Posted on 04/19/2011 4:32:59 PM PDT by a fool in paradise
There appears to be a growing epidemic of cranky creative types taking to the Internet to defend themselves from amateur critics.
Some are shameless in their self-promotion; others operate under the veil of anonymity.
Until they get busted, that is. This is what happened to Dilbert creator Scott Adams last week, in a public humiliation storyline that would suit a certain workplace drone comic strip character of his own creation. Adams was revealed to have been using an online pseudonym to bash message board users who did not have nice things to say about him.
...The backstory: An individual posting as "PlannedChaos" recently rushed to the defense of Adams on the website MetaFilter, where users were panning the much-derided cartoonist, calling his intelligence into question. Gawker, in a post last Friday, outlined some of the suspiciously vigorous vindications.
...Alas, the MetaFilter users eventually called PlannedChaos out, and Adams confessed that he was indeed behind the mask. But that wasn't the last of it.
Adams published a lengthy justification of his actions on his own website Monday afternoon in the form of a Q&A with PlannedChaos...
...You can read Adams' entire rant here. But not everyone's buying it.
"Keep digging, Adams," says Gawker's Adrian Chen.
Mary Elizabeth Williams of Salon offers a more analytical take.
"Anyone can be anyone on the Internet, and for many, anonymity offers a freedom and safety necessary for self-expression," she writes. "But when someone deliberately misrepresents himself, because he claims his own adoring 'invisible friend' is an 'unbiased messenger,' when he lies about who he is because it's 'fun' playing the 'vigilante,' it's a profound statement of cynicism about the nature of online community and contempt for his readers."
(Excerpt) Read more at news.yahoo.com ...
The first rule of holes is to stop digging once you find yourself in one.
Adams should have apologized rather than trying to justify the unjustifiable.
He didn’t, and now finds himself in a yet deeper hole.
::shrugs::
Some people need to learn through painful personal experience. Scott Adams may be one of those people.
calling his intelligence into question.
Adams kinda made their case for 'em.
Anyone who does not have a "profound cynicism" with any so-called "online community" is a moron.
But what Ms. 3-Name is really upset about is that someone liberals love made a "statement" against it. In liberal land, you DO NOT speak against the group. Your reasons, as Ms. 3-Name exerts herself to indicate, are completely irrelevent. The group is life. Disagreement is death. For liberals, there is nothing else - nothing.
And the purpose of 3-Named Leftist Kapos is to make sure liberals never forget that.
“Anyone can be anyone on the internet.” - Wow. That’s some kind of power there.
Yeah, well - we saw what happened to the Internet vermin who made fun of Jay & Silent Bob, didn’t we?
Scott Ritter wanted to be 17 again.
About 30% of the time Dilbert makes me laugh which is a much better rate than most of the stuff I read on the Internet or see in the papers, the few times I read them anymore. That’s about all that I ask of Scott Adams.
In this case, “Nobody knows you’re a Dogbert.”
Does this mean people think I’m REALLY Mr Rogers, posting on FR from the other side...
Yes!!!!
That’s excellent, thanks Talisker.
His critics are — not surprisingly — grinding their own axes. Adams has in the past stated that, politically, he’s “pro-Death” (supports both abortion on demand, and capital punishment, as well as our national defense), and like a lot of entertainment industry types, appears to be your basic libertarian. That should make some people happy, eh?
http://www.dilbert.com/blog/entry/planned_chaos/
The best example of the rumor problem involves the topic of evolution. I’ve often stated publicly that evolution meets the scientific standard of “fact.” But when I write an article or a comic on any unrelated topic that sparks discussion on other sites, a commenter suspiciously appears each time to say, “Adams has no credibility because he doesn’t believe in evolution.” Dilbert readers don’t expect all of their opinions to line up with mine, but evolution is probably the hottest of hot buttons for the technology crowd. If you’re rumored to be anti-science, you’re dead to them, and so is your product. That’s a rumor with economic consequences.
If you wonder how the evolution rumor started, it’s partly because I made the following argument: The evidence for evolution, by its nature, seems fishy to the average non-scientist independent of the underlying truth. That’s a statement about human perceptions, not the objective reality of the theory. The suggestion here is that if scientists could do a better job of packaging the evidence for evolution it might help convert the doubters. Malevolent posters often quote me out of context as saying, “The evidence for evolution smells like bullshit.” Out of context it means nearly the opposite of what it means within context.
Dear Mr. Rogers: I saw you fight Julia Child on Saturday Night Live. I can’t believe you let that octogenarian beat you.
I was trying to be a gentleman...
You mean....you’re not?!
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