --> 0:53:18.239 for the work. Now, that sounds a lot more like that. 0:53:18.640 --> 0:53:21.960 And honestly, if nothing else, just like you came out 0:53:22.000 --> 0:53:26.000 of this situation, like where you are facing a permanent 0:53:26.000 --> 0:53:29.359 life altering situation, Yeah you maybe like fuck it, I'm 0:53:29.400 --> 0:53:33.840 just going to throw caution to the end. Oh this 0:53:34.600 --> 0:53:36.839 I feel weird about that, because how can we know, 0:53:37.160 --> 0:53:41.520 Like that's I don't think about anybody who has surgery. Really, yeah, 0:53:41.600 --> 0:53:44.560 I think that it's more. I mean, think about America, 0:53:44.760 --> 0:53:47.160 Think about the COVID lockdown. Think about for how many 0:53:47.239 --> 0:53:51.959 people that period of isolation was the straw that broke 0:53:52.000 --> 0:53:55.160 the camel's back, that sent them spiraling into like Ashley Babbitt, 0:53:55.200 --> 0:53:58.160 you know, like it doesn't take like We're all a 0:53:58.200 --> 0:54:01.040 lot of us, most of us maybe are kind of 0:54:01.040 --> 0:54:04.080 fragile at any given moment, and like, this is an 0:54:04.120 --> 0:54:06.799 intense thing to deal with. I don't think I need 0:54:06.880 --> 0:54:09.279 much more than like, Yeah, he lost the ability to 0:54:09.320 --> 0:54:12.560 talk for several years and it blew up his marriage 0:54:12.640 --> 0:54:14.920 and he lost everyone who was close to him for 0:54:14.960 --> 0:54:19.359 a while and lived alone as a hermit. Not yeah, man, 0:54:19.440 --> 0:54:20.920 I can see that fucking you up. 0:54:21.160 --> 0:54:24.080 Yeah. I mean, like even if like just like the 0:54:24.440 --> 0:54:29.560 everyone I care about left, yeah, or I pushed him away. Yeah, No, 0:54:29.760 --> 0:54:32.120 that's what I'm like. Yeah, oh my god, Like I 0:54:32.160 --> 0:54:33.960 just can't even have fathom like how that would be 0:54:34.000 --> 0:54:35.280 as anyone. 0:54:35.719 --> 0:54:38.520 I can see you not becoming the best version of 0:54:38.560 --> 0:54:40.040 yourself after that, Right. 0:54:40.000 --> 0:54:42.799 You're either going to tell on a mia culpa tour 0:54:42.880 --> 0:54:45.600 and trying to fix or you're just gonna say, well shit, 0:54:46.160 --> 0:54:48.680 yeah why not? Yeah yeah. 0:54:48.920 --> 0:54:52.640 So And in two thousand and eight, Scott publishes the 0:54:52.680 --> 0:54:54.799 book Twenty Years of Dilbert, which is what I've been 0:54:54.880 --> 0:54:58.560 quoting from several times. It's where he repeatedly blames diversity 0:54:58.600 --> 0:55:01.839 programs for the great failure of his life. And it's 0:55:01.840 --> 0:55:04.960 interesting because after this point he also like in this book, 0:55:05.239 --> 0:55:07.920 like he blames you know, losing his job, not getting 0:55:07.920 --> 0:55:11.960 promoted on diversity programs, and he blames now. In two 0:55:11.960 --> 0:55:14.600 thousand and eight, he blames black people for the failure 0:55:14.640 --> 0:55:18.279 of his television show, saying, quote, the show started out well, 0:55:18.320 --> 0:55:20.600 but in the second season the network made a strategic 0:55:20.640 --> 0:55:24.200 decision to focus on shows with African American actors. Gilbert 0:55:24.239 --> 0:55:27.960 lost its time slot and cancelation followed. And that's very 0:55:27.960 --> 0:55:30.160 different from the reasonable answer that he gives in two 0:55:30.200 --> 0:55:33.680 thousand and six. It's also definitely not true. For the 0:55:33.719 --> 0:55:36.200 next fifteen years or so, Scott is going to bring 0:55:36.239 --> 0:55:39.600 these incidents up with increasing regularity. In twenty seventeen, he tweeted, 0:55:39.840 --> 0:55:42.520 I lost my TV show for being white when UPN 0:55:42.560 --> 0:55:46.040 decided it would focus on an African American audience. That 0:55:46.200 --> 0:55:48.600 was the third job I lost for being white. The 0:55:48.680 --> 0:55:51.759 other two are in corporate America. They told me directly, 0:55:52.880 --> 0:55:54.480 which is again different on the story he. 0:55:54.520 --> 0:55:57.040 Gives Vampire Slayer around this time. Yeah, man, it's not 0:55:57.080 --> 0:55:59.719 because you're white. Like it was number one UPN, not 0:55:59.760 --> 0:56:03.040 a ground network. Number two. Your show didn't find an audience. 0:56:03.320 --> 0:56:07.719 Most shows don't kind of getting two seasons isn't super common, bro, Like, 0:56:08.440 --> 0:56:10.880 you got actually more of a chance than most people. 0:56:10.880 --> 0:56:14.759 And it's like any reasonable person who gets to be 0:56:14.840 --> 0:56:17.960 worth hundreds of millions of dollars for drawing doodles would 0:56:17.960 --> 0:56:22.440 be like, I have no complaints about this system, right yeah? Yeah, 0:56:22.480 --> 0:56:26.520 like just worked out perfect for me. Like, are you crazy, Scott, 0:56:26.640 --> 0:56:31.560 Like you have been the luckiest anyone's ever been. I've 0:56:31.680 --> 0:56:34.680 never been rich. I have supported myself. I've been able 0:56:34.760 --> 0:56:36.719 to support my spouse when they were going through grad 0:56:36.719 --> 0:56:40.640 school off doing comics. I'm proud of that. I feel 0:56:40.680 --> 0:56:43.680 I'm very fortunate because I have not gone into an 0:56:43.680 --> 0:56:47.160 office to work since two thousand and four. I feel 0:56:47.200 --> 0:56:52.160 I'm so lucky. This motherfucker's worth millions. Yeah, he's like 0:56:52.040 --> 0:56:55.160 like black people took my TV show. No, they fucking didn't. 0:56:55.239 --> 0:56:57.279 They just didn't like it. No one else liked it either. 0:56:57.480 --> 0:57:00.160 We all disliked it. We all took it from you. 0:57:00.160 --> 0:57:02.760 You have like three hundred million dollars in a mansion 0:57:02.800 --> 0:57:06.000 in California shaped like Dilbert's head because of your glowing 0:57:06.440 --> 0:57:09.600 like the system has Oh yeah, his his house is 0:57:09.600 --> 0:57:10.640 shaped like Dilbert's head. 0:57:10.640 --> 0:57:16.240 Look, that is absurd. That is the dumbest fucking thing. 0:57:16.880 --> 0:57:20.320 Yeah, it's it's it's funny because again he's like, they 0:57:20.400 --> 0:57:22.200 canceled it because they wanted to focus on shows with 0:57:22.240 --> 0:57:25.040 black actors. Other people have pointed out Gilbert had the 0:57:25.080 --> 0:57:27.960 second lowest ratings of any show on television at the 0:57:28.000 --> 0:57:31.480 time it was canceled. And this is like when Scott 0:57:31.520 --> 0:57:33.440 made his big post, they can't it was because I 0:57:33.520 --> 0:57:37.160 was white. Like people brought this up and Scott goes 0:57:37.760 --> 0:57:40.520 ape shit, just like he did with Norman Solomon, he 0:57:40.680 --> 0:57:44.200 is unable to disengage, replying days later to his Twitter 0:57:44.880 --> 0:57:48.120 trolls quote, I successfully stirred up a hornet's nest of 0:57:48.240 --> 0:57:51.200 unsuccessful artists. They don't know they're part of the show. 0:57:51.560 --> 0:57:54.280 Don't tell them. 0:57:56.400 --> 0:57:59.680 I'm a master. Yeah, I was really manipulu. No. 0:58:00.040 --> 0:58:03.280 Yeah, we're saying that, like you have seen tremendous success 0:58:03.320 --> 0:58:05.720 and the fact that not everything you did worked isn't 0:58:05.760 --> 0:58:10.080 something that black people did to you, Like it's most 0:58:10.320 --> 0:58:13.720 cartoons don't succeed. Everyone I know who's I know, I've 0:58:13.760 --> 0:58:16.040 known I know more than most people of like people 0:58:16.040 --> 0:58:19.240 who have been very successful in Hollywood, all of them 0:58:19.280 --> 0:58:22.120 have failures. All of them have more than one failure 0:58:22.240 --> 0:58:26.520 in their background. Scott, like Scott Scott McFarlane right, like 0:58:26.600 --> 0:58:30.480 who's made god knows how much money doing cartoon shows. 0:58:31.120 --> 0:58:34.160 His first show gets canceled after like two or three seasons. 0:58:34.160 --> 0:58:36.880 Oh right, he's out of the base, Yeah, Scott, Why 0:58:36.920 --> 0:58:39.000 I was saying, Yeah, family guy, he's out of like 0:58:39.080 --> 0:58:41.440 the he's out of like doing that for years when 0:58:41.440 --> 0:58:44.480 the show gets canceled. You know, like his got brought 0:58:44.520 --> 0:58:47.240 back because it developed a fan base, which the dilbrit 0:58:47.240 --> 0:58:47.720 show didn't. 0:58:47.760 --> 0:58:50.360 But that's one interesting thing you compare that because they 0:58:50.400 --> 0:58:54.040 both got brought back, like re ran on that swim. 0:58:54.200 --> 0:58:56.000 But Sam may Farlane's, well, shit, if you're gonna be 0:58:56.000 --> 0:58:58.840 rerun it, I'm gonna do these bumpers. Yeah, lean into it. 0:58:58.880 --> 0:59:01.400 He actually built worked on if Yeah, I wonder if 0:59:01.440 --> 0:59:03.640 Scott at well, I mean I'm glad he didn't. But 0:59:04.000 --> 0:59:07.080 Scott has it put like effort like behind it, like 0:59:07.120 --> 0:59:09.680 that could have helped him too. He just he wanted 0:59:09.760 --> 0:59:12.040 to work the way it was gonna work, and it 0:59:12.080 --> 0:59:13.200 didn't happen that way. 0:59:13.440 --> 0:59:16.600 And so now also my suspicion, I don't I'm not 0:59:16.640 --> 0:59:19.520 an expert on Seth MacFarlane lore. But my suspicion is that, 0:59:19.640 --> 0:59:23.640 like for Seth, being doing that TV shows has been 0:59:23.680 --> 0:59:26.200 his whole motivating factor in life, and Scott. 0:59:26.160 --> 0:59:28.960 Was animator though, that's where he began. He worked, Yeah, 0:59:29.080 --> 0:59:34.000 he worked for Cartoon Network, he did shorts in the nineties. 0:59:34.120 --> 0:59:36.680 I think he worked on a season of Johnny Bravo even. 0:59:36.760 --> 0:59:39.440 Yeah, that makes sense, And I suspect the reason he 0:59:39.480 --> 0:59:41.720 put in all that extra work on those bumpers and 0:59:41.760 --> 0:59:44.280 stuff is that, like, this is what he loved and 0:59:44.320 --> 0:59:47.080 wanted to do, Whereas for Scott, the Delbert TV show 0:59:47.160 --> 0:59:49.520 was like a side gig in between drawing cartoons and 0:59:49.560 --> 0:59:51.160 trying to make burritos. 