Rule #0 of driving trollies: acting in a manner indistinguishable from being a dickhead is, in fact, being a dickhead. Whether or not you “really” meant it is irrelevant.
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Someone indistinguishable from being an asshole is an asshole first, “troll” assumes they can just turn it off if they wanted to, which he does not.
He is more sincere than the Ann Coulter or Glenn Beck brand of conservatroll, he’s a holistic asshole with zero winks.
I don’t think he’s trying to rile anyone up so much as performing the attention-seeking behavior he’s been performing for quite a while now. At least I’ve been aware of his ill-seeming statements for 5+ years.
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He’s been a yuuuuge fucking dickhead since, like, forever ago. Or maybe it just seems that long to me.
Still, at long last someone has taken a stand for that long-oppressed minority group “Rich Old White Dudes”.
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I wanted to say ten years, but i really didn’t want to put the effort into delving into his catalogue of narcissistic assholery to verify that far back 
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I had to have a think, but I reckon was kinda over his stale brand of smug wankery somewhere around 02/03 maybe. Probably didn’t go completely toxic for a few years after that though.
ETA: Just had a quick look, and would have been 04/05 or so. So yeah, about 10 years. 
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Are you proposing some kind of trolley turing test?
Surely someone who deliberately convinces me that they are an asshole just is an asshole…
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Sounds fascinating; anybody have non-Gawker links?
Is your google finger broken? Here you go! 
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It’s not like he’s the only one saying the things he’s saying. If he’s trolling, it’s still hurtful and misogynistic. At some point, he needs to take responsibility for what he says and clarify whether or not he’s making a joke or really believes some of the vile shit that is coming out of his blog.
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Thanks. But you’re still assuming that I can’t figure out what’s satire and what isn’t. As someone who was born and will die a woman, I promise you, I very much understand when I’m being talked down to, being ignored on the assumption that I don’t understand, or being underestimated. When we tell you how we experience the world (not just you, but anyone, any man especially), it would be helpful if your first instinct isn’t to dismiss it as not being “factual” enough for you to take seriously, because you don’t see it. Listening is key to understanding others world views, as I’m sure you understand. I (and other women here) would really like for you to do that when we discuss this stuff, because we actually often to have some special insight into it, because we experience it, often daily, in sometimes subtle ways.
As for Adams, this might be one huge satirical trolley, aimed at making people think a bit harder about various issues. But he’s been doing this shit for years. He has said some offensive and hurtful things and ALWAYS either doubles down or just deletes stuff when he gets called out. If he’s driving trollies, he’s in the same boat as the other alt-right trollies, who do not believe that misogyny or racism are “real things” that need to be addressed, other than the occassional KKK rally, which can be dismissed, because they are “working class cretins” (until of course, they are useful stooges to align with for the cause). Let me remind you that the alt-right has a serious anti-democratic/pro-authoritarian streak, that seeks to empower the chosen few over the rest of us, because “they are the most intellectually capable” to “run” this country. They don’t care about you, me, or most of us in fact, they care about themselves and their interests. They will use the struggle working class for their own ends. If Scott Adams has seriously thrown his lot in with these guys, then he clearly doesn’t give a shit about the rest of us.
But you are smart enough yourself to decide if Adams is being satirical or not. I leave that to you to decide.
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This really irritates me. As if the problem isn’t on his end somehow.
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I don’t know, I wasn’t involved. I like @shaddack; we are both morlocks. I don’t talk to him about women’s issues because that would be as pointless and half-informed as two fish talking about the care of bicycles. We talk about ions and volts.
It’s very strongly related. I don’t feel like a cow or a chicken has less inherent right to life than a human; I am not a species exceptionalist. I get flack from other humans because of this; recently a friend laughed his ass off because he caught me apologizing to black widow spider I was about to kill.
Please, y’all, remember I am only talking about what I experience and what is in my head. I make no claim to any universality thereof. If bOINGbOING would prefer that I not share my perspective, or if the reality I inhabit offends, then I’m willing to stop talking about it. In other threads people talk about being autistic or pyschopathic, but if talking about being thoroughly comfortable with death and violence is unacceptable, I’ll stop.
I’m telling you the good qualities I notice. Scott Adams makes me laugh, and responds to me personally in a kind and generous manner if I talk to him. I’m not apologizing for other people’s different sense of humor (or lack thereof) and I’m not claiming he’s saying something different than what you see, I’m saying what I see. I won’t agree to condemn a person just because I might be wrong in my assessment of them; if I did that, I’d have joined a dozen lynch mobs before breakfast.
All this is true! But as far as I can see, nobody here but me has attempted to deal directly with the man honestly and fairly without preconceptions - it’s all vilification based on interpreting the writings of a humorist as if he were writing completely humorlessly. I find it necessary to trust myself in this situation; to do otherwise would be inhumane and dishonorable.
