Linus Tech Tips Drama Explained

for those of you interested in the Linus Tech tips and Gamers Nexus drama but don't want to watch a 44-minute short film followed by a novel followed by a 12 minute follow-up followed by an apology video and then followed by a 20 plus Twitter thread where someone claims about inappropriate working conditions and sexist comments then you've come to the right place now before I start explaining to be clear this isn't drama if you've ever purchased consumer Tech like a gaming laptop computer parts a gaming console mice headphones Etc then you need to pay attention the review videos that you watch before you buy those products come from these creators so let's get into it Linus Tech tips had a convention in his hometown where he extended a private tour of his facilities to the content creators that showed up I being wonderful the creators were welcome to stream or record the tour and one of the creators uploaded a video or one of the tour guides said this the difference between us and somebody like Gamers Nexus or Hardware unboxed is we test new components new tests every time now who is this tour guide presumably someone on the labs team at Linus Media Group which if you don't know lioness announced almost a year ago that he spent a lot of money investing in facilities in order to test computer parts and other consumer Tech to help get better results for his product reviews now I don't know what prompted this person to have an ego about benchmarking and testing because inherently it's not that cool and on top of all that it's not a competition the point of testing a product for a review video is to give potential consumers a better idea of what it is they're going to get and overall help them make a more informed decision throwing shaded other channels in the industry and implying that you're better just makes you seem egotistical cocky and probably insecure what could have simply been said is that we do a good job because I assume if that had been said it wouldn't have prompted Steve from Gamer's Nexus to keep his pimpan strong and make a 44 minute video detailing why Linus Media Group isn't doing a good job as a matter of fact he more or less implied that they were doing a [ __ ] job and for those of you who are confused when I say Linus Media Group I am referring to Linus Tech tips his brand big and they have so many channels now that we're just going to call it all Linus Media Group so following this clip being leaked online Hardware unbox didn't take kindly to the commentary and posted this Twitter post online in a way that Linus didn't really seem to appreciate there's a fair number of people that are talking about the the whole trust me bro situation uh where there were some creators that it seems like you guys are look it's pretty clear that not everyone in the Creator space handled that super professionally so I'll try to summarize what Steve from Gamers Nexus was trying to say so that you get a pretty good idea of what was communicated without watching all 44 minutes essentially what Steve is claiming is that Linus Media Group rushes their content by giving themselves arbitrary and self-imposed deadlines he argues that these deadlines are not necessary We Believe LTT or lmg is rushing too much to hit arbitrary and largely self-imposed deadlines he drives home this point multiple times throughout the video and argues that it is the main reason that has caused all the sloppy work and misinformation that has been showcased in the lmg videos as of recently now lmg has over 120 employees and collectively throughout all of their channels they put out 25 plus videos per week that's a lot of videos but that's also a lot of people to help work on them Steve then goes on for the rest of the video citing many data points for benchmarks mainly showcasing all the different incorrect information and the inconsistencies Within lmg's own videos even though it's not actually true they don't collect new data and new tests every single time and it's not always necessary anyway he also shows that lioness is aware of the poor data that is being pushed into live videos and claims that it is an ethical issue because if the priority is hitting deadlines and not getting accurate information out to your viewers who make your jobs possible then what kind of company is lmg it calls into question the motivations of the corporation and does in fact make it look to be bottom line Centric one that cares about their viewers or one that cares about their bottom line three of these examples that Steve talked about are worth talking about in Greater detail number one the 300 incident one of the cited benchmarks was a 40 90 test comparing it to a 3090 TI The Benchmark was testing cyberpunk at 4K with Ray tracing on where the 4090 was shown to be 300 percent better than the previous generation 3090 TI the current price of the older 3090 TI is around 1200 USD and the current price of the 4090 is 1600 USD Steve argues that to the guy who was testing these cards if he can't see an issue with those numbers right off the bat without doing any additional testing then there is a massive problem which I have to agree not only is it unprecedented to see a new generation card perform 300 percent better than the last generation but for it