I’m a long time fan of Scott Adams Dilbert Comic strip, as are millions of cubicle farm workers in the ranks of the oppressed and downtrodden.

But I’ve always taken note of Adams’ willingness to shamelessly exploit his creation to make a few trainloads of cash in the vast world of merchandising and his apparent willingness to play both sides of the employee/employer war against each other, if there was a buck in it for him.

And that’s cool. I’ve even bought the odd Dilbert item or two myself and been given the occasional desktop calendar or book as a gift. And when I visit the Dilbert website, I expect to see a fairly hefty amount of advertising…even for non-Dilbert products. Adams’ motto certainly seems to be: I’ll flog it, if you pay me.

And that’s fair enough too. After all, if he’s developed a brand that brings in hordes of gullible punters into the shearing pens where they can be swiftly and painlessly separated from their hard-earned wonga, in a style that would make the pointy haired boss proud, then fair play to him.

But the latest storyline in the daily Dilbert series has taken the Dilbert advertising monolith one step further…by building advertising directly into the strip itself.

A while ago, Adams announced the launch of a new file sharing service called dilbertfiles.com, designed to allow subscribers to send and share large files over the web.

And suddenly, a few weeks later, the latest story lines are featuring Dilbert creating the service and incurring the wrath of the Boss, Catbert et all in the process.

All I can read into this, is that the service is not perhaps doing as well as predicted – why else would Adams have to stoop to this level, in order to flog it?

And what’s next? Alice and Wally wearing sandwich boards advertising gawd knows what, as they move from meeting to meeting? The pointy haired boss having a banner hanging over his desk, advertising gawd knows what else? Dogbert doing monologues on the shopping channel?

It’s a pity really, because I used to enjoy my daily dose of Dilbert. But I don’t think I’ll bother visiting again for awhile…

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