Oh, that's wild. Apparently the Dilbert site is not set up to handle UTF-8. "sÇssÉ Ê‡uÉɹouƃı" was supposed to be the upside-down version of "ignorant 4$$35".
In many ways Dilbert does remind me of the supporting geeks in "War Games," definitely high on the Asperger's scale. But there's another aspect of his personality that comes out when he meets in-duh-viduals like this one... he becomes the voice inside my head and says things I wish I *could* say without seeming unnecessarily cruel. This paperback guy reminds me of the "too helpful" dude here: http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2001-05-06/; people like this are clueless and meddlesome, and frankly I'd like to slap their sÇssÉ Ê‡uÉɹouƃı to Nunavut and back. On a daily basis, Dilbert and his gang help me to channel these anti-social impulses into laughter.
So it's not just women that he puts off with his social gaucheness. Not to get too heavy about someone who is, after all, only a cartoon character (sorry to break that news to you guys), but in the real world Dilbert would be pretty firmly set on the autism spectrum. (Like most of us - that's why we love him.)
I think this guy is just a typical engineer, tries to compress into one sentence the following discussion:
Hello, what is your name? Do you work here? Really? Well I'm an engineer too! Who would have guessed! Have you got any hobbies? What do you like to do on your free time? What a coincidence, I like to read books too! So what have you been reading recently? It's an amazing book by Scott Adams, called "the Dilbert principle" or something similar. Sounds interesting, is this the same person responsible for the Dilbert comics? Dilbert, why do you look a bit sad now? I dunno, I had a strange sensation all over my body, as if it has something to do with my fate. Come on, you don't really believe in this stuff, right?
So are you interesting in that Book? I think I can loan it to you? Really, thanks, I'm a big fan of myself.