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Branch Nvidian posted:I'm still convinced Linus wanted GN's slice of the market and Steve turned down a buyout, so Linus decided to try to compete and push GN out, but since Linus is just a clown, he has no idea how to actually do it. I have no evidence of this happening, but it's my personal conspiracy theory. I've been assuming something like this too. Especially since Linus' vision for the lab is the most unfocused thing in the world, what with his constant stance of like "what will it review?" "everything of course". Don't try to build any kind of working knowledge or internal practices, just yolo the whole thing and try to muscle everybody else out with sheer presence.
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Aug 15, 2023 03:29
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It could be intentional, but Hanlon's Razor also decently explains pretty much everything on Linus' end. A guy whose "tech Jackass/Red Green"-content took off saw other people doing more serious stuff, he has the cash to try to get in on it himself and the toys to do so seem cool, so he chases that because it's another thing to chase. He makes that move even though any one of his existing hustles - the merch with ever more complex custom products, the growing MCN, the conventions/LANs, the production services, the streaming service, etc. - is large enough that he should have proper, industry seasoned general managers or COOs for each one, plus the separate CEO running the show, let alone adding labs (let alone his whole Badminton-building side hustle.) He needs a "Luke" for each for these, and he clearly doesn't have that, and that's incompetence on his part as the owner with no one but outside folks like GN Steve to reality check him. Linus also openly notes on WAN that he doesn't chase the various and many IT tax breaks and production credits in BC and Canada even though he's long shot past where hiring a person for that would pay for itself because that's hard work and boring to secure. All in all, malice would be better organized than Linus. It's no excuse, but it's clear he's in so far over his head, and there's no sign he's going to "dig up" yet. Ultraklystron fucked around with this message at 03:38 on Aug 15, 2023 |
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Aug 15, 2023 03:34
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Bullshit The poo poo LTT pulled with the water block was absolutely trash tier. They took that company's only working prototype, tested it incorrectly, gave it a bad review, and then sold it at auction when the company specifically said they wanted it back. Oh, and Linus is only now getting around to trying to make it right after someone with a big enough platform pointed it out. He's also complaining about it being aired publicly even though he made absolutely zero attempt to to settle with the company before this point.
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Aug 15, 2023 03:40
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Ultraklystron posted:All in all, malice would be better organized than Linus. It's no excuse, but it's clear he's in so far over his head, and there's no sign he's going to "dig up" yet. He'll never "dig up". That would require admitting that he's wrong, and he's got too much ego to do that and too much money for anyone to make him. Linus is a prototypical small business owner; he has no emotional distance from the company, no ability to meaningfully delegate, and a complete unwillingess to be wrong. Between the inertia and resources of the channel size, and being more entertainment focused than the serious reviewers but crunchier than the Austin Evanses or MKBHDs, he's strongly unlikely to be disgorged as the big fish in techtube. And if he won't sell the company then no matter what the org chart says he calls all the shots, a CEO that he disagrees with just gets fired. Until he gets so far up his own rear end everyone quits or he does something that causes him to become persona-non-grata in the industry he gets to be a petty tyrant putting out whiny non-apologies forever.
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Aug 15, 2023 04:03
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Linus may be richer and have a nicer house than me but I can take solace that it is in Surrey (lower mainland folks will get this)
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Aug 15, 2023 04:05
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Tuxedo Gin posted:My favorite part of the video is where at ~3:30, Steve points out that when you try to go from a "just entertainment" channel to a data driven 'real' tech channel, you need to actually do poo poo properly. I like clown Linus. I still only really watch the videos where they're doing stupid poo poo with expensive tech. Linus can't even decide if AIOs are better than air cooling.
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Aug 15, 2023 04:09
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Fantastic Foreskin posted:He'll never "dig up". That would require admitting that he's wrong, and he's got too much ego to do that and too much money for anyone to make him. Oh for sure. I feel like it's really beginning to mirror the Penny Arcade business arc, so I'd expect the CEO to bail after one foot in mouth too many from Linus and/or an offer to good to refuse, while a bunch of the other concerns under LMG eventually get sold off to other companies a la PA selling PAX to Reed Exhibitions. Very clear regardless of motive, this is on the same path IMHO.
