Scott Adams facts for kids

Quick facts for kids Scott Adams
Adams in 2017
Born	Scott Raymond Adams (1957-06-08) June 8, 1957 (age 66) Windham, New York, U.S.
Alma mater	Hartwick College (BA) University of California, Berkeley (MBA)
Occupation	Cartoonist, writer, speaking contractor
Years active	1989–present
Notable work	Dilbert
Spouse(s)	Shelly Miles ​ ​ (m. 2006; div. 2014)​ Kristina Basham ​ ​ (m. 2020; separated 2022)​
YouTube information
Years active	2018–present
Subscribers	150K
Total views	50 million
Subscriber and view counts updated as of September 10, 2023.

Scott Raymond Adams (born June 8, 1957) is an American author and cartoonist. He is the creator of the Dilbert comic strip, and the author of several nonfiction works of business, commentary, and satire. Adams worked in various clerical roles before he became a full-time cartoonist in 1995. While working at Pacific Bell in 1989, Adams created Dilbert; by the mid-1990s the strip had gained national prominence in America and began to reach a worldwide audience. Dilbert remained popular throughout the following decades, spawning several books written by Adams and becoming a cultural touchstone until it was dropped from syndication. It now runs as a webcomic.

Adams writes in a satirical way about the social and psychological landscape of white-collar workers in modern corporations. In addition, Adams has written books in various other areas, including the spiritual novella God's Debris and books on political and management topics, including Loserthink.

In 2023, Dilbert was dropped by numerous newspapers and its distributor, Andrews McMeel Syndication, after Adams published a video in which he referred to black people as a "hate group" and advised white people to "get the hell away from black people." Adams later claimed this was a use of hyperbole. Adams has continued the strip as Dilbert Reborn on his locals.com website since March 2023.

Early life and education

Adams was born on June 8, 1957, in Windham, New York, the son of Paul and Virginia (née Vining) Adams. He has described himself as "about half German" and also has English, Irish, Welsh, Scottish, and Dutch ancestry. In 2016, Adams said he had a small amount of Native American ancestry, but later discovered via 23andme genetic testing that he does not have any detectable Native American genetic markers. He was a fan of Peanuts comics while growing up and started drawing comics at age 6. He won a drawing competition at age 11.

Adams graduated from Windham-Ashland-Jewett Central School in 1975 and was the valedictorian of his class of 39 students. He remained in the area and earned a BA in economics from Hartwick College in 1979. He then moved to California and started work. In 1986, Adams earned an MBA from the University of California, Berkeley. Adams took Dale Carnegie Training and called it "life changing".

Career

Office worker

Adams worked closely with telecommunications engineers at Crocker National Bank in San Francisco between 1979 and 1986. Upon joining the organization, he first worked as a teller. After four months in which he was twice held up at gunpoint, he entered a management training program. His positions included management trainee, computer programmer, budget analyst, commercial lender, product manager, and supervisor.

He later shifted to work at Pacific Bell. To devote time to developing a new career, he woke up every day at 4 a.m. and spent time at various endeavors; cartooning proved to be the most successful of them. Adams created Dilbert during this period of personal exploration. The Dilbert name was suggested by his former boss, Mike Goodwin. Dogbert was loosely based on his family's deceased pet beagle Lucy. His submissions of Dilbert and other comic panels to various publications were not published, but an inspirational letter from a fan persuaded Adams to keep trying. He worked at Pacific Bell between 1986 and June 30, 1995, and the personalities he encountered there inspired many of his Dilbert characters. In 1989, while still employed at Pacific Bell, Adams launched Dilbert with United Media. To maintain his income, he continued to draw his cartoons during the early morning hours. His first payment for Dilbert was a monthly royalty check of $368.62. Dilbert gradually became more popular. It was syndicated in 100 newspapers in 1991 and 400 by 1994. Adams attributed his success to his idea of including his email address in the panels, which resulted in feedback and suggestions from readers.

Full-time cartoonist and author

Adams' success grew, and he became a full-time cartoonist as Dilbert reached 800 newspapers. In 1996, his first business book, The Dilbert Principle, was released. It expounded on his concept of the Dilbert principle.

In 1997, Adams won the National Cartoonists Society's Reuben Award for Outstanding Cartoonist and Best Newspaper Comic Strip. Logitech CEO Pierluigi Zappacosta invited Adams to impersonate a management consultant, which he did wearing a wig and false mustache. He tricked Logitech managers into adopting a mission statement that Adams described as "so impossibly complicated that it has no real content whatsoever". His writing in San Jose Mercury News West Magazine regarding the incident earned him an Orwell Award. By 2000, the comic was in 2,000 newspapers in 57 countries and 19 languages.