0:59:50.800 --> 0:59:54.000 You know, like brito Yah. Cannon's good, sir. 0:59:55.120 --> 0:59:57.640 It's such a weird thing to be Like, my like 0:59:57.840 --> 1:00:02.400 third job didn't pan out. So black people are engaged 1:00:02.440 --> 1:00:04.040 to conspiracy against me. 1:00:05.120 --> 1:00:10.640 It's it's it's like, it's not evidence of great mental health. Yeah. 1:00:11.320 --> 1:00:13.919 If the entire black community was going to rally around, 1:00:13.960 --> 1:00:16.120 like we need to take one white man down, why 1:00:16.200 --> 1:00:17.880 the fuck would it be Scott Adens. 1:00:17.920 --> 1:00:19.600 Yeah, I mean, to be fair, I think he's saying 1:00:19.600 --> 1:00:22.600 that like it was these venal Hollywood types who wanted 1:00:22.600 --> 1:00:24.760 to get the black you know viewer or whatever. But 1:00:24.800 --> 1:00:28.520 I also see no evidence of that Like Hollywood, especially 1:00:28.520 --> 1:00:31.800 in the early two thousands, wouldn't have killed a successful 1:00:31.840 --> 1:00:34.360 show by a white guy to please the black community. 1:00:34.640 --> 1:00:36.920 It wasn't a successful show, Scott. 1:00:37.800 --> 1:00:42.280 I can think of like a CEO of a channel 1:00:42.400 --> 1:00:45.840 killing successful shows was in the early seventies when CBS 1:00:45.840 --> 1:00:48.919 did like the rural purge, where any show that took 1:00:48.920 --> 1:00:52.080 place or appealed to people in rural areas like Beverly 1:00:52.160 --> 1:00:55.360 Hillbillies and he Hall got canceled despite having amazing ratings 1:00:55.600 --> 1:00:58.880 because they didn't want to appeal to uh, they would 1:00:58.880 --> 1:01:02.120 appeal to more urban viewers. Yeah again. It was white 1:01:02.160 --> 1:01:03.560 people hurting white people. 1:01:04.120 --> 1:01:10.800 Yeah yeah again. Scott very silly man, So who knows 1:01:10.960 --> 1:01:13.840 like why he suddenly starts to go down this road. 1:01:14.280 --> 1:01:17.440 But as he gets increasingly like obsessed with the ways 1:01:17.440 --> 1:01:20.840 in which he's been wronged by diversity, he also starts 1:01:20.880 --> 1:01:23.880 to get increasingly elaborate with like his lore as to 1:01:23.920 --> 1:01:26.560 why he thinks he's how he thinks he's uncovered the 1:01:26.560 --> 1:01:30.640 secrets to success in the universe. And the best example 1:01:30.680 --> 1:01:35.120 of this is his concept of talent stacking. In twenty thirteen, 1:01:35.160 --> 1:01:37.200 he writes a book called How to Fail at Almost 1:01:37.200 --> 1:01:39.800 Everything and Still Win Big And it's another it's him 1:01:39.880 --> 1:01:42.280 kind of pretending to be humble, where he's like, I 1:01:42.480 --> 1:01:44.680 was bad at all of this stuff, and I still 1:01:44.720 --> 1:01:48.320 got super successful. And I got successful because you know, 1:01:48.440 --> 1:01:50.480 even though I wasn't great at any one thing, I 1:01:50.520 --> 1:01:53.000 had a bunch of little skills and they all synergize 1:01:53.040 --> 1:01:55.560 together to allow me to be a big success. You know, 1:01:55.840 --> 1:01:58.080 I wasn't the best artist, but I understood kind of 1:01:58.080 --> 1:01:59.680 how to use the Internet, and so I was able 1:01:59.680 --> 1:02:03.040 to take advantage of that to like promote my cartoon strip, 1:02:03.080 --> 1:02:05.120 and you know that's why it was a big hit. 1:02:05.240 --> 1:02:05.439 Right. 1:02:06.360 --> 1:02:09.400 Here's how he describes this concept more succinctly in his 1:02:09.400 --> 1:02:12.840 book Win Bigley, which he publishes a few years later, 1:02:12.920 --> 1:02:14.280 you know, in the early Trump years. 1:02:14.440 --> 1:02:14.680 Quote. 1:02:15.720 --> 1:02:17.919 A talent stack is a collection of skills that work 1:02:17.960 --> 1:02:20.040 well together and make the person with those skills unique 1:02:20.040 --> 1:02:22.880 and valuable. For example, a computer programmer who also knows 1:02:22.880 --> 1:02:25.280 how to do good user interface designed would be more 1:02:25.320 --> 1:02:27.320 valuable than one who does not. The power of the 1:02:27.320 --> 1:02:30.160 talent stack idea is that you can intelligently combine ordinary 1:02:30.200 --> 1:02:33.800 talents together to create extraordinary value. The key concept here 1:02:33.840 --> 1:02:35.680 is that the talents and the stack work well with 1:02:35.720 --> 1:02:40.280 one another. Now that's not wrong, but Scott, that's not 1:02:40.640 --> 1:02:42.960 a discovery, right, Like if you were if you were 1:02:42.960 --> 1:02:44.440 to go up to a person on the street and 1:02:44.440 --> 1:02:46.800 be like, hey, do you think having more skills makes 1:02:46.840 --> 1:02:48.960 you more valuable? I'm going to guess one hundred percent 1:02:49.000 --> 1:02:49.560 of people. 1:02:49.400 --> 1:02:55.240 Say like yeah, of course goes like yeah that when 1:02:55.280 --> 1:02:57.120 you turn in a resume, They're not like, oh shit, 1:02:57.200 --> 1:02:58.800 he's got eight skills supposed to two. 1:02:58.880 --> 1:03:01.880 Yeah, yeah, oh he's got a great talent stack. No, 1:03:02.000 --> 1:03:04.640 it's yeah, learning things is good. You are a more 1:03:04.760 --> 1:03:07.120 valuable coder if you know how to code more things 1:03:07.200 --> 1:03:09.720 you know. And just like when it comes to like 1:03:09.760 --> 1:03:12.720 the artistic field, this is something that writers have talked 1:03:12.720 --> 1:03:15.880 about for a long time. Oftentimes if you if you, 1:03:16.000 --> 1:03:18.840 I mean this goes back decades. You see, like writers 1:03:18.880 --> 1:03:22.080 answering letters from fans. Advice they'll give is go out 1:03:22.120 --> 1:03:25.520 into the world, like experience things, meet people you know 1:03:25.840 --> 1:03:28.080 that will make you a better writer. The more things 1:03:28.120 --> 1:03:30.720 you know about, the more things you can write about 1:03:30.760 --> 1:03:34.520 with versimilitude. Robert Heinlen, you know, had a great has 1:03:34.520 --> 1:03:36.920 a great bit about like the creative value of having 1:03:36.960 --> 1:03:39.800 a broad base of skills of knowing how to you know, 1:03:40.240 --> 1:03:44.280 harvest crops and skin an animal and you know, go 1:03:44.440 --> 1:03:47.400 phishing and you know all these kind of like different 1:03:47.440 --> 1:03:50.080 things that are sort of like unrelated skills because as 1:03:50.240 --> 1:03:54.880 has hurt Heinland said, specialization is for insects. Right, Like, again, 1:03:55.440 --> 1:03:58.160 what Scott is done here is he's taken a basic 1:03:58.280 --> 1:04:01.960 observation that is most people are aware of and that 1:04:02.000 --> 1:04:04.680 people have been talking about one way or another forever, 1:04:05.160 --> 1:04:08.400 and has reframed it in kind of the gamified language 1:04:08.400 --> 1:04:11.840 of hustle culture. And I'm not sure if this is 1:04:11.920 --> 1:04:14.440 just Scott trying to work a grift and knowing that 1:04:14.520 --> 1:04:18.600 he's just repackaging very obvious shit, or if he just 1:04:18.840 --> 1:04:22.800 hasn't read other people's writing, right, Like, does he legitimately 1:04:22.840 --> 1:04:24.440 fail revelation? 1:04:24.880 --> 1:04:25.480 Yeah? Do it? 1:04:25.480 --> 1:04:29.560 It doesn't matter, yeah, yeah, but it is interesting like this, 1:04:29.920 --> 1:04:32.160 And I think that kind of the way he does this, 1:04:32.560 --> 1:04:35.640 by sort of like treating it as such a dogmatic 1:04:35.800 --> 1:04:39.560 like a skill tree and an RPG, I think kind 1:04:39.600 --> 1:04:42.640 of makes it. It's it sets you into this very 1:04:42.760 --> 1:04:47.320 like crystallized mode of thought that I think is more 1:04:47.360 --> 1:04:49.640 brittle and might make you less likely to pick up 1:04:49.720 --> 1:04:52.439 useful skills if you can't sort of like figure out 1:04:52.440 --> 1:04:54.680 how that skill is gonna work in a talent stack, 1:04:55.040 --> 1:04:58.000 because like the skill Scott talks about that synergized together, 1:04:58.040 --> 1:05:00.640 he didn't like go into learning those things because he 1:05:00.680 --> 1:05:03.160 knew they would hybridize as well. It was more just 1:05:03.240 --> 1:05:05.520 like living a life where you have a wide base 1:05:05.560 --> 1:05:09.080 of experiences makes you more versatile and more able to 1:05:09.200 --> 1:05:11.680 like adapt to the world. And that's the only real 1:05:11.720 --> 1:05:14.720 meaning of intelligence. But you know what else is intelligent? 1:05:16.880 --> 1:05:19.840 Is it the products and services that weis to span 1:05:20.040 --> 1:05:21.200 our minds and skills stack. 1:05:21.280 --> 1:05:24.600 That's right, every single advertiser on this show is a 1:05:24.640 --> 1:05:30.360 member of MENSA. Oh that's the promise hear that. I've 1:05:30.360 --> 1:05:34.080 never heard of another podcast talking about MENSA. But here 1:05:34.120 --> 1:05:46.480 we go, Ah, we are back. So good stuff, good stuff. 1:05:47.040 --> 1:05:51.720 So focusing obviously on acquiring talents that you can combine 1:05:51.880 --> 1:05:54.920 is a good thing. But I think Scott's talent stacking 1:05:55.160 --> 1:05:57.040 is kind of I think the way he's framing this 1:05:57.280 --> 1:06:01.600 is more likely more likely than making you talented. It's 1:06:01.600 --> 1:06:03.920 a very brittle way to interpret a phenomenon that, like, 1:06:04.000 --> 1:06:06.920 viewed properly, can be liberatory. But I think looked at 1:06:07.000 --> 1:06:08.800 the way that Scott looks at it might lock you 1:06:08.840 --> 1:06:11.080 into a world where all you do is draw Dilbert 1:06:11.080 --> 1:06:14.600 and repackage old self help books. But it works for Scott. 1:06:14.680 --> 1:06:17.080 He does get rich, which means he's never had to 1:06:17.160 --> 1:06:20.200 question the person that he's become or the ultimate value 1:06:20.200 --> 1:06:23.240 of his conclusions about the world. As the years go on, 1:06:23.440 --> 1:06:25.840 his work loses any edge of humility, and he veers 1:06:25.880 --> 1:06:30.120 increasingly towards megalamoniacal shit. His two novellas are the best 1:06:30.160 --> 1:06:32.920 example of this. He writes two fiction books and kind 1:06:32.960 --> 1:06:35.680 of the early aughts. One is called The Religion War 1:06:35.720 --> 1:06:37.600 and one is called God's Debris. 