**The Loss of Scott Adams, Creator of "Dilbert"**
The world lost a brilliant and beloved creator on January 1st, 2024, when Scott Raymond Adams, the mastermind behind the iconic comic strip "Dilbert," passed away at the age of 68, after a long battle with metastatic prostate cancer. His former wife, Shelly Miles, announced his death with a livestream on X on Tuesday morning, reading a statement that Adams had prepared beforehand.
"If you are reading this, things did not go well for me," the statement began. As Miles fought back tears while reading the message, which was dated January 1st, she shared that Adams had been in hospice care at his home in Pleasanton, California. "I had an amazing life," it concluded. "I gave it everything I had. If you got any benefits from my work, I'm asking you to pay it forward as best you can. That is the legacy I want. Be useful. And please know I loved you all to the end."
**A Long Battle and a Final Request**
Adams had been struggling with the disease since May of last year, when he announced that he had an aggressive form of metastatic prostate cancer. He shared that he had the same disease as then-President Joe Biden and revealed his diagnosis on his YouTube show, "Real Coffee With Scott Adams." Despite his fears of becoming "just the dying cancer guy," he decided to go public after Biden revealed his own diagnosis. "I'd like to extend my respect and compassion for the ex-president and his family because they're going through an especially tough time," he said at the time. "It's a terrible disease."
In November, Adams issued a plea for President Trump to "help save his life" after he claimed that his health care provider, Kaiser Permanente, had "dropped the ball" in scheduling treatment for a newly FDA-approved drug for the disease. "He offered to help me if I needed it," Adams wrote on X. "I need it." Trump responded by saying "On it!" in a post on Truth Social.
**The Rise and Impact of "Dilbert"**
Born in Windham, New York, on June 8th, 1957, Scott Raymond Adams grew up in the Catskills. His father was a postal worker, and his mother was a real estate broker. He earned a bachelor's degree from Hartwick College in 1979 and an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley, in 1986. Adams began doodling what would become "Dilbert" on notepads as a bank teller in San Francisco and later on whiteboards at the Pacific Bell telephone company. He eventually submitted the cartoon for syndication.
"Dilbert" was first published in 1989 and ran for decades in thousands of newspapers across the country. Its satirical office humor about white-collar, micromanaged offices filled with corporate buzzwords earned Adams critical acclaim. The "Dilbert" franchise eventually grew into multiple books as well as a TV show. Adams proved adept at growing his audience during the tech boom of the 1990s, creating a "Dilbert" website long before most other cartoonists took to the internet. He also became the first major syndicated cartoonist to include his email address in his comic strip, an innovation that allowed readers to contact him directly with ideas. Their feedback convinced him to focus the cartoon entirely on the workplace, after some of the strip's early installments explored Dilbert's home life.
**A Controversial End**
In 2023, "Dilbert" was dropped by most publications following a racist rant made by Adams on his YouTube series. While discussing a controversial poll in which more than a quarter (26%) of Black correspondents disagreed with the statement, "It's OK to be white," Adams said that African Americans were "a hate group." "I don't want to have anything to do with them," Adams said. "And I would say, based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to white people is to get the hell away from Black people." Adams later refused to apologize, saying he made the remarks "intentionally." He relaunched "Dilbert" as a subscription-only online strip called "Dilbert Reborn."