to only cost 25 more makes absolutely zero [ __ ] sense Steve later shows that the actual results with correct testing parameters should have only been about a 70 increase in the 4090s performance in reality that should be closer to 72 to 75 percent we explained this previously but that's because LTT didn't properly set their test parameters and double check that the graphic settings weren't changing due to other dependencies during test setup now the reason this is a big deal is because if you're a Linus Media Group a company that was recently offered to be bought out for a hundred million dollars and you're essentially the biggest consumer Tech Media Group in existence the you probably publish updated that bad you're the guy that people look towards to make sure that they're not [ __ ] up so if you're [ __ ] up it's [ __ ] number two the Billet Labs incident this one is bad lmg did a review on a custom water block I believe this custom water block cools both the CPU and the GPU it's an interesting piece to say the least it's definitely not something that most consumers would buy but it's cool lioness tested in a video and naturally in line is fashion he uses the wrong graphics card get a shot of that look at that ultimately this changes the results of what the temperature should have actually been this arguably being a big deal because anybody that gets into water cooling especially custom water cooling for their computer parts care a lot about the temperature and the results there were complaints about lioness testing this product poorly to which he responded to very poorly on his live stream it's bad because it makes absolutely no sense and nobody should buy it he basically responded by saying even if the temperatures were lower at the end of the day it wouldn't change the general recommendation of the product which is no one should buy it it's an 800 water block you shouldn't be looking to get this which in my opinion you can't really say that while it's definitely an Enthusiast piece there are people who are willing to buy a thousand dollar keyboards there are people who bought graphics cards at the peak of pandemic pricing there are always people who are willing to spend an ungodly amount of money on a product just because it makes them happy if Bobby has a disgruntled marriage shitty son and a shitty job and the only thing that keeps him from doing a backflip off a bridge is to spend 800 on a custom water block then let him furthermore Lina states that he could have had employees go back and test the video properly but it would have cost him several hundred dollars across multiple employees time I I don't know guys I'm not sure if I can apologize for not spending another 100 200 300 500 of various people's time sitting and Engineering a workaround to a product that no matter the result nobody should buy this again is a horrible look if you're a company that was offered a hundred million dollars to be bought out and then you the owner of the company is caught complaining about what I assume would be a couple Grand to pay a couple employees to reshoot and retest the product it's tone deaf to say the least overall the attitude with which Linus approached this whole thing was just a really bad look because even though Billet laughs sounds like an official name ultimately it's just a startup involving two people trying to innovate the PC space and to be frank it is always a bad luck when the bigger more successful company is seeing more or less putting down the little guy that story never turns out well but it gets worse after the review was posted Billet Labs asked for their one-of-one best prototype back so they could continue working on their products lmg responded not once but twice saying that they would get their product back to them only to have it auctioned off at the convention that I went to about a month later after these emails I even remember seeing it there when I walked past lmg claimed that this was a miscommunication and that they would be compensating Billet labs for the Prototype but later what was discovered is that that email to actually compensate bill at Labs didn't come until Gamer's Nexus posted there now four plus million views video criticizing Linus Tech tips again not a good look number three the pwnage Mouse incident long story short one of lmg's many side channels did a review on a mouse made by pwnage which was considered to be a premium gaming mouse to which the reviewer confidently stated that it was a high friction Mouse and wasn't as smooth as advertised on their website this was only to find out later that the plastic on the bottom of the mouse wasn't actually removed during the review OMG then eventually began the process of replacing the video in place once again we assume this time with YouTube's trim tool that'll take a day or two to process they're cutting the section about friction but this doesn't fix the problem they are choosing to leave the content live whose conclusions were at least partially based on massively erroneous work because they don't want to hurt their video performance well to be honest this is [ __ ] up you do not expect the top consumer Tech Media company in the world to make a mistake like not removing the plastic before reviewing a mouse but holy [ __ ] is it funny