1:06:37.600 --> 1:06:41.360 Have you read these books? Randy's definitely never heard of them. 1:06:41.520 --> 1:06:45.920 Oh oh boy, so oslo hesitant when I hear a 1:06:46.000 --> 1:06:48.840 cartoonist has written a novel. Yep. 1:06:49.960 --> 1:06:53.320 Well, Scott considers this his only his real legacy, that 1:06:53.440 --> 1:06:56.080 like he will be remembered for these books. He said 1:06:56.080 --> 1:06:58.440 this that like what I will be remembered for is 1:06:58.520 --> 1:07:01.880 my novels. He believed these are very deep and contain 1:07:02.160 --> 1:07:05.120 important truths about the human condition that no one else 1:07:05.960 --> 1:07:10.160 has elucidated before. Now I have not read God's Debris. 1:07:10.200 --> 1:07:12.960 I have read The Religion War. These are both pretty 1:07:12.960 --> 1:07:15.760 short books. You can find them for free online if 1:07:15.800 --> 1:07:17.400 you want to steal them like I don't think Scott 1:07:17.440 --> 1:07:19.960 put them up. But they're available, which is where I 1:07:20.080 --> 1:07:22.920 found them, So just google them and google the title 1:07:22.920 --> 1:07:25.720 and text if you want to read this shit. I 1:07:25.800 --> 1:07:29.160 have read The Religious War. I would the Religion War. 1:07:29.360 --> 1:07:32.960 I would charitably describe it as an atheistic rant that 1:07:33.080 --> 1:07:37.040 managed to manages to be racist on an almost unique level. 1:07:37.360 --> 1:07:39.440 The basic plot I will give Scott credit for this 1:07:40.000 --> 1:07:43.560 is summarized efficiently in the first paragraph of the prologue. 1:07:43.600 --> 1:07:46.640 And here's Scott's book. Here's how it opens. In the 1:07:46.720 --> 1:07:49.919 year two thousand and seven, a brilliant and charismatic leader 1:07:50.040 --> 1:07:52.480 named al z began his rise to power in the 1:07:52.520 --> 1:07:56.000 Palestinian territories. He was the architect of the twenty year 1:07:56.040 --> 1:07:59.360 Plan for eliminating Israel, the success of which started a 1:07:59.360 --> 1:08:02.120 domino effect in the Middle East, as one Arab dictatorship 1:08:02.160 --> 1:08:05.560 after another fell and their territories rolled into the Great Caliphate. 1:08:05.880 --> 1:08:09.360 Alsi's subjects heady from an unbroken string of victories, demanded 1:08:09.400 --> 1:08:11.160 the spread of Islam to the rest of the world. 1:08:11.360 --> 1:08:14.280 AlSi understood that this was neither practical nor desirable, but 1:08:14.320 --> 1:08:16.639 to satisfy the appetite of his people, he began an 1:08:16.680 --> 1:08:20.160 unending war of minor terror against the Christian dominated world. 1:08:20.439 --> 1:08:22.559 The attacks were calculated to be large enough to look 1:08:22.600 --> 1:08:25.160 like progress let's yet small enough to avoid provoking all 1:08:25.200 --> 1:08:28.799 out war. Publicly, he blamed renegade groups for the attacks. 1:08:28.960 --> 1:08:31.879 The Christian dominated countries k new Alzi was behind the bombings, 1:08:31.880 --> 1:08:33.960 but they depended on him for their oil and wanted 1:08:33.960 --> 1:08:36.360 to avoid a larger war that would cripple their economies 1:08:36.400 --> 1:08:39.759 and an all likelihood increase the number of bombings. Now 1:08:40.479 --> 1:08:42.760 there's a lot that's insane about that. For one thing, 1:08:43.560 --> 1:08:46.800 Scott doesn't seem to know that there are Sunni and 1:08:46.880 --> 1:08:50.560 Shia Muslims, and that they, like the all disagree. 1:08:50.040 --> 1:08:53.400 About a lot. Neither of those words are in the book. 1:08:54.040 --> 1:08:56.840 Sunni doesn't show up, Shia doesn't show up. He doesn't 1:08:56.880 --> 1:08:59.400 mention Iran like we don't know what the Shia world 1:08:59.479 --> 1:09:02.120 supposed to be? Are you doing here? Like? He just 1:09:02.280 --> 1:09:04.280 is like all of the Muslims are in a caliphate 1:09:04.439 --> 1:09:07.760 now because this guy and what so Alzi his plan 1:09:07.840 --> 1:09:11.400 to destroy Israel is like he organizes the Palestinians to 1:09:11.520 --> 1:09:16.439 demand democratic rights and like they become kind of quasi 1:09:16.479 --> 1:09:20.120 equal partners in society and then one day they murder 1:09:20.160 --> 1:09:25.120 all the Jews. Like, it's pretty fucked up. This is 1:09:25.680 --> 1:09:29.919 a Christian novel that, like My Youth kind. 1:09:29.680 --> 1:09:33.800 Of does now He's he doesn't portray the Christians particularly 1:09:33.840 --> 1:09:37.040 sympathetically either, right, the big Christian general was also portrayed 1:09:37.040 --> 1:09:40.040 as a bad guy. It's more like an early Internet 1:09:40.080 --> 1:09:43.200 atheist novel. But like, you know how a lot of 1:09:43.240 --> 1:09:46.120 those guys, those like internet atheists from the nineties after 1:09:46.200 --> 1:09:49.439 nine to eleven went like super hard anti Muslim. Yes, 1:09:49.800 --> 1:09:54.439 Scott's doing the same thing here, right, it's pretty fucked up. 1:09:54.520 --> 1:09:58.759 It's very racist. It's really funny. Like Scott has convinced 1:09:58.800 --> 1:10:01.360 himself that his novel was prescient because it predicted the 1:10:01.439 --> 1:10:06.040 rise of Isis. That's bullshit. That is not what Scott did. 1:10:06.360 --> 1:10:08.759 All he did was use the word caliphate, which isis 1:10:08.800 --> 1:10:11.840 also used, but also a bunch of governments have called 1:10:11.840 --> 1:10:15.600 themselves caliph. Very it's a thing it goes back like 1:10:15.640 --> 1:10:18.080 a thousand years. It's it's been a thing for a while. 1:10:19.280 --> 1:10:21.120 Agree, there isn't one of my D and D books 1:10:21.160 --> 1:10:24.120 like for al Kadan. Does that mean like Ed Green 1:10:25.600 --> 1:10:26.880 nineties predict It's. 1:10:26.640 --> 1:10:30.160 Also like fuck Scott Is, like once they start winning 1:10:30.200 --> 1:10:32.800 the victories, just number one, like the west Is just 1:10:32.880 --> 1:10:35.639 kind of ignores their campaign of low level terror, which 1:10:35.640 --> 1:10:38.040 we didn't. We like bomb the crap out of them. 1:10:38.080 --> 1:10:40.519 And number two he has this idea that like, well, 1:10:40.600 --> 1:10:43.599 once a caliphate is declared, all of the Muslims just 1:10:43.720 --> 1:10:46.080 start clamoring to join it and take over the Now 1:10:46.360 --> 1:10:49.400 you know who actually defeated ISIS because I was there 1:10:49.439 --> 1:10:52.599 for quite a bit of it. It was Muslims, by 1:10:52.640 --> 1:10:56.040 the way, like uh whenever, like I don't know, people 1:10:56.080 --> 1:10:57.920 shot at me. The folks who like threw their bodies 1:10:57.960 --> 1:11:00.080 in front of me Muslims. The people who are like 1:11:00.240 --> 1:11:02.840 at their day and night throwing like fucking with like 1:11:02.960 --> 1:11:06.559 hand grenades and fucking combat knives, clearing buildings of ISIS 1:11:06.560 --> 1:11:09.439 fighters were also Muslims. I watched him pray in the 1:11:09.439 --> 1:11:13.679 mornings before they would go get fucking shot. Like very offensive, 1:11:14.360 --> 1:11:18.200 this guy. Yes, I am very frustrated by Scott Adams 1:11:18.240 --> 1:11:21.040 and his racist book, and that he thinks he predicted 1:11:21.120 --> 1:11:25.480 isis like, go fuck yourself, Scott. 1:11:25.840 --> 1:11:28.479 I mean, are you surprised though, considering like nothing else 1:11:28.479 --> 1:11:29.960 he's taking credit for it at this point. 1:11:30.040 --> 1:11:33.360 No, no, not at all. It just is like particularly galling. 1:11:34.600 --> 1:11:38.120 So the way Scott writes about the Caliphate shows his 1:11:38.320 --> 1:11:43.080 fundamental incuriosity about the world. He never expresses any understanding 1:11:43.160 --> 1:11:46.280 of the actual religious doctrine behind the strains of fundamentalist 1:11:46.400 --> 1:11:49.920 Islam most associated with terrorism. Even if this book was 1:11:50.000 --> 1:11:52.600 anti Muslim hate speech, it might have come from a 1:11:52.600 --> 1:11:56.280 position of understanding, you know, stuff like Selophism, right, it'd 1:11:56.280 --> 1:11:57.960 be one thing, it would still be bad. But if 1:11:57.960 --> 1:12:00.800 this was like anti Muslim and really gott into the 1:12:00.880 --> 1:12:04.559 nitty gritty of like different really problematic beliefs among extremist Muslims, 1:12:04.560 --> 1:12:06.720 like you know, Slofi Islam and stuff, that would at 1:12:06.760 --> 1:12:10.120 least show that like he was curious to an extent, 1:12:10.479 --> 1:12:15.200 you know, but he's he simply is not. And the 1:12:15.200 --> 1:12:18.679 book itself does treat Christianity with a similarly broad brush. 1:12:18.760 --> 1:12:21.680 The American Leader is this like general like, by the way, 1:12:21.720 --> 1:12:24.559 the whole West is part of the Christian Alliance, that's 1:12:24.560 --> 1:12:26.479 what they call themselves with like, I don't know, man, 1:12:26.520 --> 1:12:29.040 I feel like it's a secular I feel like all 1:12:29.080 --> 1:12:32.400 of the religious terrorism is part of why people have 1:12:32.479 --> 1:12:35.400 become more secular in the twenty first century, as opposed 1:12:35.439 --> 1:12:38.840 to making everyone pick sides in a religion war, like 1:12:39.200 --> 1:12:41.200 it's just not what happened, Scott. 1:12:41.880 --> 1:12:43.960 Not fucking fuck. 1:12:44.479 --> 1:12:47.360 Yeah, it's offensive to it should be offensive to anyone 1:12:47.360 --> 1:12:48.040 who reads it. 1:12:48.080 --> 1:12:48.320 Now. 1:12:48.720 --> 1:12:52.040 The conflict between these two big blocks is resolved when 1:12:52.120 --> 1:12:55.840 Scott's self insert character who is a guru called the Avatar. 