‘Dilbert’ creator Scott Adams dies at 68

Cartoonist, author, and political commentator Scott Adams passed away Tuesday after a battle with prostate cancer. He was 68.

His ex-wife and caregiver, Shelly, made the announcement on Adams’s live stream Tuesday morning.

“Unfortunately, this isn’t good news,” Shelly said. “Of course, he waited til just before the show started, but he’s not with us anymore.”

Shelly read aloud a “final message” that Adams “wanted to say” on the livestream.

“If you’re reading this, things did not go well for me,” the message began. “I have a few things to say before I go. My body fell before my brain. I am of sound mind as i write this January 1, 2026.”

Adams became famous through “Dilbert,” the comic strip that poked fun at corporate culture with keen insight into the absurdity, cruelty and incompetence of management inside large organizations. 

In his last decade-and-a-half, however, Adams achieved wide influence through his business advice and political analysis. 

His 2013 bestseller, “How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big,” is one of the most influential and entertaining business books of recent years. 

In it, Adams introduced the concept of using systems, rather than goals, to achieve success in life. He also advised readers to accumulate skills — a “talent stack” — rather than traditional credentials.

In 2015, Adams began commenting on politics after observing the first Republican presidential primary debate. When then-candidate Donald Trump responded to a moderator’s question that accused him of mistreating women by interjecting, “Only Rosie O’Donnell,” Adams took notice. 

A trained hypnotist, Adams recognized that Trump had powerful skills of persuasion. He predicted that Trump, then a huge underdog, would win the nomination — and the presidency.

Adams drew ridicule — and abuse — for his bold claim. But he looked increasingly prescient as Trump dispensed with his opponents, the Republican establishment, and — eventually — Hillary Clinton. 

Adams used what he called the “persuasion filter”: rather than judging whether political rhetoric was true or false, he simply evaluated it based on whether it was persuasive. 

From that perspective, facts might be more persuasive, but they were ultimately unnecessary.

What began as a simple blog post became a daily live video stream — first on the now-defunct Periscope platform, then on a variety of outlets, including anti-cancel-culture Rumble (in which he had invested). 

Adams began each show by brewing fresh coffee; he eventually called his livestream “Coffee with Scott Adams,” and it became required viewing, or listening, for millions of fans, who poured their own mugs and tuned in at 10 a.m. Eastern for the “simultaneous sip.”

While he excelled at explaining Trump’s tactics to a growing audience of Trump-supporting fans, Adams was also interested in explaining how Democrats, and the left-leaning media, interpreted events. 

He explained that the country was often watching “two movies on one screen,” and argued — with great empathy for his opponents — that voters who felt genuinely frightened by Trump’s ascent had been led into an emotional cul-de-sac by cynical leaders.

Adams emphasized that he was not a Republican: “I’m further left than Bernie Sanders,” he reminded viewers. He even endorsed Clinton in 2016 — for his own safety, he said. But he drew a conservative audience that soon included Trump’s own advisers. 

He was no longer simply observing events; he was influencing them, as his ideas filtered into the campaign — and, eventually, the White House. (The team that bought Brexit to Britain also tuned in.)

In 2017, Adams published Win Bigly: Persuasion in a World Where Facts Don’t Matter, in which he extrapolated the lessons of Trump’s unlikely victory. He followed that with Loserthink, using his critiques of stale thinking in the media to teach positive mental habits. 

During the coronavirus pandemic, Adams added an evening “swaddle,” in which he wrapped himself in a flannel blanket, and offered advice for surviving lockdowns. For many, he became a lifeline.

One of Adams’s most powerful ideas was a concept he called “the user interface for reality.” Given that we can only see reality through our own individual filters, he explained, we can choose which filter to use. 

The “Dilbert” filter, for example, predicted incompetence; the Trump filter anticipated victory. By adopting filters that guide us toward success, Adams argued, we not only convince ourselves that success is possible, but bend reality toward that outcome.

While generally pro-Trump, Adams was critical of the president on occasion, and also took unexpected political stances. When then-San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick began “taking a knee” for the national anthem in support of the fledgling Black Lives Matter (BLM) movement, Adams supported him, and admired the persuasive success of his protest. He even offered advice to leaders within BLM, notably New York’s Hawk Newsome.

But Adams soon discovered that BLM had little interest in progress. And in 2023, he was falsely accused of racism when he commented on a Rasmussen poll in which only 53% of black respondents agreed with the statement: “It’s OK to be white.” 

Adams quipped that it would be good to move away from people that felt that degree of hostility. He immediately found himself “canceled” — his comic strip dropped, his publishing contracts terminated.

Adams found, to his surprise, that being canceled was liberating. 

He began self-publishing his books, including “Reframe Your Brain: The User Interface for Happiness and Success.” He re-launched an edgier version of Dilbert on the independent Locals platform, and felt liberated to express his more controversial political views — such as that the 2020 election had likely been “rigged,” given the increasingly evident corruption of nearly every other government system.

His reach was astonishing. In the last weeks of his life, he posted on X, asking readers to share personal stories about how they had been affected by his teachings and podcasts. Ten thousand people responded, from celebrities like Greg Gutfeld, who called Adams a “mentor,” to a swimming coach who credited Adams’s teachings with helping him quit drinking. 

Adams’s influence will certainly continue, as more people discover his works after his passing.

Adams shared intimate, and often painful, details of his life — losing a stepson to a fentanyl overdoes in 2018, suffering through a second divorce in 2022, and fighting cancer. 

In doing so, Adams created a deeper bond with his audience, many of whom saw him as their close friend. 

Despite his eventual paralysis from the waist down, Adams continued his live streams almost daily. 

He also embraced Christianity in his final days. While he would not divulge details about his faith, he confirmed his conversion in a final message that Shelly read on Tuesday’s live stream.

He reframed death, as he had reframed life: just one more filter — and not one to fear.