he was so confident unimpressed by a product that he didn't even unbox properly that it almost gave me Stefan etn vibes from The Verge this is not a smooth Mouse and that's really disappointing the only question that remains is am I recommending you buy this product no so all of that roughly summarizes the original 44 minute review made by Steve from Gamer's Nexus no less than three hours later after that video was posted did lioness respond on the forums of the Linus Tech tips website with an essay some of which honestly had some legitimate points most of which sounded really stupid Steve from Gamers Nexus responded to this the next day with a dedicated 12-minute segment in his regularly scheduled upload Linus's statement it is an unhinged Unapologetic rant where he shirks responsibility and blames others I'm going to talk about two big things that were mentioned in this response and then give an opinion about the situation thus far one thing that Linus takes time to address in his essay is that Steve said that lioness sold the water block to which Linus wanted to clarify that he didn't sell it he auctioned it off for charity he tries to play weird semantic games like saying quote we didn't sell the product we auctioned it I was laughing so hard at this because the reality is it doesn't [ __ ] matter these guys gave you their best prototype and asked for it back afterwards you know like a Media review sample there was never any permission or consent to take or do anything with the water block afterwards for there to have been such a miscommunication that it ended up in a silent auction afterwards is beyond me first of all we're not going to argue the semantics about an item being sold against the will of a company versus being auctioned and being for charity which we already said doesn't make that better it makes it worse because as now you're roping in an innocent third party into a very awkward situation that can potentially make them look bad by proxy the second thing worth noting in this response is that line has pointed out that Steve from Gamers Nexus never actually reached out to Lioness for a comment Steve responded by saying that Gamer's Nexus doesn't reach out to Big corporations for Comet when their actions showcase how they feel about certain things we don't have to reach out to corporations when we think there's a patterned Behavior or that there may be a significant chance that they try to cover things up or prepare a pre-written response that could twist The Narrative and in this case manipulate the audience basically he said his actions spoke louder than his words so he felt it was unnecessary now here's where my opinion comes in and it's worth paying attention to I disagree with this take vehemently by Steve Steve who is a self-proclaimed journalist with a high level of Integrity failing to reach out for a comment in my opinion is telling in almost every piece of media where a group is covering the actions of another group they always reach out for comments because if they do respond you can compare their words to their actions to see if it lines up and it helps paint a better picture of the situation or they can decline to comment which can speak even louder than an official statement I can only assume one of the major reasons that Steve didn't reach out is because it was probably awkward to be like hey I'm doing a piece on how you [ __ ] up do you have any comment on why you're [ __ ] up the reason I bring this up is because earlier in the original 44 minute video Steve presents the why he even made it as an altruistic Endeavor this is a very uncomfortable video for me to make I haven't enjoyed the process of it but this is something we feel is desperately needed otherwise we wouldn't be doing it and it is not simply drama to talk about errors and factual testing issues in a way that hopefully brings to light the problems so that the media organization lmg can attempt to rectify them if it in fact wishes to do so he didn't run ads on the original video because he claimed he wanted to demonstrate how valuable of a message this was for Tech consumers and the viewers as in English she basically said I've got a lot to lose but this is more important than me and my business which I don't fully agree with a Content piece like this will largely be viewed as drama no matter how much you tell your viewers not to perceive it that way take a look at Linus's subreddit right now if you don't believe me it's an absolute [ __ ] show and while Steve claimed that he had a lot to lose I think that with the video he was able to put together it would be ignorant to say that he also didn't have something to gain videos like this where you slam a larger or more established Creator than yourself and present yourself as better can net yourself some pretty die-hard fans who will support you for the long term as someone who has made a couple of these pieces trust me I would know on top of that the views that Gamers Nexus is receiving on this 44 minute video while not monetized immediately will probably end up resulting in more ad revenue for the future and resulting in higher sponsorship offers if the numbers grow accordingly don't get me wrong a lot of the points that Steve made in the video are valid and are worth being said but since