His comic strips were adapted as a Dilbert TV series, which debuted in January 1999 and ran for two seasons on UPN. Adams served as executive producer and showrunner, along with Seinfeld writer Larry Charles. The show earned a Primetime Emmy Award in 1999. On June 28, 2020, Adams asserted to his followers on Twitter that the show had been canceled because he was white and UPN had made a decision to shift toward African-American viewers.

In addition to his cartoon work, Adams has written books in various other areas, including self-improvement and religion. His book God's Debris (2001) lays out a theory of pandeism, in which God blows itself up to see what will happen, which becomes the cause of our universe. In The Religion War (2004), Adams suggests that followers of theistic religions such as Christianity and Islam are subconsciously aware that their religions are false, and that this awareness is reflected in their consistently acting as if these religions, and their threats of damnation for sinners, are false. In a 2017 interview, Adams said that his books on religion, not Dilbert, would be his ultimate legacy. In 2023, Adams announced in a pinned tweet that he had re-published God's Debris for free for his subscribers, and would shortly publish an AI-voiced audiobook version.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams

In 2015, Adams wrote blog posts predicting that Donald Trump had a 98 percent chance of winning the presidency based on his persuasion skills, and he started writing about Trump's persuasion techniques. His pieces on this topic grew popular, so he started writing about it regularly. Adams soon developed this as a daily video presentation called Real Coffee with Scott Adams, distributed to Periscope, YouTube, ScottAdamsSays.com, and Locals, where he covered topics such as current events, politics, persuasion, and routes to success.

Real Coffee with Scott Adams has featured guests such as Naval Ravikant, Ed Latimore, Dave Rubin, Erik Finman, Greg Gutfeld, Matt Gaetz, Ben Askren, Carpe Donktum, Mark Schneider, Steve Hsu, Michael Shellenberger, Carson Griffith, Shiva Ayyadurai, James Nortey, Clint Morgan, and Bjørn Lomborg. In 2018, Kanye West shared multiple clips on Twitter from a Coffee episode titled: "Scott Adams tells you how Kanye showed the way to The Golden Age. With Coffee." In 2020, President Trump retweeted an episode where Adams mocked Joe Biden.

Adams offers paid subscriptions for exclusive content on Locals. In 2020, Adams said: "For context, I expect my Dilbert income to largely disappear in the next year as newspapers close up forever. The coronavirus sped up that inevitable trend. Like many of you, I'm reinventing my life for a post-coronavirus world. The Locals platform is a big part of that."

Other

Adams started Scott Adams Foods, Inc. in 1999, which made the Dilberito and Protein Chef. He sold off his intellectual property in this venture when the product failed in the marketplace in 2003. He was a restaurateur starting in 1997, but exited that business.

Adams was a fan of the science fiction TV series Babylon 5. He appeared in the season 4 episode "Moments of Transition" as a character named "Mr. Adams" who hires former head of security Michael Garibaldi to locate his megalomaniacal dog and cat. He had a cameo in "Review", a third-season episode of the TV series NewsRadio, in which Matthew Brock (played by Andy Dick) becomes an obsessed Dilbert fan. Adams is credited as "Guy in line behind Dave and Joe in first scene".

Adams has been a guest on podcasts including Making Sense with Sam Harris, The Tim Ferriss Show, The James Altucher Show, The Ben Shapiro Show, The Rubin Report, Real Talk with Zuby and The David Pakman Show. He has appeared on Real Time with Bill Maher, Commonwealth Club of California, Fox News and Berkeley Haas. Adams was interviewed for Mike Cernovich's documentaries Silenced (2016) and Hoaxed (2019). In 2016, Adams contributed a chapter of life advice to Tim Ferriss's collection, Tools of Titans.

Views

Politics and social issues

Adams has often commented on political and social matters. In 2016, he wrote on his blog: "I don't vote and I am not a member of a political party." In 2007, he suggested that Michael Bloomberg would make a good presidential candidate. Before the 2008 presidential election, he said: "On social issues, I lean libertarian, minus the crazy stuff." In December 2011, he said that if he were president, he would do whatever Bill Clinton advised him to do because that "would lead to policies that are a sensible middle ground." On October 17, 2012, he wrote, "While I don't agree with Romney's positions on most topics, I'm endorsing him for president." In a blog post from September 2017, Adams described himself as being "left of Bernie Sanders, but with a preference for plans that can work." In April 2023, Adams announced via Twitter that he had registered with the Democratic Party, and that party affiliation will not determine who he supports.

In 2015, although Adams stated that he would not endorse a candidate for the 2016 elections, he repeatedly praised Donald Trump's persuasion skills. He extensively detailed what he called Trump's "talent stack". Adams correctly predicted that Trump would win the Republican nomination and the general election. In 2018, Adams similarly praised the persuasion skills of Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez.