1:12:56.200 --> 1:12:59.479 Who is the Avatar is like a wizard, but he's 1:12:59.479 --> 1:13:03.360 a wizard. He's a wizard of smart right, He's so logical, 1:13:03.680 --> 1:13:07.160 it's so rational that his ability to like talk to 1:13:07.200 --> 1:13:11.439 people and make rational arguments is effectively a superpower. And 1:13:11.520 --> 1:13:14.360 he solves the religion war becind because he finds an 1:13:14.400 --> 1:13:17.439 old lady who's like he describes her as basically a 1:13:17.479 --> 1:13:20.799 super influencer. Right, there's just this kind of mystical network 1:13:20.840 --> 1:13:22.800 of people who are really convincing, and if you find 1:13:22.840 --> 1:13:25.320 the right person, they'll talk to you know, fifty people, 1:13:25.360 --> 1:13:27.439 and they'll convince all those people and those people will 1:13:27.439 --> 1:13:30.480 talk to another fifty people and then kind of stocata 1:13:30.720 --> 1:13:33.280 or kind of like over in a very short order, 1:13:33.479 --> 1:13:35.720 everyone will be convinced of something. Right, if you find 1:13:35.720 --> 1:13:38.120 the right person, you're able to like seed a thing. 1:13:38.640 --> 1:13:40.920 And this old lady comes up with a joke where 1:13:40.920 --> 1:13:43.720 she's like, if God is so smart, why do people fart? 1:13:43.880 --> 1:13:48.080 And that revelation makes the entire world atheist more or less. 1:13:48.400 --> 1:13:51.280 That's the plot. That's the plot of Scott's book. I 1:13:51.360 --> 1:13:56.439 hate this. I hate this. Yeah. By the way, if 1:13:56.439 --> 1:13:57.840 you're listening to this and you want to read an 1:13:57.920 --> 1:14:02.200 actual novels written by cartoonists Mel Lazarus who did The 1:14:02.560 --> 1:14:06.599 Mama and Miss Peach's Class, I'm told I've read them. 1:14:06.640 --> 1:14:09.120 Watch of Horley Racist not but like and I was like, 1:14:09.240 --> 1:14:11.160 who was one called The Boss is Crazy Too, which 1:14:11.200 --> 1:14:13.840 was based off his time working in a CD magazine 1:14:14.760 --> 1:14:17.120 like fine stuff like that that's meant to be fun 1:14:17.120 --> 1:14:19.759 and pulpy. What the fuck? Yeah? 1:14:20.040 --> 1:14:23.439 Or on the other end of the great cartoonist Alan 1:14:23.479 --> 1:14:26.120 Moore wrote a book called Jerusalem, and I'm gonna be honest, 1:14:26.439 --> 1:14:28.479 I haven't read it. No one I know who loves 1:14:28.479 --> 1:14:31.000 Alan Moore has finished it, but you could put it 1:14:31.040 --> 1:14:34.599 on your bookshelf and occasionally read pages and people will 1:14:34.600 --> 1:14:37.519 think you're very smart. So sure, it's a great book. 1:14:37.640 --> 1:14:38.880 One of these days, I'll read it. 1:14:39.160 --> 1:14:42.280 If it's Alan Moore, you probably just like at absolutely. 1:14:41.720 --> 1:14:45.280 And yeah, I keep it on my belt next to 1:14:45.360 --> 1:14:47.880 my handgun in case you know there's a jam or something. 1:14:47.920 --> 1:14:50.320 It's it's it's it's much more effective than a than 1:14:50.360 --> 1:14:56.479 a combat knife. Wailing on some Nazi with a copy 1:14:56.479 --> 1:14:57.200 of Jerusalem. 1:14:57.400 --> 1:15:01.719 Yeah, that's my new master material. Thank you, I will 1:15:01.840 --> 1:15:07.320 I will remember that time. Sorry, Alan, I love you. Okay, 1:15:07.800 --> 1:15:09.760 I'm going to keep freaking out about this book, going, 1:15:09.920 --> 1:15:11.559 keep going, please, it's terrible. 1:15:11.880 --> 1:15:15.040 So God's Debris, which is the sequel, is even more 1:15:15.160 --> 1:15:19.360 out of again, Yeah, it's a sequel. The whole thing 1:15:19.600 --> 1:15:23.200 is like a pseudo Socratic dialogue between a delivery boy 1:15:23.280 --> 1:15:27.840 and the avatar from the first book. It is charity 1:15:28.000 --> 1:15:31.759 to call this freshman intro to psychology gobbledygook, Like most 1:15:31.840 --> 1:15:35.520 freshman psych students would write a better and more insightful 1:15:35.560 --> 1:15:37.840 book than this. I'm not going to punish you all 1:15:37.840 --> 1:15:40.160 with too much detail, but you can get an idea 1:15:40.240 --> 1:15:42.240 of what we're looking at here with this passage, and 1:15:42.280 --> 1:15:44.360 this is so this delivery boy comes to give an 1:15:44.360 --> 1:15:46.560 old man a passage. The old man is the avatar, 1:15:46.640 --> 1:15:48.680 and he's I guess, going to like pass wisdom on 1:15:48.760 --> 1:15:52.040 to this kid. So like, here's the delivery boy talking 1:15:52.040 --> 1:15:55.400 to the avatar. It's for you, he said. That's that's 1:15:55.439 --> 1:15:59.440 the delivery boy. What's for me? The avatar applies the package. 1:15:59.680 --> 1:16:02.200 I just delivered the packages, I said. My job is 1:16:02.240 --> 1:16:06.320 to bring them to you. It's your package. No, it's yours, okay, 1:16:06.439 --> 1:16:09.040 I said. Planning my exit strategy, I figured I could 1:16:09.080 --> 1:16:10.760 leave the package in the hallway on the way out. 1:16:10.800 --> 1:16:13.759 The old man's caretaker would find it. What's in the package, 1:16:13.800 --> 1:16:16.040 I asked. I hoped to get an awkward to get 1:16:16.080 --> 1:16:18.639 past an awkward moment. It's the answer to your question. 1:16:19.040 --> 1:16:22.679 I wasn't expecting any answers, I understand, said the old man. 1:16:22.960 --> 1:16:24.920 I didn't know how to respond to that, so I didn't. 1:16:25.160 --> 1:16:28.080 He continued, let me ask you a simple question. Did 1:16:28.080 --> 1:16:30.840 you deliver the package or did the package deliver you? 1:16:31.479 --> 1:16:33.919 By then I was delivered a little annoyed with his cleverness, 1:16:34.000 --> 1:16:36.759 but admittedly engaged. I didn't know the old man's situation. 1:16:36.920 --> 1:16:39.080 But he wasn't as feeble minded as I'd first thought. 1:16:39.320 --> 1:16:42.200 I glanced at my watch, almost lunchtime. I decided to 1:16:42.200 --> 1:16:45.040 see where this was heading. I delivered the package, I answered, 1:16:45.080 --> 1:16:47.880 that seemed obvious enough. If the package had no address, 1:16:47.920 --> 1:16:50.599 would you have delivered it here? I said, no, Then 1:16:50.600 --> 1:16:53.520 you would agree that delivering the package required the participation 1:16:53.600 --> 1:16:55.960 of the package. The package told you where to go. 1:16:56.520 --> 1:16:58.240 I suppose that's true in a way, but it's the 1:16:58.320 --> 1:17:00.679 least important part of the delivery. I did the driving 1:17:00.680 --> 1:17:03.320 and lifting and moving. That's the important part. How can 1:17:03.400 --> 1:17:06.720 one part be more important if each part is completely necessary? 1:17:06.800 --> 1:17:10.839 He asked, Now this is pointless, like there's no wisdom 1:17:11.720 --> 1:17:14.800 to be revealed in this, but also like it's like 1:17:14.920 --> 1:17:17.120 no delivery boy would be like, well, I'm the person 1:17:17.280 --> 1:17:19.519 I'm responsible for why the package. Now the deliverer would 1:17:19.520 --> 1:17:21.120 be like, look, man, this is my job. I got 1:17:21.120 --> 1:17:23.599 to make rent, Like that's why I gave you this package. 1:17:23.640 --> 1:17:25.280 Someone told me to deliver package here. 1:17:26.120 --> 1:17:29.160 Yeah, Like, I have to do this to afford food 1:17:29.360 --> 1:17:32.040 and stuff, Like that's why I'm here. That's what drove 1:17:32.160 --> 1:17:33.840 me here is my need for food. 1:17:34.040 --> 1:17:38.000 Don't you Tube minutes like, no, the package didn't make 1:17:38.040 --> 1:17:40.839 me come here, and like that, we're not equally integral. 1:17:40.880 --> 1:17:42.800 The integral part of this is I need a job 1:17:42.880 --> 1:17:44.840 and this is the job that I have. Will you 1:17:44.880 --> 1:17:46.920 please sign for the fucking package, asshole? 1:17:47.120 --> 1:17:48.320 Oh oh god. 1:17:48.360 --> 1:17:53.280 It's frustrating. In general, I think Scott Adams is maybe 1:17:53.320 --> 1:17:56.439 the single person who handled the social media era the worst. 1:17:56.960 --> 1:17:58.960 There were signs that this was going to be the case, 1:17:58.960 --> 1:18:01.360 with him from early on having to filter his ideas 1:18:01.360 --> 1:18:04.479 through editors at comics, syndicates and publishers kept the most 1:18:04.520 --> 1:18:07.080 problematic stuff out of his work. When he was allowed 1:18:07.080 --> 1:18:09.840 to just vomit his thoughts to people, things got really dark, 1:18:09.920 --> 1:18:12.240 really fast, and an early sign that this was going 1:18:12.280 --> 1:18:15.439 to be the case came in. An early sign that 1:18:15.479 --> 1:18:17.040 this was going to be the case came in two 1:18:17.080 --> 1:18:19.240 thousand and six when he made a blog post about 1:18:19.240 --> 1:18:22.599 how he didn't vote because he was too ignorant. Right now, 1:18:22.600 --> 1:18:24.519 I don't disagree with Scott there. I don't want him 1:18:24.560 --> 1:18:27.479 voting either, But he immediately seguees off of this into 1:18:27.680 --> 1:18:30.760 very wild territory, starting with the fact that like he's like, 1:18:31.040 --> 1:18:33.040 you know, I think that the news doesn't provide us 1:18:33.040 --> 1:18:35.280 with enough context to make a decision. So, for example, 1:18:35.320 --> 1:18:37.679 I just learned recently that Iran is twenty five thousand 1:18:37.760 --> 1:18:40.519 Jewish citizens, and everybody's talking about how anti Semitic the 1:18:40.520 --> 1:18:42.760 president of Iran is. But there's all these Jewish people 1:18:42.760 --> 1:18:44.639 living in Iran. So does that mean that the president 1:18:44.720 --> 1:18:46.960 is anti Semitic and that I'm going to kill people way? 1:18:47.080 --> 1:18:48.720 Or is he just kind of a bigot? You know, 1:18:48.840 --> 1:18:51.080 the media hasn't provided me with the context that I 1:18:51.160 --> 1:18:53.280 need here, And for one thing, like you could look 1:18:53.360 --> 1:18:56.800 up life for Jewish people in Iran, Like there's Jewish 1:18:56.840 --> 1:18:58.760 people who have like left Iran or who still live 1:18:58.800 --> 1:19:00.760 there probably who you can like you can find like 1:19:01.040 --> 1:19:03.040 their feelings on the matter. You could look this up, 1:19:03.400 --> 1:19:06.559 like there are media, there's newspapers that have written articles 1:19:06.560 --> 1:19:09.479 about this, Scott. The fact that every newspaper that talked 1:19:09.479 --> 1:19:11.479 about this is during like when everyone was flipping out 1:19:11.479 --> 1:19:14.400 over Mahmoud ahmadina Jod, the former president of Iran because 1:19:14.400 --> 1:19:18.200 he made some statements about Israel. The fact that like 1:19:18.680 --> 1:19:21.479 every news article on Amadina Jod didn't like go into 1:19:21.479 --> 1:19:25.200 detail about life for Jewish Iranians doesn't mean that like 1:19:25.800 --> 1:19:28.800 that context is not provided elsewhere by the media, you 1:19:28.960 --> 1:19:31.839 chose not to look into it, and for some reason, 1:19:31.960 --> 1:19:36.639 from that very strange statement, we veer into Holocaust denial. 