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Aug 15, 2023 04:10
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Rubellavator posted:I like clown Linus. I still only really watch the videos where they're doing stupid poo poo with expensive tech. Linus can't even decide if AIOs are better than air cooling. Well Air Cooling is clearly the best as you can see from this chart of the NH-D15
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Aug 15, 2023 04:11
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Klyith posted:Nah. I can easily believe him at his word when he said that he wants to re-create the stuff that inspired him way back when, whether PC magazines or the peak of web reviews like anand, Toms, etc. The serious review work that Linus wants Labs to do seems directly opposed to the TechQuickie "it's just an unboxing" / "we're an entertainment company" / "i'm just a smol bean" philosophy of "we have a loving deadline, get the video out the door". Like.. the labs guy saying their work will be better than GN because they'll be generating fresh data for every review... I believe he believes that, I also believe when you come at the king you best not miss.
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Aug 15, 2023 04:15
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I've been seriously out of the loop in regards to anything tech for years, but the algorithm still shows me GN videos from time to time. I've always respected Steve's dedication to objectivity and methodological integrity, so I'll still watch one every once in a while, even if I sometimes end up falling asleep a few minutes into the part where he busts out the graphs. This new video has me at the edge of my seat. Steve does NOT take stuff like this lightly. I find it interesting that Linus' main complaint about GN doing that video is that they didn't reach out to him before going public with it. He's completely oblivious to being guilty of doing the exact same thing to Billet Labs. Only, those guys were a small start-up, not this huge YT presence with millions per year in revenue and brand deals for free gear and stuff. I also find it super problematic that his POV that 'no one should buy this' stinks to high hell of just staking a position that neatly absolves LTT of any responsibility to represent the block in the actual use case it was designed for, while at the same time allowing him to maintain the same position of the video itself. Like Steve points out, if a 20 degree difference doesn't change the conclusion, there's a problem! If you're going to pick a position of 'no one should buy this under any circumstances', regardless of how well it does/doesn't perform, maybe don't do a video at all? It's quite the self-report to frame it in terms of the cost to the company in time/money to go back and do the video correctly, completely ignoring the damage it does to the LTT brand itself. It's telling that he just ignores the possibility of reputational damage in favor of saving a few bucks, despite the channel's entire existence being predicated on that reputation in the first place. I mean, most of his fans are idiots, so he's probably right in that it probably won't end up causing a noticeable dip in impressions or w/e, but that he's cool with that sort of transaction in the first place speaks volumes to his lack of character regardless. Ultraklystron posted:Hanlon's Razor I disagree with you on that. Linus basically tried that to defend the myriad of methodological fuckups Steve pointed out as basically, 'we're still new at this, it's ~growing pains~'. The thing is, if you're producing a video that you know for a fact is built on flawed data, and you decide to publish it anyway, that goes beyond simple stupidity. I could entertain it if every single case was something where they'd only realized there was a mistake after somebody pointed it out or w/e, especially if they'd done the needful and taken said content down and issued a correction in its place or something, but that apparently wasn't always the case. Stupidity would be admitting that you forgot to take the tape off of the mouse, malice is blaming the manufacturer for not making the instructions to remove that tape clear enough. Ditto for the Billet Labs thing. Misrepresenting the product and then having the balls to double down on that misrepresentation while tacitly admitting that performance is apparently irrelevant is pure loving malice to me. Phone posted:to be fair, hard R linus was extremely funny earlier this year I hadn't seen that, so I looked it up and laughed my rear end off. Luke should probably/definitely push back harder than he does against some of Linus' dumber meltdowns, but his handling of that situation in particular was masterful. Also, I took the funny part completely out of context just for laughs: https://i.imgur.com/5IKXigL.mp4 Mooktastical fucked around with this message at 04:20 on Aug 15, 2023 |
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Aug 15, 2023 04:17
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whoever bought the prototype should send it to steve for testing.
