Comment by maxbond
2 days ago
To add, he also said elsewhere that he didn't like his job and was phoning it in and focusing increasingly on his art. He thought he was passed over because of his gender for a promotion... When he was openly phoning it in and writing comics about how his work culture sucked. Why would you promote someone with their foot out the door and who was badly misaligned with the organization? One or the other maybe (someone who doesn't like the work culture might be a good pick to improve it) but both? Why would you even be upset about it when your art is blowing up and going full time on it is clearly the right move?
Similarly he felt his TV show was cancelled after two seasons because it wasn't PC, but his show wasn't getting good viewership and had a terrible time slot. That's a pretty typical trajectory for a TV show, it's like complaining your startup failed.
He wrote a lot about explicitly magical thinking. Sort of along the lines of The Secret; that he could achieve things where the odds were against him through sheer force of will and wishing. That's not necessarily a problem but it does set you up for denial when things don't always go your way. And the denial is dangerous.
The later chapters of his life were marked by tragedy. His stepson died of overdose. His marriage collapsed. He lost the ability to speak and had to fight like hell to get a proper diagnosis and treatment (he later recovered). He went through COVID like the rest of us. Unfortunately these events would seem to have hardened and radicalized him.
I think we can understand and empathize with that without condoning it. I hope he found his peace in the end.
I wonder if any of his then-peers who were also white men got promoted? I'm betting it was non-zero.
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> He was directly told that he won't be promoted because he was a white man.
Even if that was true (I don't believe his allegation), that's just _one company_. He obviously considered himself a very intelligent and capable person, so it seems the obvious next step would be to go work basically anywhere else? The Dilbert comics never seemed to push the ideal of company loyalty, so I don't think he felt trapped by obligation there.
One only needs to look at the upper management and board of any fortune 500 to disprove the idea that only non-white women are getting promoted.
To put it simply, I do not believe his recounting of events. I think that he convinced himself that was the case, but the conversation did not actually happen as he remembers it.
I understand this might be unpopular, but I’ve been told exactly this… directly, to my face, on multiple occasions. The last time it happened, I asked for it in writing. Unsurprisingly, that request went nowhere.
Whether it happened to Adams specifically, I can’t say. But I can state with absolute certainty that this happens, because it’s happened to me repeatedly. Either it’s more widespread than people want to acknowledge, or I’m unusually unlucky.
And yes, it’s a radicalising experience. It’s taken considerable effort and time to regain my equilibrium when discussing these topics.
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Why wouldn't you believe it? Racism against white men has been commonplace in US corporations for decades.
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I 100% believe that he was told this by at least one higher-level White male manager in corporate America in the 1980s who would rather his anger at being passed over were directed at women, minorities, and an amorphous conspiracy than the individual decision-maker making the decision to pass him over, and who knew him well enough to know that he would both uncritically accept the description of a bright-line violation of his legal rights that fit his existing biases while also not taking any action to vindicate those same rights.
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What do you think of https://www.compactmag.com/article/the-lost-generation/
> He was directly told that he won't be promoted because he was a white man.
I think Adams was lying. I don't think they ever told him that.
For instance in contemporary interviews about his show being cancelled he gave reasonable explanations. Only later did he claim his show was cancelled unjustly. He also wrote a book with the subtitle, Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don't Matter. I think as his views hardened he didn't feel obligated to tell the truth, and/or that his lies were in service of a deeper truth.
So I think he sincerely believed he had been passed over because of he was a man, but that that conversation never took place and he knew it.
> If I remember correctly, it had more to do with his sex and not his race.
You're right. I've updated the comment. Thanks for the correction.
> Why would he work his ass off after that?
He was phoning it in before that.
Hell, he could have been told that he wasn't promoted because of his sex/race/whatever by his direct superior who supported Adams' promotion but was overruled by his higher ups/the committee.
"Older white guy boss tells younger white guy Adams that he doesn't have a future because the company is only promoting <slurs> and <slurs>." is something I would totally believe happened. Source: if you're a white guy, other white guys tell you all sorts of things you'd think they'd keep to themselves.
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