He always was an arrogant, over-privileged arsehole. But having an army of "fanboys" will have amplified his character flaws. Ditto his involvement with Trump et al.
There is no answer to this. The universe does not provide any mechanisms for moral decision making or evaluation. Rather, morality exists in human minds, not in the external world.
We have to do the best we can to be kind and minimise suffering, while understanding that there will inevitably be a diversity of judgements on moral matters. And if those moral judgements have real-world effects, there will be moral judgements about that too.
The lack of moral universality is how it is, not a failure. And it never ends: there are no right answers, although there might very well be wrong ones. Its up to us.
And that's exactly the thing about cancel culture - it seeks to elevate one particular moral judgement above all others and punish not just those that go against it but also those that advocate for or even just consider any other morality.
Firstly, its not even clear to me that "cancel culture" is anything more than a soundbite.
But even if it is, in fact, a thing - it's clearly not backed by "one particular moral judgement", as it is commonly portrayed. Lots of people face disapproval and punishment for a diversity of chosen moral stance, including people who could be categorised as "liberal" and who are typically considered to be those doing the "cancelling".
Supporers of the abolition of slavery or apartheid, or of human rights for minority communities, were for many years "cancelled" in the US, and in Europe, for example. Today, in the US, supporters of social equality and diversity are being "cancelled".
So I suspect that "cancel culture" is what you get when one moral/political group (of any persuasion) only sees part of the bigger picture, and uses that to manufacture a grievance.
'cancel culture' used to be called 'calling out assholes' before we entered the current period of fetishizing cruelty.
Now, the worst and slimiest amoung us are crawling up on the cross and weeping and gnashing their teeth because people won't buy their book or watch their movie. It's almost always the most powerful who claim to be 'cancelled'.
Calling out assholes is a good and useful function and we should continue to do it.
> But at an art gallery, Picasso is near worshipped despite his torrid misogyny and abuse in his personal life which was terrible even by the standards of his day.
Picasso's work is the thing that is generally venerated, not so much the (rather loathsome) man himself. Similarly for Eric Gill, who produced great artistic work despite being an truly awful human being.
Scott Adams seems to have confined himself to merely expressing prejudiced views, amplified somewhat by his modest fame. But then his creative work doesn't in any way match Picasso's or Gill's either.
> Scott Adams seems to have confined himself to merely expressing prejudiced views, amplified somewhat by his modest fame. But then his creative work doesn't in any way match Picasso's or Gill's either.
Scott's body of work spans many years and - like music bands - the early stuff is much different to the later stuff. To say he confined himself to "expressing prejudiced views" seems to overlook a whole lot of that early work.
To say his work doesn't "match" other artists work is subjective. I got/get the occasional giggle out of Dilbert - more often in the earlier ones. I don't care for Picasso's art at all but I recognise that other people do. Who's body of work should I personally rate higher? The top comment mentions feeling like Scott was family, while acknowledging all the flaws of Scott.
This is why I mention that good and bad actions can both stand.
Picasso's art looks to me like something a deranged child might draw.
Scott's work in the 1990s (i.e. ~30 years ago) was genuinely very funny at the time for anyone who worked in an office, including myself, when I was working as an engineering intern at a company. One strip I remember in particular came out just when our company had announced some silly new initiative and gave out free sweatshirts to motivate everyone, and the Dilbert strip that Sunday was almost exactly the same thing except it was t-shirts there. The timing was eerie.
It's sad to me how Adams fell, which largely seemed to happen after the popularity of Dilbert waned and may have been a reaction to that, but his work was funny and lovable in its earlier days.
As with many others here, I admired his early creative work, but found his political beliefs to be abhorrent. An illustration, I guess, that we are maybe all of a mixture.
I'm sorry about the manner of his dying, even if the world may also be a marginally better place without the bile he inflicted on it. Still, I'm sorry he's died. He was only ten years older than me.
And my favourite Dilbert cartoon is still the one about "eunuch programmers" [1].
Back in the early eighties people would go to a shop and buy "a VisiCalc". What they were actually getting was an Apple Ii pre-loaded with VisiCalc software. But to them, VisiCalc was the computer.
> Search engines still index blogs far better than social media posts.
For a lot of people, social media is the internet. They don't discover things on search engines, they are guided to them by engagement engines in walled gardens.
And increasingly what they're bwing guided to is commercial, mimetic slop. Most people are, unfortunately, not interested in the fairly high-minded content that the article's author is referring to. I wish it were otherwise.
I've had a blog for twenty five years. I try to do the right thing, and I get no views. Thats because blogging as an artesian activity is dead. Which is its great strength.
> Most people are, unfortunately, not interested in the fairly high-minded content that the article's author is referring to. I wish it were otherwise.
We who grew up with the internet are waking up and a bit disillusioned, coming to terms the idea that it was always this way. But fear not - for the interested minority, the tech lets you find the interesting stuff and each other. And it’s better than it’s ever been for curious kids.
Maybe in the future there will be “Ozempic for the mind” to break the masses’ addiction to endless scrolling.
> For a lot of people, social media is the internet. They don't discover things on search engines, they are guided to them by engagement engines in walled gardens.
Sure, this is true -- but there are also many (though nowhere near as many) for whom the opposite is true. I think it's important to remember that there's value in speaking to a community like that even if it's not the whole world listening.
It pains me to aay it but, during a recent redundancy and lengthy job search, subscribing to Linkedin Premium was a big help.
Unfortunately, Linkedin is where the recruiters and many of the hiring businesses are - and a subscription did seem make me more visible. I was fortunate enough to be able to afford it, and subscribed for three months before reverting to the free tier when I found a role. There was a two week free trial.
May be useful for those who, like me, don't have much of a personal "network".
(Developer, UK, no connection to Linkedin except as a user)
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