Dilbert on Business Card Forensics

For 20 years, Scott Adams’ comic strip Dilbert has been widely admired for its sharp and satirical look at office politics and the foibles of white collar workers. In a humorous comic strip from late last year (pictured above), Dilbert took aim at business cards and how much information you can glean from them, whether that information is positive or negative.

According to Adams, many people responded negatively to that comic strip, finding it to be too caustic, even for the typically sardonic Dilbert. In a blog post, he responded that,

“The point I was trying to make with the comic is that people routinely do forensics on business cards. For example, you can.

1. Google people’s name for news stories
2. Look people up on Facebook and other social sites
3. Do research on people’s employers
4. Estimate people’s incomes, and even personalities, based on job titles.”

Adams goes on to prognosticate that we’re not far away from a “point where no mating will ever occur because no one will pass the background check. If you knew everything about another person’s history, there would always be at least one show stopper. In a simpler time, you could fall in love before you found out any damning information about your partner. I’m not sure that was better.”

Both in his blog post and in the initial strip, Adams makes a strong point about how our initial perceptions of people are unfairly colored by the surface information that is available to us, be it in a business card or through a simple Google search. To ensure that nobody gets the wrong idea about you, investing in a personal online reputation management solution is a necessity.