Late this afternoon I came across an interesting story via Gawker concerning Scott Adams, the creator of the comic strip "Dilbert". It appears that Mr. Adams has been going on to various message boards under an assumed name to not only talk about how smart Scott Adams is, but how great his comic strip is. Now, I could use this post to talk about how unfortunate it is that a man who is clearly set financially and professionally could still be so insecure that he would take the time to create an alias just for the sake of defending himself from the faceless Internet masses, most of whom would never be brave enough to say any of this to his face, while also trying to promote his own material, but that isn't what I'm going for here.
After all, everyone who has ever had a blog, a Twitter feed or LiveJournal has at one time or another linked to their own material in an attempt to get some new readers. Much like musicians hand out demo CDs after gigs, writers are constantly trying to build a new audience any way they can. (By the way, there is nothing wrong with this: if they didn't want people to read their stuff they wouldn't put it out there to be read.) Also, every writer knows doing this comes with the risk of someone reading your stuff and not liking it, which sucks, because most of the time you work really hard on the material and finding out someone didn't like it is on par with a personal insult. But it comes with the territory: you either come to grips with or cave and start keeping a private journal. So, while I'm not a fan of "Dilbert" (at least it's not "Zippy") I'm not about to kill Scott Adams for wondering what people are saying about him or his work.
What I took exception to was when Adams was caught and finally decided to fess up that the alias was really him, he signed off with, "I'm sorry I peed in your cesspool." Sorry, he lost me - I am officially not on Scott Adams' side anymore. You can't try and subvert a message board using a fake alias to tell everyone that you have a genius-level IQ, get caught (which, by the way, really shouldn't happen to a genius) and then still try to act like you are too cool for the room. Like I said, I get that Adams was curious what people were saying about him but acting like he was above these people when he just showed us that he is as self-conscious as the next guy is a super-douche move. I think most of the people there would have respected him more if he had simply signed in under his real name and defended his position in an open and honest manner. Now, instead of that, he has opened himself up to more ridicule and criticism because he looks like the kind of person who feels as though people don't appreciate him enough. Honestly, this was a minor step above hiring a lawyer and suing the message board for slander.
Frankly, I see only one way out of this for Mr. Adams: he has to make fun of himself in a cartoon. Really, it is the only way to show that he has a sense of humor about not only himself, but the absurd situation he has put himself into. And, as a bonus, if he does that I might actually read "Dilbert". (See, Scott, there is a way to get new readers out of this after all.)
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