World Record Holder?

I wonder who holds the record for being the victim of the most crimes. I might have a shot at that record. Here’s my list.

- Assault by pistol (1)
- Robbed by large knife (1)
- Death threats (1)
- Apartment robbed (2)
- Garage robbed (2)
- Embezzled (2)
- Robbed at gunpoint (3)
- Car stereos stolen (5)
- Service people overcharging, scamming (approx. 25)
- Customer theft at my restaurants, e.g. stolen salt shakers (approx. 500)
- Employee theft at my restaurants (approx. 1,000)
- E-mail scam attempts sent to scottadams@aol.com (approx. 50,000)
- Dilbert comics stolen (approx. 250,000,000)

I’m probably leaving out a few things. The Dilbert comic theft might be an underestimate. I have documentation of 25 million thefts from the Internet alone in the past 12 months. It adds up.

Famous musicians get downloaded a lot. But they don’t produce a new song every day, as I produce a new comic. So I probably have the edge there because I create more items to steal. And some big corporations probably get robbed a lot if, for example, they own a chain of convenience stores. But those are companies, not individuals. If you divide those thefts by the number of stockholders, it’s not so much per person.

Seriously, who gets robbed more than me? I’m not complaining. My life is great. But I wonder if I hold the record.

[Update: Just to be clear, the comic theft is only the people stealing it for financial gain. Yes, the number is that big. No cartoonist minds someone making a copy for personal use.]

Comments

[soubriquet]

What a pissy lot of commenters.
I recommend setting Ratbert onto their mean-minded cases.

[K]

Congratulations on making it this far. Obviously youʻre something special.

Iʻm thinking that if you equate your experiences in this post to a hotel visit youʻve done very well-feeling good to be alive and able to tell the tale.

But I do hope you donʻt come up against any threatening people anymore. I think youʻve had your share.

Enjoying your blog.

A Kiwi in Kyoto

[sali]

In Iran, Putin Warns Against Military Action:
http://salihome.info/show/index.html

[erikjheels]

Greetings Scott,

See also:

http://www.erikjheels.com/2007-07-27-legal-dilbert-reprints.html

Regards,
Erik

[Gawell]

Wow, that's a lot. Thank god that's not me, Scott.

But in fact, I'm robbing you too, since I've put some clips up on YouTube. But since my last sentence kinda' rhymed, I don't consider it a real crime. Please don't make me do the time!

If you want me to remove the clips, just know I really like the strips. Just send me an email, and not to jail. Otherwise I may have to get out on bail.

DogbertRocks@gmail.com

But once upon a time, I bought a lime. This would later turn out to be a really bad rhyme, so I'll stop now. But now that I've confessed, and finally got it of my chest, I feel really at rest. No more bad rhyming!

I certainly think that might be a record. You could notify Guiness World Records. If it's not a world record, I could start stealing comics to "help". But that is "price of success".

[Becca]

You own a restaurant? wtf?

[concatenator]

I don't get that death threat. What do you threaten a cartoonist with - "Make Dilbert gay/woman/Left-Wing Liberal, or else you die?" And what kind of death were they planning? I mean implement-wise, were they specific about large knives etc?

Why would anyone threaten you first - wouldn't it be easier to just try and kill you without warning? It just shows they are not serious.

Now you can relax.

[Eric]

My car in high school was stolen 9 times in a period of 7 years...

[Amit Maroo]

How can you tell by your internet reports how many people used your comics for 'personal use' and how many did for 'financial gain'?

If a guy in India downloads a comic, prints it on a mugs and sells them, how the hell would you come to know he used them for 'financial gain'?

[Sajid]

Thanks for the awesome comics man. I cant afford them, so I steal them for personal use. But you dont seem to mind that, so all is good. :P :D

[Archdeacon Pilot]

Hi Scott, if you served me up rubbish food i'd threaten to kill you, stab you, steal your pepper mill (I don't use salt shakers), leave a turd on the chair and exit your restaurant without paying!

Oh, and once outside your restaurant, i'd smash your car windows, slash you tyres and steal your stereo.

Does this make me a world record holder for an over the top response to robbing me of a decent meal?

PS Tell me where I can steal/download your comics for FREE (or i'll kill you)!!

Have a nice day

[pazi]

Whew! Glad I read the update before deleting my Dilbert collection. Earliest ones are from 1992, and it's pretty much complete since 1995 (minus a few missed during holidays). Every once in a while I come across a situation that reminds me of a Dilbert comic I've once read, and need to go back to find that. Which is no simple feat since I haven't stored any keywords with the images. "Qwertytis" being one recent example.