that video talks about questioning the motives of lmg I also think that it's fair to question the motives of Steve for making the video I personally think it's find to benefit from something if you were trying to do a good thing but I don't think it's fine to present it like you're doing it solely for the sake of others which is why I think it's telling that Steve didn't ultimately reach out to Linus I don't think that kind of thing can exist on YouTube because ultimately there is always money involved as for lioness Tech tips and the rest of lmg a lot of you are probably thinking blindness is a liar lmg is untrustworthy we shouldn't watch their videos if all they care about is money more than us to that I say put your pitchforks down and show the entire point of review content is to give a general idea or better understanding of the product that you as a consumer might buy this is so that you can make a more informed decision and not waste your hard-earned money while we did Cover three big fuck-ups from lmg the rest of the data that Steve cites as harmful and damaging in my opinion is a bit of an exaggeration don't get me wrong Steve is right to say that Linus Media Group presenting misinformation is wrong and that is true but he came at them in a way that definitely evoked outrage from viewers I know Steve approaches content differently for most creators and is definitely on his no friends in the industry type [ __ ] it is my job to ignore personal relationships yeah if lmg is going to make false accusations and wants to try and use personal relationships to gain favor so that we don't cover something we think is not okay it's not going to work with us we don't play that game but as a human and Creator myself I don't like the way that Steve approached this I think that there had to be a better way even if it was simply just less harsh language at the end of the day lmg videos do still provide viewers with what is necessary a better general idea of the product that you might be looking to purchase someone looking to buy the products that they cover would definitely understand more about them having watched the video versus not watching it at all so where does that leave us now one day later lioness Tech tips posted an apology video led by their new CEO Taryn Tong accompanied by the rest of the leadership roles at lmg the apology pretty much addressed all the concerns and clarified some of the points made by Steve lmg said that they are halting all video production until they can get back to the standard that they feel they need to be at effective immediately all YouTube video production is on pause and our teams are going to be spending this entire next week focusing on long-term workflow changes to make our content better in a lasting way essentially they promise to be better and it looks that way all's well that ends well right wrong here is a 20 plus Twitter thread from xlmg employee medicine where she says she literally cut her leg open to avoid the ridicule of taking a sick day she starts off by saying her daily obligations and her weekly obligations were insanely overwhelming and they are now handled by an entire team at lmg she said that she was belittled by upper management calling her work dog [ __ ] and her incompetence also being told that she has to put on her big girl pants and to be more assertive to which she later states she was then called a [ __ ] bossy and quote to calm her tits by a male employee she says she never talked about this originally when leaving lmg two years ago because she didn't want to face the backlash from the community and potentially harm her future career options because lmg is deeply connected within the consumer tech industry I have some opinions on this but I'll keep it short by saying yeah that's pretty [ __ ] bad lmg responded by tweeting out we are taking Madison's allegations seriously we are conducting an internal assessment alongside bringing in a third-party investigator to look into the allegations I don't know I feel every company or Corporation who finds itself in a scandal ends up doing this type of thing and it very rarely actually amounts to anything I'm not sure how investigating something that happened so long ago is going to help bring anything else to life if there were any actual remarks they would have been done in person people can lie about what they said and emails can be deleted it seems very Bleak to be honest don't be wrong I think this is the right thing to do and realistically the only thing that you can do if you're lmg right now I don't think they can avoid to further lose public face and honestly it's the right thing to do if they just don't want to be a bad company but it still just feels like a shitty situation for everybody involved I feel bad for Madison hopefully she gets some reprieve from venting her frustrations because to be honest that's probably as good as it's going to get anyways that was your tldr I know that was long for a tldr but this was as fast as I could cover the whole situation without missing the major important parts if you want to support my channel leave the video a like or subscribe for more content like this in the future or just follow me on Twitch because I'm way more active on there anyways have a good rest of your day goodbye