“If you are reading this, things did not go well for me.” That’s how Scott Adams’ X account announced his death on Jan. 13, reaching an enormous global audience in much the way he had for decades throughout a career that spanned both the cartoon pages and front pages of newspapers for the controversial personality.
Adams, creator of the satirical office comic strip “Dilbert” and later a polarizing conservative-leaning online commentator, died in Pleasanton, Calif., at 68 from metastatic prostate cancer. His death came after months of rapidly declining health, including paralysis from the waist down and hospice care in his final days.
Adams’s first ex-wife, Shelly Miles, told TMZ on Jan. 12 Adams had entered hospice care as his condition worsened, and he died the following day. He had publicly disclosed in May 2025 he was battling aggressive prostate cancer that had already spread and said “the odds of me recovering are essentially zero.” In late 2025, Adams described a tumor near his spine that left him paralyzed from the waist down, telling viewers: “I can’t move any muscles. I do have feeling, I just can’t move any muscles.”
In his final weeks, Adams continued recording and posting YouTube videos from home while receiving end-of-life care, with family members and a nurse tending to him around the clock. On Jan. 13, his X account posted “a final message from Scott Adams,” which was datemarked Jan. 1, describing his evolution from “Dilbertoonist” to what he described as an author of “useful books.” Framing his later career as oriented around helping people, he wrote, “I had an amazing life. I gave it everything I had.”
