Linus Tech Tips is imploding right before our eyes

[subcon959]

It all kicked off when Gamers Nexus uploaded a video codemning bad practices by LTT, including poor accuracy in their testing, unethical behaviour regarding affiliations and just a general lack of responsibility to the audience and community..



Linus himself responded in an emotional forum post on his own site where he basically came off as lacking maturity and perspective.

Gamers Nexus released another video where Steve was visibly shocked and confused by how Linus handled it and the internet agreed and went ballistic.

Linus Media Group was forced to formally acknowledge the situation and various members of the team, including the new CEO, appeared in a new video to properly address the outrage. Corporate Damage Control 101..



Just as it seemed they might be able to make it out of this, even though they have lost hundreds of thousands of subscribers at this point.. this bombshell dropped..

A former employee by the name of Madison has spoken up about her ordeal with the company's toxic workplace and how it left her with severe mental health issues - to the point where she cut her own leg open so she could get away from work. Her allegations include sexual harrassment and bullying.

 

[Deleted member 194275]

youtuber drama happens every single day

Usually it generates views for everybody involved so, drama is kinda their thing... they like it...

 

[Spring_Spring]

Instead you should all subscribe to my youtube channel. Isn't that a great idea?

 

[Haymose]

LMG clearly has an agenda for quantity over quality

 

[subcon959]

youtuber drama happens every single day

Usually it generates views for everybody involved so, drama is kinda their thing... they like it...

LMG is valued at 100 million dollars, and most of their revenue is from mechandise and subscriptions so I really don't think the community backlash is something they want.

 

[Kioku]

Give it a month, most will forget and LTT will go back to it.

 

[zekro94]

If you watch the second video one of them even mentions LTTstore.com in a publicity way(he even says someone has to say it, well no, no one has to say), they will use everything to just make money. They don't care about public perception. If they did they wouldn0t do this on a "apologising" video. I always hate that they do the same thing in every video they have, always the same with the ltt store, like cmon just one video without it please

 

[shaunj66]

The fact that LMG got out a sad-face "we're sorry" video in 24 hours just rubs me the wrong way. It's like they're capitalising on the drama and how can we trust that long lasting business decisions can be made and decided on that quickly? Ergh.

I've always had fun watching their videos but I'd rank them pretty low in people I'd make informed purchasing decisions from. I know it's a meme at this point but the way they handle tech by just ripping open boxes and throwing stuff around with little care feels disrespectful to me and don't get me started on his cringey, sponsor segways. It's not funny anymore mate.

 

[Latiodile]

don't get me started on his cringey, sponsor segways. It's not funny anymore mate.

they used to be better according to my fanboy friend, it used to be "2 arrows to the right" to skip and now it's just shotgunned across the video in an annoying fashion, as well as sucking up to the "asus can do no wrong" mentality now

 

[SylverReZ]

His latest apology video truly deserves the dislikes.

 

[_v3]

LMG has been on a slow and steady decline for years now with obvious and glaring mistakes any decently tech savvy person would pick up and I'm glad Steve from GN had the cahones to call him out despite being on very good terms with Linus. The creators within the LMG group wanted more time to focus more in depth on the research that goes into the videos, Linus on the other hand decided to be a bonehead and force his team to vomit out more videos than they were comfortable with. Long ago Linus said that money wasn't going to cloud his judgement and a lot of people called him out, rightfully so; I don't think there's any person on this planet that's impervious to greed, especially when racking such a huge amount of money as LMG.

That being said he's still human, humans make mistakes. I hope he's able to pull his head out of his ass and resume his work, despite having an annoying voice he's still a decent host.

LMG is not imploding and it won't implode, the team behind it is stellar and even if Linus decides to retire I'm sure the team will continue doing a good job without him.

The dreaded cookie cutter youtuber apology video now available on the LTT youtube channel.

 

[linuxares]

I sure hope Madison got recipts for some of that... because holy moly that's bad.

 

[DinohScene]

Honestly, I'm glad I don't follow both.