1:19:36.760 --> 1:19:40.720 So here's Scott I gamm it. I'd also like to 1:19:40.800 --> 1:19:44.160 know how the Holocaust death toll of six million was determined. 1:19:44.520 --> 1:19:47.080 Isn't this sort of number that's so well documented, with 1:19:47.120 --> 1:19:49.840 actual names and perhaps a Nazi paper trail, that no 1:19:50.000 --> 1:19:52.720 historian could document it doubt its accuracy, give or take 1:19:52.760 --> 1:19:54.400 ten thousand, Or is it like. 1:19:54.439 --> 1:19:57.960 Every other LRN large round number that someone pulled out 1:19:57.960 --> 1:20:00.240 of his ass and it became true by repetition. Does 1:20:00.280 --> 1:20:02.840 the figure include resistance fighters and civilians who died in 1:20:02.880 --> 1:20:04.880 the normal course of war, or just the Jews rounded 1:20:04.960 --> 1:20:08.320 up and killed systematically. No reasonable person doubts that the 1:20:08.360 --> 1:20:10.680 Holocaust happened, But wouldn't you like to know how the 1:20:10.720 --> 1:20:14.280 exact number was calculated? Just for context? Without that context, 1:20:14.320 --> 1:20:15.800 I don't know if I should lump the people who 1:20:15.840 --> 1:20:18.720 think the Holocaust might have been exaggerated for political purposes 1:20:18.880 --> 1:20:21.599 and with the Holocaust deniers if they are equally nuts, 1:20:21.640 --> 1:20:24.040 then I'd like to know that I want context. You 1:20:24.080 --> 1:20:27.400 know what, Scott you can get context because there's libraries 1:20:27.439 --> 1:20:30.040 full of books people have written calculating the death toll 1:20:30.040 --> 1:20:32.599 of the Holocaust. All of these questions have been answered 1:20:32.680 --> 1:20:37.040 numerous times by both journalists and historians. You chose not 1:20:37.160 --> 1:20:40.400 to seek that out. It's not a problem that every 1:20:40.520 --> 1:20:43.559 article that talks about mentions the Holocaust and its death 1:20:43.600 --> 1:20:46.479 toll doesn't go into detail about how that death toll 1:20:46.520 --> 1:20:50.960 was calculated, because that's not good article writing. You don't 1:20:51.040 --> 1:20:54.160 like it would be like every time I talk about 1:20:54.240 --> 1:20:59.759 fucking climate change, I discuss like how fucking internal combustion 1:20:59.840 --> 1:21:04.479 in work. Like it's simply not necessary context every single time. 1:21:04.720 --> 1:21:07.920 But it's super easy to learn about how the Holocaust 1:21:07.920 --> 1:21:10.439 death toll was calculated. And if you were to just 1:21:10.479 --> 1:21:14.080 have typed into Google in this period of time, how 1:21:14.200 --> 1:21:18.280 was the Holocaust death toll calculated? You would find answers 1:21:18.320 --> 1:21:20.959 to this question. And if people at home are curious, 1:21:21.120 --> 1:21:25.080 The Holocaust Encyclopedia, operated by the US Holocaust Memorial Museum 1:21:25.320 --> 1:21:27.840 has a page titled documenting numbers of victims in the 1:21:27.840 --> 1:21:31.240 Holocaust and Nazi Persecution, which you and Scott Adams can 1:21:31.280 --> 1:21:33.360 peruse at your leisure if you want. This is not 1:21:33.520 --> 1:21:35.800 hard stuff. It's easy to find. You do not have 1:21:35.840 --> 1:21:39.120 to be a historian to learn the basic answers to 1:21:39.120 --> 1:21:40.760 the questions that Scott is asking here. 1:21:40.960 --> 1:21:43.759 It's so it brings Yeah, it's so blatant. The holy 1:21:43.960 --> 1:21:46.680 is like no one's covered this means I didn't have 1:21:46.760 --> 1:21:49.280 the curiosity to go find out. Yeah no, man, you 1:21:49.320 --> 1:21:53.760 didn't look like, why isn't the media telling me about this? 1:21:53.920 --> 1:21:56.880 Well they did. You didn't read those articles. There's a 1:21:56.880 --> 1:22:00.360 lot of articles, so you didn't want to know about it, Like, yeah, 1:22:00.479 --> 1:22:04.880 I can hand I can hand mine toddler evidence that 1:22:05.000 --> 1:22:08.080 if she cleans her room up, she will not trip 1:22:08.160 --> 1:22:11.479 over her toys. She's not gonna read that. She doesn't 1:22:11.479 --> 1:22:14.160 give a shit, she's gonna keep her toys out. 1:22:14.479 --> 1:22:16.240 It's like if I bought a car that didn't have 1:22:16.280 --> 1:22:18.160 a manual in it and then I drove it and 1:22:18.240 --> 1:22:21.200 never changed the oil until like the engine broke, and 1:22:21.200 --> 1:22:23.280 then I was like they didn't give me the contact, 1:22:23.400 --> 1:22:26.599 Like yeah, man, you like you can look up how 1:22:26.640 --> 1:22:29.040 do I maintain a car? What does this light on 1:22:29.080 --> 1:22:32.800 my dashboard mean? What are these noises from my car mean? 1:22:33.080 --> 1:22:36.160 It's not hard to get that answer, Like it is 1:22:36.200 --> 1:22:39.479 not the fault of the fucking car manufacture that you 1:22:39.800 --> 1:22:44.479 chose to act like a helpless babe. This is all 1:22:44.479 --> 1:22:46.760 a really perfect example of the kind of dumb that 1:22:46.840 --> 1:22:49.559 Scott gives us. He thinks that like saying this, that 1:22:49.640 --> 1:22:51.640 being like, well, I just want context, what about this? 1:22:51.680 --> 1:22:56.519 What about what I'm saying it didn't happen? Yeah, dot dot. 1:22:56.720 --> 1:23:00.000 Yeah, Like he thinks that this makes him look nice, 1:23:00.160 --> 1:23:02.200 just deep and wise, but like kind of the cynical 1:23:02.320 --> 1:23:05.880 prankster wise man, like the Avatar and his books, Like 1:23:06.080 --> 1:23:08.960 you just accepted that number without thinking. Maybe now you'll 1:23:09.000 --> 1:23:11.479 think more about the things you accept without thinking. No, 1:23:11.600 --> 1:23:13.960 you should actually like try to learn the answers to 1:23:14.000 --> 1:23:17.360 the questions that you're asking, because they're very readily available. 1:23:17.520 --> 1:23:23.160 Scott Adams, it's like very frustrating. 1:23:23.520 --> 1:23:23.920 It's like. 1:23:25.680 --> 1:23:28.000 I think his attitude is that like when we talk about, 1:23:28.040 --> 1:23:31.000 for example, Holocaust and I as shooting up synagogues and 1:23:31.120 --> 1:23:34.240 murdering Jewish people, every article about that should include a 1:23:34.320 --> 1:23:37.840 digression about like the estimated kill rate during acton Reinhard 1:23:37.960 --> 1:23:40.280 and how it compares to the rate of killing in Rwanda. 1:23:40.400 --> 1:23:42.960 Like that's literally what I think he's saying, which is 1:23:43.080 --> 1:23:46.679 nuts and stupid, and he should feel bad, and also 1:23:47.040 --> 1:23:51.120 somebody should throw p at him anyway for the sake 1:23:51.160 --> 1:23:53.559 of fairness. I should note that at this point Scott's 1:23:53.640 --> 1:23:57.640 ill considered political rants are not always entirely on the 1:23:57.680 --> 1:24:00.599 wrong side, although there's always an element of wrong to them. 1:24:00.960 --> 1:24:02.600 And May of two thousand and eight, he wrote a 1:24:02.640 --> 1:24:05.320 blog post making fun of people who complained about illegal 1:24:05.360 --> 1:24:09.040 immigrants and that's a noble cause. There are some cringe 1:24:09.040 --> 1:24:13.200 worthy lines in the post, like Mexicans have great looking 1:24:13.240 --> 1:24:15.720 skin that resists sunburn. I have skin that looks like 1:24:15.760 --> 1:24:21.680 tappyokas spilled on canvassing skin. Mexic people, what the fuck, Scott, Well, 1:24:21.720 --> 1:24:25.599 you don't need to get into that. Scott continued posting, though, 1:24:25.640 --> 1:24:29.000 and he eventually started to draw criticism when other people 1:24:29.120 --> 1:24:32.960 realized that the unfiltered Dilbert guy was a dick. This 1:24:33.040 --> 1:24:34.760 happened first in a big way when he made this 1:24:34.800 --> 1:24:38.200 twenty eleven post complaining about the unfair treatment of women. 1:24:39.560 --> 1:24:42.480 The reality is that women are treated differently by society 1:24:42.520 --> 1:24:44.799 for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally 1:24:44.840 --> 1:24:48.879 handicapped are treated differently. It's just easier this way for everyone. 1:24:49.200 --> 1:24:51.080 You don't argue with a four year old about why 1:24:51.080 --> 1:24:53.240 you shouldn't eat candy for dinner. You don't punch a 1:24:53.280 --> 1:24:56.080 mentally handicapped guy, even if he punches you first. And 1:24:56.120 --> 1:24:58.160 you don't argue when a woman tells you she's only 1:24:58.200 --> 1:25:00.559 making eighty cents to your dollar. It's the path of 1:25:00.640 --> 1:25:03.639 least resistance. You save your energy for more important battles. 1:25:04.680 --> 1:25:08.960 So Scott posts this stupid thing because he's a dumb asshole, 1:25:09.720 --> 1:25:12.040 and he gets made fun of on a blog called feminist, 1:25:12.439 --> 1:25:15.839 and so he jumps he again. He can't handle people 1:25:15.960 --> 1:25:18.840 not agreeing with him or not thinking he's smart, so 1:25:18.880 --> 1:25:22.240 he leaps into the comments section to defend himself and 1:25:22.400 --> 1:25:26.599 argue against everybody, and immediately, because he's not good at arguing, 1:25:26.840 --> 1:25:29.360 he just kind of gives that up and starts insulting 1:25:29.400 --> 1:25:33.280 people for their poor reading comprehension. He also suggests that 1:25:33.320 --> 1:25:35.760 they all secretly agree with him and know he's right, 1:25:35.800 --> 1:25:37.519 and are just arguing with him for the sake of 1:25:37.560 --> 1:25:40.040 their own egos. Then he makes a blog post a 1:25:40.040 --> 1:25:42.400 few days later reiterating all the points that had made 1:25:42.400 --> 1:25:46.439 everyone mad, but insisting that everyone had just gotten him 1:25:46.439 --> 1:25:50.040 wrong and that like Dilbert readers are smart enough, you know, 1:25:50.080 --> 1:25:52.800 but other people didn't get it. I'm actually going to 1:25:52.920 --> 1:25:55.680 read a quote from EW dot com here, like summarizing 1:25:55.720 --> 1:25:58.960 the fallout. Adams insisted that his post was some sort 1:25:59.000 --> 1:26:02.160 of forensic ex size that his loyal readers he presents 1:26:02.200 --> 1:26:06.000 them as sort of uber rational Dilbert Nation, understand, but 1:26:06.080 --> 1:26:09.160 he did eventually offer an apology. The best of my knowledge, 1:26:09.160 --> 1:26:11.840 no one who understood the original post or its context 1:26:11.880 --> 1:26:13.720 was offended by it. But to the women who were 1:26:13.720 --> 1:26:16.320 offended by their own or someone else's interpretation of what 1:26:16.360 --> 1:26:18.680 I wrote, I apologize. 