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Aug 15, 2023 04:20
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You mean after they're done analyzing it to steal Billet's IP, right?
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Aug 15, 2023 04:22
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Mooktastical posted:I disagree with you on that. Linus basically tried that to defend the myriad of methodological fuckups Steve pointed out as basically, 'we're still new at this, it's ~growing pains~'. The thing is, if you're producing a video that you know for a fact is built on flawed data, and you decide to publish it anyway, that goes beyond simple stupidity. I could entertain it if every single case was something where they'd only realized there was a mistake after somebody pointed it out or w/e, especially if they'd done the needful and taken said content down and issued a correction in its place or something, but that apparently wasn't their SOP. Stupidity would be admitting that you forgot to take the tape off of the mouse, malice is blaming the manufacturer for not making the instructions to remove that tape clear enough. Ditto for the Billet Labs thing. Misrepresenting the product and then having the balls to double down on that misrepresentation while tacitly admitting that performance is apparently irrelevant is pure loving malice to me. Yeah, that's a very fair counterpoint. It's one thing for them to suck occasionally, but to defend an on-going pattern with no admission of fault or introspection crosses into a particularly narcissistic kind of malice. Ultraklystron fucked around with this message at 04:26 on Aug 15, 2023 |
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Aug 15, 2023 04:23
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Linus and his fans have all latched on to the "poor journalistic practices - GN didn't even reach out" defense. Just ignore the fact that the LTT channel alone has 15m subscribers vs GN's 2m. And that's just the biggest of LMG's channels. He is not being accused without a voice. He has a voice and he has already posted a statement to say that he won't use it.
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Aug 15, 2023 04:28
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Mooktastical posted:Linus basically tried that to defend the myriad of methodological fuckups Steve pointed out as basically, 'we're still new at this, it's ~growing pains~'. Also keep in mind that Linus announced the Labs thing back in early 2022. They've had a year and a half to establish testing guidelines and standards, and seemingly they just haven't. He's got an entire division of people, some allegedly poached from inside the industry, giving him test data that someone could do sitting in their den. Daniel Owen, for whatever you may think of him, is literally doing exactly that and his results seem to have a higher standard than what LTT is using.
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Aug 15, 2023 04:31
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njsykora posted:Its generally considered good journalistic practice to give right of reply though this is mostly because typically the journalist had a much broader reach than the person being criticized, which doesn’t really hold here (“both sides” bullshit is all too often considered good journalism, though)
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Aug 15, 2023 04:35
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Branch Nvidian posted:Also keep in mind that Linus announced the Labs thing back in early 2022. They've had a year and a half to establish testing guidelines and standards, and seemingly they just haven't. He's got an entire division of people, some allegedly poached from inside the industry, giving him test data that someone could do sitting in their den. Daniel Owen, for whatever you may think of him, is literally doing exactly that and his results seem to have a higher standard than what LTT is using. If he's not willing to spend $500 to test a thing as it was intended to be used, he's not willing to take the effort to set up a rigorous testing environment. I'm sure the people he hired just want to do good work, but a. we can't be sure he'd even let them and b. we can be sure he doesn't care, the video isn't going to wait.