 

[Veho]

I never really followed or trusted LTT. I've watched a few videos and the "unboxing / first impressions" schtik was too annoying for me to take them seriously. Whether Linus was just feigning a lack of knowledge about the devices and manufacturers, or was genuinely uninformed about the products he was reviewing, neither inspired much confidence.

So turns out they are paid shills for some manufacturer or other? I can't be arsed to watch all that.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

LTT's quality has been dropping for years now so I wasn't surprised by GN's claims, they were all pretty much obvious for quite some time. I stopped watching most of LTTs stuff years ago, only really watch their obvious entertainment videos if something stands out as being particularly interesting.


The Billet labs stuff though really rubs me the wrong way, the prototype was clearly LOANED out to them, how could anyone involved in any kind of B2B communications role fuck up something as simple as an email response? How did anyone working inventory tag a product that should have been clearly labeled as loaned out or borrowed as ok to auction off? The lack of communication in a business as relatively small as LMG is pretty alarming.


As for the Madison allegations, I'd be curious to see some receipts for some of those claims and what LMG's response will be to this other than just deleting comments referencing it on their lame ass apology video.

So turns out they are paid shills for some manufacturer or other? I can't be arsed to watch all that.

The tl;dr is:

1) They consistently get benchmarks and basic info about products wrong and either can't be bothered to fix them or do so in an inadequate manner. This one is honestly just funny, because LMG went out and spent thousands of dollars on a huge warehouse and tons of testing equipment and yet the staff still commit rookie mistakes because they're clearly not as knowledgeable as they should be.

2) They push bias towards certain products that sponsor them, part of which is caused by the above incompetency of testing and part of which is simply obvious $$$$.

3) Most recently LMG just straight up stole "accidentally auctioned for charity" a small company's only usable prototype for a cooler that was only ever loaned to them for a video...which they also botched by not even using the product with the correct GPU, which the company also sent that LTT still has and hasn't returned as well.


And then immediately after all that a previous employee came out this morning saying she was emotionally and sexually harassed while working at LMG as well.

 

[Kioku]

The fact that LMG got out a sad-face "we're sorry" video in 24 hours just rubs me the wrong way. It's like they're capitalising on the drama and how can we trust that long lasting business decisions can be made and decided on that quickly? Ergh.

I've always had fun watching their videos but I'd rank them pretty low in people I'd make informed purchasing decisions from. I know it's a meme at this point but the way they handle tech by just ripping open boxes and throwing stuff around with little care feels disrespectful to me and don't get me started on his cringey, sponsor segways. It's not funny anymore mate.

Did you watch that "apology" video? The level of insincerity just astounds me. No direct assumption of responsibility and even Linus decided to play victim (again). Couple that with the deflection and mile-wide side stepping? It was bad.

 

[Tom Bombadildo]

Did you watch that "apology" video? The level of insincerity just astounds me. No direct assumption of responsibility and even Linus decided to play victim (again). Couple that with the deflection and mile-wide side stepping? It was bad.

My favorite was the couple tone deaf "LTT STORE DOT COM HAHA" jokes they just had to throw in there. Can't even make it through what should have been a serious video without shilling their products out

 

[skawo]

Okay, who on earth would go "oh man, where my ADS at"?
Stunning level of disconnect from reality shown off here.

 

[wiiu20603]

What really got me was Linus's inability to use Linux. He did a 1 month Linux only challenge a while back where he was unhappy that Linux wasn't just Windows with a different theme.

In a video much later, he was trying to use a Linux laptop and thought that control+c was used to copy text from the terminal. (control+c ends a running process and is usually one of the first terminal command a Linux user learns)

In reality, control+shift+c is used to copy text from a terminal.

It's a small thing, but I thought it showed just how incompetent he is with no desire to learn something new.
But he's a former best buy employee with no college degree, so he's probably doing the best he can.

 

[smf]

If you watch the second video one of them even mentions LTTstore.com in a publicity way(he even says someone has to say it, well no, no one has to say), they will use everything to just make money.

All companies use everything to just make money.

He was talking about LTTstore.com, as cringy as the video was in places. I literally don't care, I never watched LTT for it's accuracy anyway.