1:26:19.120 --> 1:26:25.240 You week by your own interpretation. What. Yeah, it was 1:26:25.280 --> 1:26:27.680 all just a game for me, the puppet master. But 1:26:27.720 --> 1:26:31.920 I'm sorry if it hurt you. Like Scott, just if 1:26:31.920 --> 1:26:34.600 you want to be if you want to believe shitty things, 1:26:34.680 --> 1:26:38.200 just like say them on your massive platform and ignore 1:26:38.240 --> 1:26:42.280 the people who argue with you. Yeah, don't be a 1:26:42.320 --> 1:26:47.639 little baby about this, like he's such a whimp public 1:26:47.760 --> 1:26:49.120 counts to defend himself or that. 1:26:49.320 --> 1:26:52.320 Oh boy, that's where we're heading to. So the attention 1:26:52.520 --> 1:26:55.680 or because this kind of goes viral, more and more 1:26:55.720 --> 1:26:58.240 people start to watch his blog posts because and then 1:26:58.240 --> 1:27:00.400 they start to realize, like, wow, he says dumb all 1:27:00.400 --> 1:27:04.759 the time, Like he's constantly saying bullshit without knowing anything 1:27:04.800 --> 1:27:07.400 about the shit he's talking about. So in the mid 1:27:07.439 --> 1:27:09.799 adds it kind of comes sport in a couple places 1:27:09.840 --> 1:27:13.160 online to make fun of bad Scott Adams posts, and 1:27:13.200 --> 1:27:16.320 Scott can't handle it, so he starts to make fake 1:27:16.360 --> 1:27:20.240 accounts on MetaFilter and Reddit under the pseudonym Planned Chaos, 1:27:20.600 --> 1:27:23.360 where he again he's doing this puppet master thing and 1:27:23.400 --> 1:27:27.759 he pretends to be someone else defending himself because apparently 1:27:27.840 --> 1:27:31.439 his rational superfans aren't like good enough to actually do 1:27:31.520 --> 1:27:34.719 the job for him. Here's an example of a Planned 1:27:34.800 --> 1:27:38.600 Chaos post. If an idiot and a genius disagree, the 1:27:38.760 --> 1:27:41.960 idiot generally thinks the genius is wrong. He also has 1:27:42.040 --> 1:27:45.080 lots of idiot reasons to back his idiot belief. That's 1:27:45.080 --> 1:27:47.680 how the idiot mind is wired. It's fair to say 1:27:47.720 --> 1:27:49.720 you disagree with Adams, but you can't rule out the 1:27:49.800 --> 1:27:52.719 hypothesis that you're too dumb to understand what he's saying. 1:27:53.080 --> 1:27:58.559 And he's a certified genius, just saying, first of all, 1:27:58.760 --> 1:28:00.960 argument to authority. If you want to be like a 1:28:00.960 --> 1:28:03.679 big fucking rules, D and D for real life guy, 1:28:03.760 --> 1:28:06.919 Like that's the argument to authority. You're not actually defending yourself, 1:28:07.000 --> 1:28:10.120 Like that's evidence that you've kind of like that whatever 1:28:10.280 --> 1:28:13.080 argument you're you're you're making is completely hollow because you 1:28:13.120 --> 1:28:14.760 have to rely on like, well, he's a genius, so 1:28:14.800 --> 1:28:17.680 you just don't understand him. But also that's just like 1:28:18.520 --> 1:28:23.360 such a sniffly little wiss thing to do, like say 1:28:23.400 --> 1:28:25.280 it under your own name, you fucking coward. 1:28:25.400 --> 1:28:28.200 Yeah, that's that's what Bobby Like, well, let's not to 1:28:28.280 --> 1:28:30.519 the biggest thing that Bob Scott adams. But it's like, 1:28:32.160 --> 1:28:34.799 I have never understood making a sock of an account 1:28:34.800 --> 1:28:40.320 to defend yourself. It's sad, it's sad, it's weak anyway. Whatever. 1:28:40.760 --> 1:28:44.680 Once Trump began his campaign for president, Scott's behavior accelerated. 1:28:44.760 --> 1:28:47.479 He predicted a Trump primary win fair enough, gets that 1:28:47.520 --> 1:28:50.160 one right, and then he takes back his endorsement of 1:28:50.160 --> 1:28:53.080 Trump though after the Access Hollywood take tape, and he 1:28:53.240 --> 1:28:56.599 endorses Gary Johnson, which he'll later come to like regret 1:28:56.640 --> 1:28:58.600 and try to explain away, but it is it is 1:28:58.760 --> 1:29:02.559 very funny. Once Trump wins, he publishes a book called 1:29:02.640 --> 1:29:05.160 Win Bigley in which he argues that he and Trump 1:29:05.200 --> 1:29:09.240 are both master persuaders, and Trump was ushering humanity into 1:29:09.280 --> 1:29:13.439 a bold new world with his master persuader techniques. He 1:29:13.560 --> 1:29:17.200 becomes increasingly partisan during the Trump years, but also increasingly 1:29:17.360 --> 1:29:21.200 silly and deeply irresponsible, would be fair to say. In 1:29:21.200 --> 1:29:25.360 twenty nineteen, you guys remember the Gilroy Garlick Festival mass 1:29:25.360 --> 1:29:28.679 shooting that was carried out by that kind of fascist guy. Yeah, 1:29:29.120 --> 1:29:32.799 real fucked up. Scott uses the tragedy as an excuse 1:29:32.840 --> 1:29:35.479 to publish a video app he's made called win Hub, 1:29:35.800 --> 1:29:38.880 which he's created as like a news gathering tool, and 1:29:38.920 --> 1:29:42.439 he's like, while like the shooting is going on, he's 1:29:42.479 --> 1:29:45.320 telling people to use this to report on what's happening. 1:29:45.320 --> 1:29:48.680 If they're like, it's pretty fucked up. Like there's a 1:29:48.680 --> 1:29:50.720 lot of debate in our culture about like what it 1:29:50.760 --> 1:29:52.800 is and isn't appropriate to do in the wake of 1:29:52.840 --> 1:29:54.639 a mass shooting, but I think we can all agree 1:29:54.680 --> 1:29:57.200 trying to plug your app is not appropriate. 1:29:57.880 --> 1:30:02.000 Yeah, that's a bit off sides. Yeah, Yeah, that's just bad. 1:30:02.160 --> 1:30:04.000 That's just real fucked up. Scott. 1:30:04.960 --> 1:30:07.599 A write up in MSN notes Adams didn't make major 1:30:07.640 --> 1:30:10.040 waves with a February twenty twenty one comic that poked 1:30:10.040 --> 1:30:12.400 fun at those who received a coronavirus vaccine, but he 1:30:12.400 --> 1:30:15.120 did rouffle feathers when he espoused debunked claims that people 1:30:15.160 --> 1:30:17.880 who weren't vaccinated fared better than those who were in 1:30:17.920 --> 1:30:20.800 a video shared by the Just Think podcast. In the 1:30:20.800 --> 1:30:23.720 twenty twenties, his political statements also started to focus more 1:30:23.760 --> 1:30:25.920 on race. At the beginning of twenty twenty two, he 1:30:25.960 --> 1:30:28.320 tweeted that he was going to self identify as a 1:30:28.360 --> 1:30:31.800 black woman until Biden picks his Supreme Court nominee, which 1:30:31.840 --> 1:30:34.120 the President had vowed would be a black woman, and 1:30:34.160 --> 1:30:36.320 then in June of twenty twenty, Adams tweeted that when 1:30:36.320 --> 1:30:38.760 the Dilbert TV show ended in two thousand after just 1:30:38.800 --> 1:30:41.240 two seasons, it was the third job I lost for 1:30:41.280 --> 1:30:46.439 being white. So Scott's madness crescendos after the twenty twenty 1:30:46.439 --> 1:30:50.080 two Highland Park mass shooting. This, like so many mass shootings, 1:30:50.200 --> 1:30:52.720 was carried out by a very young man twenty one 1:30:52.760 --> 1:30:56.040 years old. Rather than seeing this as perhaps a reason 1:30:56.120 --> 1:30:59.040 to explore more restrictive laws as to win firearms could 1:30:59.080 --> 1:31:01.280 be purchased, or perhaps apps as a sign of deeply 1:31:01.360 --> 1:31:04.360 toxic aspects of our culture and the things that young 1:31:04.400 --> 1:31:07.479 men in it are raised to believe. Scott posted one 1:31:07.520 --> 1:31:09.960 of the craziest things I've ever seen on Twitter, which 1:31:10.000 --> 1:31:14.639 is an app fueled entirely my mental breakdowns. Here's Scott again, 1:31:14.720 --> 1:31:18.160 in the wake of a mass shooting. The Highland shooting 1:31:18.200 --> 1:31:20.360 and every fit in the overdose death among the young 1:31:20.400 --> 1:31:22.560 are teaching us the same lesson, and we refuse to 1:31:22.640 --> 1:31:24.960 learn it. It's difficult, but I'm qualified to give you 1:31:25.000 --> 1:31:28.280 this lesson. Unfortunately, dam this won't be easy to read. 1:31:28.439 --> 1:31:31.160 When a young male, let's say fourteen to nineteen, is 1:31:31.160 --> 1:31:33.960 a danger to himself and others, society gives the supporting 1:31:34.040 --> 1:31:37.599 family to options. Number one, watch people die and number 1:31:37.640 --> 1:31:41.000 two kill your own son. Those are your only options. 1:31:41.320 --> 1:31:44.280 I chose one and watched my step son die. I 1:31:44.400 --> 1:31:46.760 was relieved he took no one else with him. If 1:31:46.800 --> 1:31:48.559 you think there is a third choice in which your 1:31:48.560 --> 1:31:51.439 wisdom and tough love, along with government services, fixes that 1:31:51.479 --> 1:31:54.240 broken young man, you are living in a delusion. There 1:31:54.240 --> 1:31:56.360 are no other options. You have to either murder your 1:31:56.360 --> 1:31:58.840 own son or watch him die and maybe kill others. 1:31:59.080 --> 1:32:02.560 There is a sad reaction behind this, so like, I 1:32:02.600 --> 1:32:06.880 that's like fucked up. That's real bad. First off, not true. 1:32:06.880 --> 1:32:09.800 I mean, among other things, I did an interview when 1:32:09.800 --> 1:32:11.599 I was still working with Cracked at a young man 1:32:11.640 --> 1:32:14.000 who attempted to carry out a mass shooting at his school. 1:32:14.040 --> 1:32:16.479 This was back in the late nineties, and got caught 1:32:16.520 --> 1:32:19.280 and stopped, thankfully before he was able to shoot anybody, 1:32:19.320 --> 1:32:21.400 but he had the guns, he was about to start. 