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Aug 15, 2023 04:39
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Branch Nvidian posted:Also keep in mind that Linus announced the Labs thing back in early 2022. They've had a year and a half to establish testing guidelines and standards, and seemingly they just haven't. He's got an entire division of people, some allegedly poached from inside the industry, giving him test data that someone could do sitting in their den. Daniel Owen, for whatever you may think of him, is literally doing exactly that and his results seem to have a higher standard than what LTT is using. Yeah, but their heat pumps are late, so that makes it all better, right? Subjunctive posted:this is mostly because typically the journalist had a much broader reach than the person being criticized, which doesn’t really hold here You know where it does hold? Billet Labs. I feel like Linus should have to respond to the inherent hypocrisy in expecting GN to give LTT right to reply when they didn't do the same for a much, much smaller outfit, especially given that they doubled down on such an indefensible position Mooktastical fucked around with this message at 04:47 on Aug 15, 2023 |
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Aug 15, 2023 04:40
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So the hits keep on coming. Apart from Louis Rossman and Jay publicly supporting Steve on his video, LTT just released a new review 3 hours ago of a Fifine microphone, and literally the top response is from EposVox.EposVox posted:This is not an appropriate way to utilize Frequency Response graphs for an evaluation of mic performance. :/
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Aug 15, 2023 05:05
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Aug 15, 2023 05:05
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Tornhelm posted:So the hits keep on coming. Apart from Louis Rossman and Jay publicly supporting Steve on his video, LTT just released a new review 3 hours ago of a Fifine microphone, and literally the top response is from EposVox. There's a bunch of other high rated comments saying the same stuff, a few specifically citing industry standard documentation.
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Aug 15, 2023 05:21
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njsykora posted:Its generally considered good journalistic practice to give right of reply sure, but it's for practical reasons not ethical reasons. if your "target" is going to clap back it's good to know what they're gonna say so you can address it up front rather than have to do a bunch of back and forth in the press. there's no responsibility to seek comment before you report facts
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Aug 15, 2023 05:41
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And even if you approach it from an ethical angle, this is not a case where there can be a real, meaningful justification. It wasn't self defense. They published multiple errors, slowly fixed some of them in ways that maximizes profit over transparency/accuracy. Linus has released his response: trust me, bro. growing pains. oops we forgot we promised to return the cooler and sold it, but we will pay them whatever they ask to shut them up, but also that lovely cooler was overpriced so gently caress that company
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Aug 15, 2023 05:53
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There's also the fact that its not really necessary when they've already made public statements regarding the situation. Pretty much the only thing he reported on that wasn't from a public statement on was their theft and auctioning off of the engineering sample, to which Linus' response is pretty much just "We've promised to buy them off, but haven't actually sent them any money".
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Aug 15, 2023 05:58
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Tuxedo Gin posted:And even if you approach it from an ethical angle, this is not a case where there can be a real, meaningful justification. It wasn't self defense. They published multiple errors, slowly fixed some of them in ways that maximizes profit over transparency/accuracy. Linus found it important to point out that  they auctioned it not sold it (which the video didn’t imply)
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Aug 15, 2023 06:04
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Rinkles posted:Linus found it important to point out that Yeah. They stole it FOR CHARITY.
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Aug 15, 2023 06:04
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* tax write-off
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Aug 15, 2023 06:17
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Tuxedo Gin posted:Yeah. They stole it FOR CHARITY. a modern day robin hood, if you will
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Aug 15, 2023 06:19
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Tuxedo Gin posted:Linus and his fans have all latched on to the "poor journalistic practices - GN didn't even reach out" defense. One of the GN Discord moderators was spouting out this defense of Linus while also being Extremely Not Mad about it by the time I left the server lol.
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Aug 15, 2023 07:03
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Having watched the video, one of the bits that stood out to me was this segment where LTT was reviewing the Ryzen 7950X, and from the clip that was cut out, it looked like they were trying to match AMD's own findings, and then regretting that they couldn't because then it meant that they'd have to give it a negative evaluation when compared to all other reviewers. It was completely bizarre, because that's utter nonsense when you're trying to review a thing. At best, you can use "everyone else likes/dislikes this, but I don't" as a sort of sanity check on your findings, and try to make a counter-argument as to why you came to the conclusion you did, that no one else does, but that doesn't mean you outright say that you were apprehensive about the review just because you're going against the grain, and then try to find a way to make yourself conform. and like, not to endorse or defend JayzTwoCents, but his channel was in a similar position with the RTX 4060Ti review, where they were positive on it when everyone else wasn't, and he took down the review entirely.