Glad to hear you're cool with us hamsters.

-zi

[jerry wolfe]

Hey Scott,
You seem a lot like the character in the old "Lil' Abner" cartoon strip who always walked under a small dark cloud, where ever he went it was raining only on him.

http://boskolives.wordpress.com/

[still working it out]

[No cartoonist minds someone making a copy for personal use.]

That's great. Sometimes it would be hard to make my point at work without doing this.

[JBange]

This reminds me of one account I heard of someone who'd managed to experience all manner of dangerous and deadly mishaps, but had come out largely unscathed--- plane crashes, car accidents, robberies, etc. My immediate thought was "does that make him lucky, or unlucky?" Hard to say...

[rd]

http://www.harpers.org/TheEcstasyOfInfluence.html

[adrian monk]

Wow. Scott, please tell about all of these times. I would love to hear about them, and I'm sure they would be outrageously funny.

I mean, not that I'm GLAD that they happened to you. I'm just sure you would tell them in an uprourously funny way.

Then again, maybe not!

[Cody]

[If free will doesn't exist, then how do you attract so many criminals who want to attack and rob you?]
He looks like a relatively wealthy white man who is unlikely to be able or willing to defend himself physically if threatened with a weapon.

[Cody]

[And how can someone use Dilbert for financial gain?]
Print a comic on a coffee mug then sell it without licensing it.

[ethan]

so what constitutes a "LARGE" knife?

just wondering

[Don]

Hey, I just steal your salt and pepper shakers to compensate for the lousy pay.

PS
Add one for the chair I stole yesterday.

[Robert Hamilton]

Cuse me,Cuse me Senor, I hope that you're not including your restaurant employees eating a meal without paying for it, even though you would be legally correct. And how can someone use Dilbert for financial gain? I must be really slow today, because I can't figure that one out. This, I gotta hear. If you say that people post Dilbert on their web sites and draw advertising to their otherwise bland sites, you can make that 2 death threats. Not from me, I'm not THAT angry and stuff.

[ymal brucker]

I hope you'll permit a small correction. Neither an apartment nor a garage can be 'robbed.' Only humans. An apartment can be burgled (or burglarized), but not robbed. A car can be stolen or burglarized, but not robbed.

[Arne]

I sincerely wonder how the documentation of 25 Million thefts of Dilbert comics for financial profit looks like?

[Mr. Wampus]

Everyone seems to focus on the comic theft statistic, but there are problems all up and down your list.

First, I can scarcely believe that you were assaulted by a pistol or robbed by a knife. Those things don't have legs or eyes or even a mouth. How did you know it was even talking to you? Maybe you hallucinated it.
Do you often see inanimate objects walking down the street by themselves accosting people?

Death threats. I mean is that even a crime anymore? Oh sure, you can get a ticket for that, but big deal.

Apartment/Garage robbed. Well now, you're just being picky. Maybe you shouldn't keep nice things in places that tempt people to steal them. My home is decorated with cinder blocks and plywood and I almost never have problems with robbery. All of my good stuff is locked safely away in a high-security storage facility in Yucca Flats. I'm not even sure where that is but I'm told it's safe.

Robbed at gunpoint. Now you are splitting hairs. Is there THAT much difference between being assaulted by a gun and being robbed at gunpoint? And you have been robbed by a large knife which is also a weapon. It looks like you're just trying to pad your "resume" by splitting similar events apart just to make it look busier.

Stolen stereos. OK, you got me there. Point for you.

Being over charged for service? That's a crime? That's just the American Way. (Sign here and you'll be agreeing to let me change the air in your tires. Only $39.95. You need to do it at every oil change, or after every rain.)

Customer/Employee theft. If someone is stealing your customers and employees, you do have a big problem. But you can get new ones, and you didn't actually "own" those people anyway. (Unless the rules are different for celebrities... you don't ACTUALLY get to own other people do you?)

Finally, email scam attempts don't really count because they aren't specifically aimed at you. They are just sort of tossed to the ether(net) and they wait for gullible people to scam themselves. If you never respond back, you aren't really a victim of crime, and if you do, well then, you're just too stupid to live.

So there you have it. You aren't nearly as bad off as you think you are, but you should check into that hallucination stuff before you start to believe that you have been accosted the mailbox.