1:32:22.640 --> 1:32:27.120 He was penalized obviously, like he was sent to I 1:32:27.120 --> 1:32:30.000 think a mental institution for a while. But like he's 1:32:30.040 --> 1:32:32.559 like it's been decades, he's like a normal person. He's 1:32:32.560 --> 1:32:36.559 got a life now, he's like hasn't killed anyone. Like 1:32:36.960 --> 1:32:40.680 you can, in fact intervene in people who are like 1:32:40.800 --> 1:32:45.320 going in dark directions and they can be saved. It 1:32:45.360 --> 1:32:48.240 happens all the time. Part of why it doesn't get 1:32:48.280 --> 1:32:50.839 more attention is that a guy shooting up a school 1:32:51.120 --> 1:32:53.559 obviously is a thing that people are going to pay 1:32:53.560 --> 1:32:57.360 attention to all the times every single day in which 1:32:57.640 --> 1:32:59.880 a mentor comes across a kid who's starting to have 1:33:00.160 --> 1:33:03.599 under a dark path and like reaches that convinces that person. 1:33:03.720 --> 1:33:06.640 You know, every time that a parent like sees that 1:33:06.840 --> 1:33:11.080 their child is starting to like embrace toxic aspects of 1:33:11.160 --> 1:33:13.920 like belief and behavior, and it starts to talk to 1:33:13.960 --> 1:33:15.920 them and you know, starts to work with them and 1:33:16.400 --> 1:33:19.759 tries to understand and counsel them. Every time, like people 1:33:19.800 --> 1:33:22.280 get pulled back from that brink. It doesn't like you 1:33:22.280 --> 1:33:25.120 don't get a news story about that, right, like obviously, like, 1:33:25.479 --> 1:33:29.599 but that doesn't mean it's not happening. It's it's kind 1:33:29.640 --> 1:33:32.759 of fucked up to say that. Like, once people start 1:33:32.800 --> 1:33:35.760 to show that they have that they're fetishizing violence, they 1:33:35.960 --> 1:33:39.000 that you know, they're embracing like racist or problematic beliefs, 1:33:39.080 --> 1:33:41.960 or that they're you know, starting to get addicted to drugs, 1:33:42.080 --> 1:33:44.479 that there's no way to save them. Like if you've 1:33:44.520 --> 1:33:46.920 lived a life, you know people who have been pulled 1:33:46.920 --> 1:33:49.599 away from all sorts of fucked up things or who 1:33:49.640 --> 1:33:52.320 have like gone too far down a dark road and 1:33:52.400 --> 1:33:56.240 pulled themselves back. It happens all the time. Not that 1:33:56.320 --> 1:33:59.559 it's like easy or simple. These are terrible things to 1:33:59.600 --> 1:34:01.920 deal with as a kid, having a child who like 1:34:02.479 --> 1:34:04.759 you think, might shoot up a school. That's a terrifying 1:34:04.800 --> 1:34:07.240 position to be in as a as a But like 1:34:07.840 --> 1:34:11.719 people get pulled away from that kind of stuff. Now 1:34:11.800 --> 1:34:15.280 there is a sad his stepson that is a well, 1:34:15.320 --> 1:34:18.040 that's what we're about to talk about. Oh no, it's 1:34:18.080 --> 1:34:21.000 a pretty sad story. Scott's step son was involved in 1:34:21.040 --> 1:34:25.519 a serious bicycle accident at age fourteen. He suffered severe 1:34:25.520 --> 1:34:28.439 brain damage, which caused him to lose all impulse control, 1:34:28.720 --> 1:34:32.160 and he became terribly addicted to drugs and eventually died 1:34:32.240 --> 1:34:35.800 of a fentanyl overdose in twenty eighteen. This is a 1:34:35.840 --> 1:34:39.360 horrible story. There's a video in twenty eighteen when Scott 1:34:39.400 --> 1:34:42.280 gets the news where he's just like weeping to his audience, 1:34:42.280 --> 1:34:43.759 and I have no doubt that it's genuine. 1:34:44.240 --> 1:34:47.960 Oh yeah, I mean it's yeah, yeah. I don't want 1:34:48.000 --> 1:34:51.559 to brag on him for losing yeah, a child. 1:34:51.040 --> 1:34:55.040 No I don't either, But like number one, I think 1:34:55.040 --> 1:34:57.280 at twenty eighteen, video doesn't look to me like a 1:34:57.280 --> 1:34:59.200 man who like gave up on a child. That looks 1:34:59.240 --> 1:35:01.640 to me like a man who's sad because what he 1:35:01.800 --> 1:35:04.640 was doing didn't work. And I think it's very depressing that, 1:35:04.720 --> 1:35:06.400 like the lesson he took out of this is that, like, 1:35:06.880 --> 1:35:09.600 you can't save people when they start to have problems. 1:35:09.960 --> 1:35:14.799 Obviously everyone can't be saved. Clearly, Scott's steps On, whatever 1:35:14.920 --> 1:35:17.280 was going on, like was not something he was able 1:35:17.280 --> 1:35:19.320 to pull out of. And that's a tragedy. I know 1:35:19.439 --> 1:35:22.800 multiple people who had serious addictions to like things like 1:35:22.960 --> 1:35:26.680 things that were going to kill them and stopped. You know, 1:35:27.479 --> 1:35:30.240 I have friends who like I have a friend who 1:35:30.320 --> 1:35:36.400 survived shooting himself. Like, people come through terrible things and 1:35:36.640 --> 1:35:39.320 build lives afterwards. And the attitude that like, when a 1:35:39.320 --> 1:35:41.640 young man is troubled, all you can do is let 1:35:41.720 --> 1:35:46.479 them die or murder them is so that's the such 1:35:46.479 --> 1:35:48.760 a bad thing to take out of this experience. 1:35:50.560 --> 1:35:52.080 That sounds sociopathic. 1:35:52.760 --> 1:35:55.160 It is, and it's also it's probably one of the 1:35:55.160 --> 1:35:57.200 things that's really problematic to me about this is that, 1:35:57.280 --> 1:35:59.960 like he is, he is bringing his step son's death 1:36:00.320 --> 1:36:02.640 in the context of a man who went on a 1:36:02.680 --> 1:36:05.920 mass shooting and murdered people. His steps on just had 1:36:05.960 --> 1:36:10.000 a drug addiction. Having a drug addiction and dying as 1:36:10.040 --> 1:36:12.400 a result of it is not in the same moral 1:36:12.680 --> 1:36:16.920 universe as shooting strangers to death with a fucking rifle. No, Like, 1:36:17.280 --> 1:36:19.560 comparing those two things is insane. 1:36:19.880 --> 1:36:23.280 Well, it's I think it's the whole mentality of Oh, 1:36:23.280 --> 1:36:25.919 addiction is a moral failing, not a disease. 1:36:26.200 --> 1:36:29.679 Yeah, no, it's like number one, especially in this case, 1:36:29.760 --> 1:36:32.040 like this is a kid who's got like brain damage 1:36:32.240 --> 1:36:35.600 and he has no impulse control, which is sad and 1:36:35.760 --> 1:36:38.400 hard to deal with, But like it's not the same 1:36:38.439 --> 1:36:41.639 as deciding to murder people. You shouldn't be talking about 1:36:41.720 --> 1:36:46.920 these things together. They're not even in the same realm. No, Like, ah, 1:36:47.320 --> 1:36:52.320 it's it's one of those things, Scott. So obviously the 1:36:52.360 --> 1:36:54.880 culmination of this where we are now is that earlier 1:36:54.920 --> 1:36:57.839 this year, Scott made a number of super racist comments 1:36:57.880 --> 1:37:01.040 about black people and about how like white people just 1:37:01.160 --> 1:37:03.880 need to stop talking to and stop being you know, 1:37:03.920 --> 1:37:06.800 associated with black people, stop living with black people. We 1:37:06.960 --> 1:37:09.519 just have to separate. Like it's pretty fucked up shit, 1:37:10.080 --> 1:37:12.320 and like everyone gets saying this is like the straw 1:37:12.360 --> 1:37:14.720 that finally breaks the camel's back. He says something that 1:37:14.840 --> 1:37:18.200 like the normies take note of, and it leads to 1:37:18.280 --> 1:37:20.960 the collapse of his cartooning career. In like the space 1:37:21.000 --> 1:37:24.080 of a week. He gets dropped by shitloads of newspapers. 1:37:24.080 --> 1:37:28.280 His syndicate, his publisher drop him, everybody drops him, and 1:37:28.320 --> 1:37:30.840 Scott again tries to do kind of the I was 1:37:30.880 --> 1:37:33.519 really trying to make this very intelligent point, and all 1:37:33.560 --> 1:37:35.960 the really smart people got what I was trying to 1:37:36.000 --> 1:37:40.280 say in context, but the dumb people got angry. My argument, 1:37:40.360 --> 1:37:43.040 Scott is that a writer who repeatedly fails to get 1:37:43.040 --> 1:37:46.360 his point across to his audience is bad at writing. 1:37:47.520 --> 1:37:52.320 Anyway. Yeah, It's one thing I remember from all that, 1:37:53.080 --> 1:37:56.439 because I do have people contact me and like ask 1:37:56.479 --> 1:37:58.080 if I wanted you quotes. I was like, not really, 1:37:58.160 --> 1:38:00.960 like contact cartoons, the color that's what you should be 1:38:00.960 --> 1:38:03.280 talking to you, not me. But like one thing I 1:38:03.320 --> 1:38:08.040 will always remember about it was feeling like I saw 1:38:08.080 --> 1:38:12.840 people like, you know, applauding the syndicate Andrew's universe. Yeah, 1:38:13.040 --> 1:38:18.320 and uh Andrew real universal and I'm like, yeah, they 1:38:18.360 --> 1:38:21.320 did it, but like they it took this. Yeah, this 1:38:21.479 --> 1:38:23.880 was like there were you dog whistles before this, Like 1:38:23.920 --> 1:38:26.320 there was there are countless points where they could have 1:38:26.320 --> 1:38:29.479 stoop and said, nah, that's too far dude. Yeah, but 1:38:29.600 --> 1:38:32.960 like it literally got to a point where newspapers had 1:38:32.960 --> 1:38:37.400 to say, oh, you're gonna lose this this spot and 1:38:37.439 --> 1:38:39.960 it finally hurts and now they're like, oh, well we're 1:38:40.000 --> 1:38:41.720 not gonna stand But no, you're not gonna stand out 1:38:41.760 --> 1:38:44.040 of the fact that you're losing money if you had 1:38:44.080 --> 1:38:47.400 the morality. And again I should point out I'm saying 1:38:47.439 --> 1:38:50.600 this is myself, not on behalf of King Features or 1:38:50.640 --> 1:38:54.240 Herst Media, my my syndicate does my first opinion. If 1:38:54.240 --> 1:38:57.960 you really had any morality, he would have been dropped 1:38:58.000 --> 1:39:03.360 a long time ago. Yeah, like this, like the bigotry 1:39:03.960 --> 1:39:09.439 has been there in display for a while and now 1:39:09.479 --> 1:39:12.320 you're like, oh, now you have the morality because you're 1:39:12.320 --> 1:39:13.800 losing newspapers. 