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Aug 15, 2023 07:11
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I wish I could remember which LTT video it was I saw recently, but it must have had four or five asterisked corrections in the video itself and a bunch more mistakes listed in the video description below. Like, at that point what are you even publishing? You may as well skip the testing and just make up any fake review and get it out the door in twenty minutes if that's the direction your channel is headed.gradenko_2000 posted:At best, you can use "everyone else likes/dislikes this, but I don't" as a sort of sanity check on your findings, and try to make a counter-argument as to why you came to the conclusion you did, that no one else does, but that doesn't mean you outright say that you were apprehensive about the review just because you're going against the grain, and then try to find a way to make yourself conform. It reminds me of LTT's RTX 4080 review, where they were positive on the card but hardly criticized the fact it is totally overpriced at $1200. It's a terrible value and out of reach of most consumers but they mainly looked at benchmarks and declared it a great product without considering anything else about it. LTT got pushback on that but I doubt they learned anything.
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Aug 15, 2023 07:36
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gradenko_2000 posted:Having watched the video, one of the bits that stood out to me was this segment where LTT was reviewing the Ryzen 7950X, and from the clip that was cut out, it looked like they were trying to match AMD's own findings, and then regretting that they couldn't because then it meant that they'd have to give it a negative evaluation when compared to all other reviewers. It was completely bizarre, because that's utter nonsense when you're trying to review a thing. Every field but IT considers OEM data to be guidelines at best, lies most likely so they don't make egregious errors during reviews. Take car specs, fuel consumption is always wrong and every reviewer will retest it before going to press, only an idiot would trust the spec sheet blindly.
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Aug 15, 2023 08:17
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mewse posted:Like.. the labs guy saying their work will be better than GN because they'll be generating fresh data for every review... I believe he believes that, I also believe when you come at the king you best not miss.
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Aug 15, 2023 08:27
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mewse posted:
Not just GN Steve but also HUB Steve which was a genuine  moment. Motherfucker HUB Steve hasn't left his benchmark pit in a decade, what the gently caress are you talking about??
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Aug 15, 2023 08:28
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Combat Pretzel posted:That's so loving dumb. If you control the environment properly, the results should be repeatable. If you think you're doing it better by rerunning benchmarks of past configurations, your methodology is wrong. Isn't the guy initially from RTings? Makes me wonder if the lab guru they hired is feeding Linus bullshit lines like that to make his job and the lab itself sound more important. "We're going to be even more thorough than Gamers Nexus and Hardware Unboxed because [made up reason]" and Linus doesn't know any better.
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Aug 15, 2023 08:37
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njsykora posted:There's a bunch of other high rated comments saying the same stuff, a few specifically citing industry standard documentation. The video getting downvoted a lot is fun. YMMV, with what being an extension interpolating the data from fewer samples. 
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Aug 15, 2023 08:37
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I honestly don't get why that LTT labs dude felt the need to take a potshot at GN or HardwareUnboxed. LTT is the 800-pound gorilla of tech youtubers, so how insecure do you have to be take a swing like that?
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Aug 15, 2023 08:48
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Gamers Nexus did a really good job with this piece. I generally like the Linus Tech Tips channel and the personalities featured in the videos, but the number of mistakes lately has been really wild. It feels like the staff is both stretched way too thin in places that matter while also being bloated to the point that important processes are being lost or rushed through. I can believe all of the stuff with the GPU cooler being a series of miscommunications and process failures being true but it really is unacceptable.
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Aug 15, 2023 08:52
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They should turn a negative into a positive and open up a Linus Theft Tips channel and capture a whole new audience
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Aug 15, 2023 08:52
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I did a quick skim of recent LTT videos and I noticed that for every single one of them Linus is the Director/Producer which is just absolutely insane. There's not even any assistant producers on the staff roster. That means there is no oversight from research/testing, writing, filming and editing phases. Ostensibly that could be the writer but it seems they're swamped while also occasionally being pulled into co-host duties. No extra pair of eyes to go "These results from the lab are kinda weird, we need to omit that" .
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Aug 15, 2023 08:55
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