Dilbert: Tina the Brittle Tech Writer

[lordultimus]

Comments

[zachbeacon]

I know Scott Adams has lost his mind and everything but that last panel really did make me smile.

[mazway_75]

Now, I'd love to be mocking Scott Adams as well we should...

But go on Jezebel and the sad reality is there a lot of women who do push such insane thoughts. And I know more than a few feminists who rant on how "these nuts give all of us a bad name."

[beyondthefringe]

From the unenlightened era of... 1995. o.0

[elilla]

I guess the writing was on the wall re: Adam's irredeemable awfulness.

[donnblake]

I feel like Adams is trying real hard to offend me, but I can't muster much more than mild disdain.

[wizardru]

Don't worry, in the ensuing 23 years from this strip, he's done a pretty good job of finding better and more effective ways to offend everyone.

It's worth noting he changed her name to just Tina the Tech Writer after he got A LOT of criticism for the sexist portrayal of the character. These days I'm pretty sure he wouldn't, obviously.

[tcampbell1000]

That's a strange move. I would've thought it'd be MORE offensive to remove the adjective "brittle," because that's one baby step closer to saying "all tech writers are..."

[tcampbell1000]

Were there warning signs this early on that Adams would go the way he did? Honestly, only in retrospect. I know people who took these sort of playful jabs some years ago and then went in very different creative directions. I don't think you cross the line until it seems like you're out-and-out saying "all X are Y" rather than presenting a particular example of X.

[mastermahan]

There were a few warning signs. I read The Dilbert Future (1997) years ago, and some things stuck out.

One was a section where he attributed his success to writing down his goals 15 times a day - and that since he later achieved some of these goals without hard work or skill coming into it, it was the writing that did it.

Another was a science denial bit where he attempted to disprove gravity by suggesting it's an optical illusion caused by all matter constantly expanding. Which A) is nonsense with various counter-examples, like orbits, and B) science works by attempting to disprove everything.

Third was a prediction that the theory of evolution would be debunked.

So while he wasn't flirting with Holocaust denial or MRAs yet, his vulnerability to woo and belief that's he's smarter than he is was already there.

[super_fly]

Pretty sure most of the emails went with D.