Exactly. In my world, how people behave matters, and since I have a science-based perspective on evidence, my own personal direct observations must take precedence over hearsay. This can often result in error, but far more often will not.
It’s really a personal decision for all of us, and I respect your difference of opinion.
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Would you assume that your own personal experience of a phenomenon that you have no serious expertise on would be more informed than someone who has experienced a particular phenomenon? Why do you assume that about misogyny? Are we less rational beings unable to understand when we are being demeaned and belittled? Are our experiences somehow less when we are the people experiencing misogyny? What makes you think that you are someone in a better position to understand such a subjective experience?
[ETA] You probably didn’t mean it like this, but this just seems like a polite way of saying that we’re being “overly emotional” about this and our lived experiences are meaningless, since you’re in possession of greater rationality than we are. Human experience is, unfortunately, incredibily subjective and doesn’t fit into neat scientific categories. What we experience and how we experience it actually matters and shouldn’t be so easily dismissed as “uninformed” because you don’t actually see it. Unless you think we are lying about how hurtful Adams has been in this case, then you need to maybe take our views as a bit more informed on issues of misogyny.
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It was pretty clear around '97 when he started rambling about The Law of Attraction that his success in comics had gone to his head in a bad way, and he went onto my autodidact-crank list. Then he started his Holocaust-denial and Evolution-denial a while later (around '04/'05) and he quickly moved to my evil-autodidact-crank list. Around 2010-ish is when he took that type of unhinged thinking and adapted it to MRA ideas, though the seeds were there all along.
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In his blog and newsletter he talks about taking over the Earth and making Dogbert supreme emperor. Literally. He talks about this as fact. He discusses what will be done with CEOs and people who do not acknowledge the superiority of Dogbert’s New Ruling Class. He talks about enslaving people who do not subscribe to the newsletter. He does this absolutely deadpan. He talks about the inherent intellectual superiority and freakishly good looks of all persons who join the DNRC. Caricaturing himself as an arrogant technodweeb is a part of his humor, just like Colbert’s old caricature of himself as a self-assured right wing fanatic. Both those caricatures are mysogynist - despite the fact that the strongest, most admirable person in Adam’s comic is a woman.
I’m wondering how many of the people condemning him knew any of that before I mentioned it. I don’t feel uninformed about the Adams oeuvre or method, and I don’t feel that women have a special claim to being belittled by a man who has literally said he plans to take over the world, murder all corporate CEOs and enslave all his critics. I get that he touches people’s hot buttons; I don’t like popular comics who base their comedy on racism and hate speech and I’ll frankly say so.
But I am not asking anyone to change their opinions; just sharing mine, and explaining why nothing that’s been said here is changing it.
I didn’t know all of it, but none of that changes my impression. He still in a serious voice not only posited many and various MRA tropes along with convoluted arguments, but responded to criticisms by justifying and doubling down on his position. Nothing in what he said made it look tongue-in-cheek, and the fact that he does make tongue-in-cheek jokes about other topics doesn’t mean he’s just kidding on these ones, esp. when there was no “ha ha” moment in the saga anywhere, just years and years of repeating misogyny. (He also in a fully serious voice engaged in Holocaust-denialism and never walked it back.)
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I think you’re missing my point.[quote=“Medievalist, post:138, topic:88241”]
Both those caricatures are mysogynist - despite the fact that the strongest, most admirable person in Adam’s comic is a woman.
[/quote]
I find Alice to be characterized as shrill, bossy, and overbearing, even though she’s clearly smart and accomplished. She also constantly looks down on other women and blames them for not being where she is. She’s a fantasy character of what a woman “should” be in Adams opinion - not a reflection of reality and how we actually exist in the world.
But, since you missed my point, what makes you think that you are in a position to better understand misogyny than me or other women here? What makes you more rational than us and better able to know what it is and when it should be hurtful?
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But when they base it on misogyny (like Adams does), that’s okay with you?
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The first thing you’ve said that I agree with.
Edit to add: if one finds a thing funny that many others say is problematic, one may perhaps want to analyse why said thing is funny, and perhaps deconstruct the racist/sexist/etc stereotypes one has absorbed over the years and really examine if said thing is actually funny or not. This is a good exercise for all people.
Example: http://www.research.uky.edu/odyssey/fall99/stereotypes.html
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Four words:
Miles Davis; Art Pepper.
I guess we (not you and I; people in general) are just that complex. Art Pepper did some horrendous things, especially to women, but he turned out some absolutely beautiful music. How does that even work? (I’ll grant him this much, the dude was candid about his misdeeds.)
I’d have a much, much smaller CD collection, if I were to thin it out based on the artists’ behavior.
ETA: That said, I don’t have much use for Scott Adams.
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