Of the 2016 Democratic National Convention, he said: "If you're an undecided voter, and male, you're seeing something different. You're seeing a celebration that your role in society is permanently diminished. And it's happening in an impressive venue that was, in all likelihood, designed and built mostly by men." Adams said that he temporarily endorsed Hillary Clinton out of fear for his own life, stating that he had received direct and indirect death threats ("Where I live, in California, it is not safe to be seen as supportive of anything Trump says or does. So I fixed that."). In late September, however, Adams switched his endorsement from Clinton to Trump. Among his stated primary reasons were his respect for Trump's persuasion skills, Clinton's proposal to raise the inheritance tax, and his concerns over Clinton's health. In mid-October, Adams predicted a Clinton victory would ensure that a male president would never again be elected. He has also stated that writing positively about Trump and supporting him ended his public speaking career and decreased his income by about 40% and number of friends by about 75%.

Adams predicted in March 2020 that Trump, Sanders and Joe Biden would all contract COVID-19 and that one of them would die from it by the end of the year; in December 2020, when all three men remained alive (although Trump did catch the virus), Politico named Adams's prediction one of "the most audacious, confident and spectacularly incorrect prognostications about the year." Adams received further attention in December 2021, in reference to his July 2020 prediction that if Biden were to win the 2020 presidential election, then Republicans would be hunted and there's a "good chance" they'll be "dead within a year" and "Police will stand down" — none of which ultimately occurred. On September 30, 2021, Adams had also tweeted "My worst prediction of all time was 'If Biden gets elected, there's a good chance you will be dead in a year.' It was closer to two years. I missed it by 100%."

In January 2023, Adams announced that he was considering taking legal action against political cartoonist Ben Garrison for an allegedly defamatory cartoon about his view on masking and COVID-19 vaccines.

Race

On June 28, 2020, Adams said on Twitter that the Dilbert TV show was cancelled because he was white and UPN had decided to focus on an African-American audience, and that he had been "discriminated against".

In a series of comic strips in September 2022, Dilbert parodied environmental, social, and corporate governance (ESG) strategies. Part of the plotline involved an African-American character who "identified as white" and the company management asking him if he could also identify as gay. According to Adams, the week of September 19, Dilbert was pulled from 77 newspapers owned by Lee Enterprises. Adams also claimed that the cancellation was coincidental.

In February 2023, following controversial statements made by Adams, Dilbert was dropped by numerous newspapers across the country, including the Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, and USA Today-affiliated newspapers. Andrews McMeel Syndication, the distributor of Dilbert, announced on February 27, 2023, that it was severing all ties with Adams. Portfolio, his book publisher, announced it was dropping his non-Dilbert book that was scheduled for release in September 2023.

Adams announced that on March 13, 2023, the strip would return as Dilbert Reborn on the subscription website Locals. Adams got back all the rights of Dilbert and his books, and got to keep the advance for his new book, and did not have to pay his agent or his publisher.

Personal life

Since late 2004, Adams has had focal dystonia, which has affected his ability to draw for lengthy periods. He now draws on a graphics tablet. He also had spasmodic dysphonia, a condition that causes the vocal cords to behave abnormally. In July 2008, he underwent surgery to reroute the nerve connections to his vocal cords, and his voice is now completely functional.

In a 2006 interview, Adams said he was a vegetarian. In a 2023 tweet, Adams stated that he was a pescatarian.

Adams married Shelly Miles aboard a yacht, the Galaxy Commodore, on July 22, 2006, in San Francisco Bay, in a ceremony conducted by the ship's captain. The two had met at a gym in Pleasanton, California, where Miles was an employee and Adams was a customer. Adams was stepfather to Miles' two children, Savannah and Justin, the latter of whom died in 2018 at age 18, prompting Adams to start the service WhenHub. Adams and Miles divorced in 2014, and Adams said the two remained friends, with Miles moving only one block away after their separation.

On Christmas Day in 2019, Adams announced on his podcast that he was engaged to Kristina Basham, and later revealed that they had married on July 11, 2020. Basham, a model and baker, has two daughters and is a vice president at WhenHub. On March 10, 2022, Adams announced on his YouTube podcast that he and Basham were getting divorced.

Adams trained as a hypnotist. He credits affirmations for many of his achievements, including scoring in the ninety-fourth percentile on a difficult qualification exam for business school and creating Dilbert's success. He states that the affirmations give him focus. He has described a method he has used that he says gave him success: he pictured in his mind what he wanted and wrote it down 15 times a day on a piece of paper.

Recognition

Adams has received recognition for his work, including the National Cartoonists Society Reuben Award and Newspaper Comic Strip Award for 1997 for his work on Dilbert. He climbed the European Foundation for Management Development (EFMD) rankings of the 50 most influential management thinkers, placing 31st in 2001, 27th in 2003, 12th in 2005, and 21st in 2007. He received the Orwell Award in 1998 for his participation in "Mission Impertinent" for San Jose Mercury News West Magazine.

Publications

See also

In Spanish: Scott Adams para niños