Comment by riazrizvi
2 days ago
Did he go off the rails? My understanding is that the zeitgeist is taking people’s opposing views online and distorting them, removing context, to outrage our own audience and align it to our cause.
Almost everyone is reasonable, it’s the contexts that our reasons are relevant to, which are different.
> the zeitgeist is taking people’s opposing views online and distorting them, removing context, to outrage our own audience and align it to our cause.
This is 100% the case, with very infamous baddies, but people don't want to acknowledge it. It's a sad reality of this always on media we ingest. No idea what can be done, other than slowly ignoring more and more algorithmic stuff, and choose your own adventures based on content providers you have known for a long time, and still have their backbone intact.
Elements of society slowly wise up to how they are being manipulated, as they are increasingly exposed to it. Now with modern AI the online manipulation tactics are getting worse. So as we find ourselves in that pool of ppl who see what is happening, we just stop using those platforms, and increasingly trust more human-human contact or long form video where people have a chance to state their positions.
Perhaps?
I think it may be the opposite. The mass propaganda techniques that worked for so long (i.e. control of the narrative via the big 3 news networks) no longer work in the social media age. So you have a system that is trying more and more extreme tactics to regain control, and you have a population that is more and more agitated because they can see through the curtain and the implications are very unsettling.
I haven't followed everything Scott Adams has done recently (largely because most of his stuff ended up paywalled), but in the past I'd note that he'd have an interesting take on something, possibly hard to defend but not intrinsically "bad", but then he'd get lumped in as having a "bad" opinion by people that just wanted to create headlines. One example was his assertion that Donald Trump was a "master persuader", and much more skilled in his speech then people were giving him credit for. I remember, at the time at least, that he always prefaced it by saying it wasn't in support/antagonism of Trump, just an observation of his skill, but it quickly got turned into "Scott Adams is a MAGA guy." (Since then, I don't know if Adams ever became a MAGA guy or not, but it's an example of how at the time his statements got oversimplified and distorted). Anyway, I saw a lot of examples of that -- he'd have a relatively nuanced take probably expressed too boldly, but people wanted to just lump him in to some narrative they already had going.
I think Scott Adams' biggest problem in life (although partially what also made him entertaining), is that he'd kind of pick fights that had little upside for him and a lot of downside.
It would have been easy for you to check whether he was a "MAGA guy or not", which he was in the sense that he spent the last years of his life spreading neonazi adjacent rhetoric.
Some of it goes quite far back, even:
https://web.archive.org/web/20070222235609/http://dilbertblo...
I don't know, I feel like your link makes a better case for the parent's point than your own
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“The best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from black people“ -Scott Adams
Does that sound reasonable to you?
If anyone cares about the truth he explained what happened in detail in an interview at the time: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=U_bv1jfYYu4
Seems reasonable. He makes a provocative statement for ppl in his audience to draw their attention and make the important point it’s not okay (we should avoid) ppl who dislike us based on skin color. And he makes the further point he agrees there is still systemic racism against black folks and it’s a big problem. And yet, as you see in response to your posting of the video, ppl still dismiss it because they’d rather hold on to the soundbite to maintain their outrage, rather than understand the guy’s position.
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Most non-racists don’t need to spend 30 minutes on cable news explaining themselves to save face.
Saying something publicly is an action. Depending on what you say, you can’t take it back. If you tell your wife you think her friend is hot and you want a threesome you can’t take that back.
I also think you as the commenter should think a little bit about what motivates you to defend this guy. Why does he as a dead famous comic book author need his reputation defended? Why is it so important that we don’t see him as a racist asshole? What do you get out of that? Why not just let his own mistakes speak for themselves?
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Telling to me was Scott Adams couldn't get laid in San Francisco in the 1980's.
Hard not to conclude women found him repellent.
It's hyperbole and in response to black people who don't think it's OK to be white.
Please spare us.
This is once again misunderstood.
People are correctly pointing out that the phrase “it’s okay to be white” is used as a dogwhistle.
They are not literally saying that it’s not okay to be white. They’re saying that those who speak that phrase are projecting their racist ideology. People who say “it’s okay to be white” think that white people are under attack and that white people need to re-establish dominance. To them, equality is a threat.
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Best to listen him directly: https://www.dailymail.co.uk/video/news/video-2885723/Video-D...
1. Poll says black people are not ok with with white people
2. Which makes them racist
3. Get away from racists
Turning this 180 degrees around is insanity.
And he had zero self-awareness to understand why some black people would feel that way and responded in a stupid, bigoted, illogical way.
He assigned this viewpoint to all black people and used it as justification for segregation.
That's still racist, because he's seeking out information that 'proves' his racism (and using a poll of 130 respondents as proof is insane).
I feel like this thread on Scott Adams is exposing how many people on HN are just overtly racist. You can enjoy his content before he went off the rails fine, but seeing some of the takes here feels like a bunch of people are one step away from arguing that segregation should come back.
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[flagged]
Can you cite a context that makes the quote acceptable?
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I mean he tried treating his cancer with Ivermectin instead of seeking treatment from medical professionals.