Dilbert follows the titular character as he navigates American office culture. Recently, as “woke” culture has permeated workplaces, it has been addressed in Adams’s comics.
“All of the wokeness and anything that permeated from ESG [environmental, social, and governance] … so that stuff made its way into the business world, and then, it became proper content for Dilbert,” he told Fox News.
Coincidentally, Adams announced on Twitter that his comic is being stripped from 77 newspapers, which is coming as a “substantial” financial blow to the creator.
#Dilbert was cancelled in 77 newspapers this week.
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) September 20, 2022
“It was part of a larger overhaul, I believe, of comics, but why they decided what was in and what was out, that’s not known to anybody except them, I guess,” he said of the cancellation.
Adams began creating the comics in 1989, and they now appear in “over 2,000 newspapers, in 57 countries, and in 19 languages.”
A new character introduced by Adams is Dave, named after his brother. Dave is a prankster who likes to mess with his boss. For example, Dave is black, but he identifies as white.
Some recent comics follow the boss as he attempts to raise the company’s ESG rating. “Dave, I need to boost our company’s ESG rating, so I’m promoting you to be our CTO. I know you identify as white, so that won’t help our ESG scores, but would it be too much trouble to identify as gay?” the boss asks in one comic.
“Depends how hard you want me to sell it,” responds Dave.
“Just wear better shirts,” his boss says.
The timing of Dilbert getting cancelled by 77 newspapers (one large chain) is probably a coincidence. pic.twitter.com/kN0h9zrkbd
— Scott Adams (@ScottAdamsSays) September 21, 2022
In another comic, the company’s boss worries that its ESG score will drop if it adds more carbon dioxide to the atmosphere; however, he finds a workaround. “But we can balance that out by adding more diversity to our board,” he explains.
“How much CO2 do you plan to add?” he’s asked.
“One nonbinary board member’s worth,” the boss responds.
“What I do is I talk about how the employees handle the situation. It’s not about the goal of it. But that’s enough to make people think that I must be taking sides politically,” Adams further explained.