1:39:14.680 --> 1:39:21.160 No, now, I will say, I am now. Yeah, Yeah, 1:39:21.200 --> 1:39:23.479 he's got his comic online. You can still read Dilbert 1:39:23.520 --> 1:39:25.479 if you want to. For some reason, it is now 1:39:25.640 --> 1:39:31.200 entirely focused on like weird, cancel culture, grievance shit. But yeah, 1:39:31.240 --> 1:39:33.960 if you want that in your life, it's still available somewhere, 1:39:35.400 --> 1:39:37.320 and it's it's one of those things. You know, you 1:39:37.320 --> 1:39:39.400 you are not speaking on behalf of anyone else. I 1:39:39.439 --> 1:39:44.000 am speaking on behalf of a of my corporation. I 1:39:44.040 --> 1:39:47.120 am speaking on behalf of both Cools and Media, and iHeartRadio. 1:39:47.600 --> 1:39:51.559 When I assure everyone Scott Adams lives inside of a 1:39:51.600 --> 1:39:55.760 mansion shaped like Dilbert's head with a swimming pool out back, 1:39:55.880 --> 1:39:58.479 also shaped like Dilbert's head, where he spends all of 1:39:58.520 --> 1:40:01.320 his recreational time. Right now, Scott is sitting in a 1:40:01.320 --> 1:40:04.559 swimming pool shaped like Gilbert's head, angry that people on 1:40:04.600 --> 1:40:07.479 the internet are making fun of him. And if you 1:40:07.520 --> 1:40:09.720 want to let Scott know that, let him know that 1:40:09.760 --> 1:40:11.960 you know that he lives in a house shaped like 1:40:12.000 --> 1:40:14.960 the hell head of Dilbert. I think he'd appreciate that. 1:40:15.160 --> 1:40:17.760 Maybe it'll save him. 1:40:17.920 --> 1:40:20.759 I also remember, didn he he finally introduced a black 1:40:20.840 --> 1:40:23.960 character in his comic in the last year or so. Yeah, 1:40:23.960 --> 1:40:27.040 the first trip was literally using the black character to 1:40:27.160 --> 1:40:28.360 shit on trans people. 1:40:28.880 --> 1:40:32.439 Yeah, it's very very Scott Adams. Everything he does is 1:40:32.520 --> 1:40:33.080 very Scott as. 1:40:33.280 --> 1:40:36.479 It's just it's like that one shitty kid you went 1:40:36.520 --> 1:40:39.720 to school with, who this is the only attention he 1:40:39.720 --> 1:40:43.000 can get and he's so proud of it. And when 1:40:43.040 --> 1:40:47.160 people hate I won No, you're just pathetic. Yeah, you 1:40:47.280 --> 1:40:50.120 just kind of kind of sad, bro. And he could 1:40:50.160 --> 1:40:52.080 literally say, you know what, I'm not talking to anybody. 1:40:52.120 --> 1:40:54.000 I'm gonna sit joy my money for the rest of 1:40:54.040 --> 1:40:57.720 my life. Vallid go for it, and we'd all we 1:40:57.880 --> 1:41:01.559 have here again. There's not a single human being on 1:41:01.600 --> 1:41:03.759 the face of the earth who has a bad opinion 1:41:03.760 --> 1:41:07.599 of Bill Watterson. No, I mean the probably sending him 1:41:07.680 --> 1:41:08.599 used to deal with him. 1:41:08.479 --> 1:41:10.639 Probably the syndicate because he cost him a lot of money. 1:41:10.680 --> 1:41:13.960 But like fucking a you know, he was like, I 1:41:14.479 --> 1:41:16.479 made this for ten years. I feel like if I 1:41:16.560 --> 1:41:19.200 keep making it, the quality will drop. I'm going to 1:41:19.240 --> 1:41:22.360 go paint landscapes somewhere in the rural Midwest for the 1:41:22.360 --> 1:41:23.360 rest of my life. 1:41:23.840 --> 1:41:28.040 And Jim Davis again, like you may out like Garfield, Yeah, 1:41:28.040 --> 1:41:30.840 you may think it's a shallow tompic whatever, but every 1:41:31.000 --> 1:41:34.280 cartoonist or every person, yeah they were do. He's a sweetheart. 1:41:34.360 --> 1:41:38.000 He is very supportive. He is a nice man. He 1:41:38.080 --> 1:41:41.960 has never leapt into a fucking culture controversy. He knows 1:41:42.000 --> 1:41:44.200 that's not what we need from the Garfield man. 1:41:44.560 --> 1:41:47.160 I don't need to know the Garfield guy's opinion on 1:41:47.200 --> 1:41:48.600 any of this stuff, Like was. 1:41:48.600 --> 1:41:51.080 It that comic Garfield minus Garfield when it came up, 1:41:51.120 --> 1:41:53.639 he could easily squash that. Instead he's like, no, that's 1:41:53.640 --> 1:41:54.240 a great idea. 1:41:54.360 --> 1:41:57.600 Keeps funny, Yeah, keep doing it, like it's one of 1:41:57.640 --> 1:42:01.120 those Like Jim Davis has never gonna like come in 1:42:01.200 --> 1:42:03.839 and be like, here's what everyone needs to know about 1:42:03.920 --> 1:42:07.400 like race mixing from Jim Davis, like we're fuck, he's 1:42:07.439 --> 1:42:10.320 never gonna give you that and think like that's again 1:42:11.040 --> 1:42:11.800 earned his money. 1:42:11.800 --> 1:42:14.040 Good for you, Jim Davis. And you know what, Scott, 1:42:14.479 --> 1:42:16.240 just for some evidence of what you could be. Like 1:42:16.600 --> 1:42:19.240 Jim Davis lives in a house shaped like Garfield's head 1:42:19.280 --> 1:42:21.280 and we don't make fun of him for it because 1:42:21.280 --> 1:42:25.080 we respect Jim Davis. You do you, Jim Davis, just 1:42:25.240 --> 1:42:30.240 keep on hating Mondays and tell us how and we're 1:42:30.479 --> 1:42:34.280 abuse of Odie and John creeping on the vet. That's 1:42:34.400 --> 1:42:38.080 sure you've made it. You've made it. Yeah, although give 1:42:38.160 --> 1:42:41.360 us a better explanation for having a fucking lineman, Davis. 1:42:41.120 --> 1:42:45.519 Don't, Yeah, have an alignement Davis. Yeah, that's some real 1:42:45.600 --> 1:42:48.519 deep Garfield lore for those of you who are real 1:42:48.600 --> 1:42:53.479 Garfield heads anyway, there's actually like a shocking amount of 1:42:53.600 --> 1:42:56.880 very deep and unsettling online Garfield lore. People should seek 1:42:56.880 --> 1:42:57.160 it out. 1:42:57.280 --> 1:42:59.760 There is really terrible to seek it out on a. 1:42:59.760 --> 1:43:02.280 Dark night when you're alone in your house and and 1:43:02.840 --> 1:43:05.400 really delve into the Garfield hole. But you know what 1:43:05.439 --> 1:43:07.360 other hole people should delve into. 1:43:08.120 --> 1:43:11.680 These ads and services. No, no, no, you're you're you're 1:43:12.160 --> 1:43:15.679 oh yes, my holes, my deep holes. Yeah yeah, yeah, 1:43:17.439 --> 1:43:19.920 uh well, if you want to find me online, my 1:43:19.920 --> 1:43:23.040 my commic online comics something positive has been going around 1:43:23.080 --> 1:43:27.600 for twenty one years. It is at something positive dot net. 1:43:27.760 --> 1:43:31.479 Or if you want to read a new Popeye strip 1:43:31.880 --> 1:43:36.280 every Sunday that makes apparently certain uncles on Facebook mad 1:43:37.400 --> 1:43:41.040 go to comics Kingdom dot com slash Popeye every Sunday, 1:43:41.720 --> 1:43:44.080 and thank you guys for having me. This has been 1:43:44.840 --> 1:43:51.760 I mean, has it been say fun? It could have 1:43:51.760 --> 1:43:53.680 been working. It could have been a John K episode, 1:43:53.880 --> 1:43:58.000 It could have been dunk. Yeah, we'll get to well 1:43:58.200 --> 1:44:02.960 califernakus or ever it's pronounced one of John awful human 1:44:03.000 --> 1:44:05.439 being who Yeah, I don't know. 1:44:07.000 --> 1:44:10.400 Also a lot of a lot of great animator bastards 1:44:10.400 --> 1:44:10.840 out there. 1:44:10.920 --> 1:44:14.439 But again, I work in a field where like, yeah, 1:44:15.240 --> 1:44:18.479 we're left alone in dark rooms for hours on end. 1:44:18.720 --> 1:44:20.720 It's gonna go one of two days. 1:44:21.160 --> 1:44:23.160 Yeah, yeah, a lot of people don't know this, but 1:44:23.240 --> 1:44:27.120 Gahan Wilson helped build the Hiroshima bomb. Look it up, people, 1:44:27.320 --> 1:44:30.120 look it up. It's it's out there. Find the evidence 1:44:30.400 --> 1:44:30.799 I wanted. 1:44:30.840 --> 1:44:32.800 I almost made a joke about one of my predecessors 1:44:32.840 --> 1:44:34.400 on pop Eye, but I'm pretty sure would get have 1:44:34.439 --> 1:44:37.080 some of you're talking to. So they're all helpless, lovely, 1:44:37.160 --> 1:44:41.120 lovely men, just just like everyone who's ever worked for 1:44:41.200 --> 1:44:45.599 Clear Channel Communications. Anyway, that's the podcast. Everybody a great. 1:44:46.000 --> 1:44:50.120 What about where they can find you? Uh? Well, the internet? 1:44:50.400 --> 1:44:52.360 Oh yeah, I have a book called After the Revolution. 1:44:52.960 --> 1:44:55.639 You can find it anywhere you find books, like, type 1:44:55.640 --> 1:44:57.760 it whatever, wherever you get your books. Type it in, 1:44:58.200 --> 1:44:58.559 go to a. 1:44:58.560 --> 1:45:01.920 Bookstore, you know, with with some sort of crude weapon, 1:45:02.000 --> 1:45:05.439 ideally a copy of Jerusalem by Alan Moore, and threatened 1:45:05.479 --> 1:45:08.000 the teller until they buy a copy of my book 1:45:08.000 --> 1:45:08.759 After the Revolution. 1:45:08.960 --> 1:45:09.680 That's how you do it. 1:45:10.520 --> 1:45:14.280 And if you the listeners who do not enjoy ads 1:45:14.280 --> 1:45:17.080 about Reagan's gold coins would like to listen to this 1:45:17.360 --> 1:45:21.040 very podcast and all other cool Zone Media podcasts ad 1:45:21.120 --> 1:45:24.840 free either coming soon or already out, depending on when 1:45:24.840 --> 1:45:27.640 you're listening to this. We have Cooler Zone Media, our 1:45:27.720 --> 1:45:32.840 ad free subscription channel exclusively on Apple podcasts. Is that right, Robert? 1:45:32.840 --> 1:45:33.360 Did I do it? 1:45:34.080 --> 1:45:35.080 That is correct? Yeah? 1:45:35.120 --> 1:45:37.840 Sorry, everybody. It's just for people with iPhones. But that 1:45:38.040 --> 1:45:39.439 is most of our listeners. 1:45:39.560 --> 1:45:40.479 One day I will matter. 1:45:40.560 --> 1:45:43.080 We apologize to everyone else. We'll figure out. I'm an 1:45:43.120 --> 1:45:45.360 Android user too. You know, we're all in this together, 1:45:45.840 --> 1:45:48.559 but sadly it's harder than you'd think to work stuff 1:45:48.600 --> 1:45:52.720 like this out. Anyway, we've requested the Zone Media Apple. 1:45:52.479 --> 1:46:02.120 Podcasts behind the Bastards production of Cool Zone Media. For 1:46:02.200 --> 1:46:06.240 more from cool Zone Media, visit our website coolzonemedia dot com, 1:46:06.360 --> 1:46:09.640 or check us out on the iHeartRadio app, Apple Podcasts, 1:46:09.720 --> 1:46:11.360 or wherever you get your podcasts