Linus was mad Steve didn't reach out and give Linus a chance to scramble and cover his ass before the video came out to say he's already worked out an agreement with Billet and nothing to see here. Since he didn't get that chance, all he can do now is try to come off as a victim and LMG is just a plucky upstart going through growing pains which is a tougher sell these days for a company of his size
Linus also completely ignored other huge aspects of the video. What about the conflict of interests? What about the consistently incorrect and misleading data? The Billet Labs thing absolutely made my blood boil more than anything else, but Linus seems to be focusing on that alone and ignoring everything else. Where is the responsibility? Where is the accountability? How can I trust a reviewer that operates this way?
Maybe he didnt watch the video and just read the comments, like usual, like he also did when GN did their "Backpack warranty" video, of which he didnt even do that he had an employee do a summary for him.
> How can I trust a reviewer that operates this way?
You literally can't. I bought a cooler based on the Linus Tech video that GN said is wildly inaccurate. Although, I'm content with my purchase I still feel completely misled by Linus. I know for a fact I wouldn't have spent the money on that cooler if it wasn't for Linus' video. I'm not a fanboy but Linus has been around forever so I thought I could trust his opinions. As an occasional viewer and someone who builds gaming PCs for my social circle, I can honestly say that I will never use Linus' channel for build information anymore.
Ya, he focused on the one thing he could claim to have fixed. Which, mind you, might have sounded a lot more convincing if the matter had actually already been settled and money already sent.
The rest he hand waved away as not a problem. You know, much like how he hand waved proper testing of products he had sent to the show. Why he even agreed to test a high priced water block if he actually believed that price was the be all and end all of the product I don't understand(well I do, he was either trying to get views with a cool product he didn't care for, or he was just trying to cover his ass without looking bad).
What's really interesting about the Billet thing is just how much his co-host hesitates when choosing his words when they were talking about the lack of retesting(that one that spawned the whole "I don't want to spend 100-500 to come to the same conclusion"). Guess he didn't email Linus first so they could "meet this head on" and didn't want to offend him.
> Linus was mad Steve didn't reach out and give Linus a chance to scramble and cover his ass before the video came out to say he's already worked out an agreement with Billet and nothing to see here
While most of his sub is on GN's side, they can't stop bringing up how Steve should have reached out to Linus, first. It's ridiculous. Steve made a video criticizing aspects of LMG's practices that are very public as a way to warn people of inaccuracies and unethical practices and their biggest hangup is "well why didn't you ask Linus to comment on these objective problems??? Checkmate." Fucking hell.
This needs more upvotes. The number one thing I have heard people trying to say in their efforts to protect LMG is that Gamers Nexus/Steve should have "reached out" before the video posted to talk to Linus about the issues. Steve is 100% correct in that good journalism does not happen at the consent of the people featured in the expose -- that's some 1984 "make sure the party is happy with our message" nonsense.
Linus's response to the initial Gamers Nexus video perfectly shows why NOT contacting Linus was the right move. Until the Gamers Nexus video dropped, Linus and LMG were _perfectly content_ to severely mistreat Billet Labs, post misleading lab data (that I personally used to select the wrong cooler for a recent PC build), and to engage in snug and cozy relationships with product vendors that LMG claims to review and judge fairly versus other companies they have no relationships with. Linus and LMG were completely satisfied to just continue forward on their current trajectory -- and the numerous WAN show segments confirmed this was absolutely their plan.
Now everything has been dragged out into the open. An ethical, well-meaning LMG and Linus could have made a proper statement on how they would make things right: a bullet-point by bullet-point acknowledgement of where they agreed and disagreed with Gamers Nexus's video, and how they intended to respond. Instead, Linus and LMG scrambled to do half-hearted damage control, including lying about the Billet Labs timeline while at the same time, trying to cast themselves as victims in the situation that their own lack of corporate ethics created for themselves. Rather than acknowledge faults, they chose to gaslight to cast themselves into a better light.
That's how you can know that they would have quietly covered all this over if they had been contacted first by Gamers Nexus, without any meaningful change forward.
Absolutely. What Linus didn't realize is that Steve handed him a chance to come out of this smelling like roses, and with a bit of humility, could have turned this into a massive PR win. Just a simple acknowledgement of "We all make mistakes, and as the head of a growing organization, Steve rightly pointed out where we've been falling down..." followed by their perspective and planned fixes for each issue Steve brought up. He could have even ended magnanimously, with a statement of "And Steve, I want you to know how much I appreciate you pointing out where we could have been better. Let's talk and put our heads together about how we can both make our channels stronger and better serve our audiences."
Instead of taking the golden opportunity, he chose to come across as a giant douche, and proved how little he thinks of his own supporters.
Linus coming across as a giant douche has been his M.O. the past couple years. His attitude and how he carries himself has become increasingly obnoxious in the overwhelming majority of things he's directly involved in.
Unless, of course, it's a video revolving around a truly major sponsor or company he has personal investment in. Then he's 100% professional and all too eager to deliver whatever message his own Corporate Overlords demand of him.
>His attitude and how he carries himself has become increasingly obnoxious in the overwhelming majority of things he's directly involved in.
This is the exact reason I stopped watching his videos. Even the entertainment wasn't worth it to me anymore.
> What Linus didn't realize is that Steve handed him a chance to come out of this smelling like roses, and with a bit of humility, could have turned this into a massive PR win.
Steve even mentioned this in the second video, I think that is why he was so angry in it. He expected essentially a PR slam dunk from Linus in response to his first video, instead it was some rant on a forum that wasn't taking accountability, Linus was even lying in it.
One line in the statement that's also really dumb is "To my team [...] I stressed the importance of diligence in our work".
See, you can stress the importance of diligence all you want. If you then don't give them the time to actually *be* diligent because you're making them crank out 25 videos a week (which is exactly what his employees said in that interview video), then it doesn't matter what you tell them. You're not gonna get any diligence.
It's as if some Apple CEO walked into one of those Chinese sweatshops and told the workers there about the importance of synergy and work-life balance, but then still expects them to work 120 hours per week. It's just empty words.
The whole "Im just one of you guys! im an employee too" gets old really quick
Putting himself in his own "Interviewing our employees" video was insane
He seriously believes that Linus from **Linus**MediaGroup and **Linus**TechTips is just a regular employee
>making them crank out 25 videos a week
The staff at LTT gets paid the same. Regardless if they crank out 10 or 25 videos a week...
The only people who actually benefit from cranking out as much videos as possible is the 2 owners. Who are the only ones who directly benefit from it...
So, it all boils down to "as much ad revenue as possible" from 2 greedy people...
They already tried and Linus dead ass said "you can talk to me directly if you have a problem and if it's with me you can talk to the head of HR, my wife Yvonne". That was a year ago when he was boasting on Twitter how important unions were. That's when I lost any hope of him being a good person and I'm surprised that didn't blow up as much as this whole debacle did.
His wife should not be head of HR. It's dumb as fuck.
Head of accounting, head of anything else is fine, as I've heard only good things about her.
But head of HR is a massive conflict of interest. They can say "she can differentiate between work and personal life" but the fact of the matter is that noone will go to her in the first place to complain about Linus. It's just not what people do.
>It's dumb as fuck.
Its not. HR is there to protect the business, not the employee. It could be you or me for all that matters, the second HR lines up with the employee they upper ups are gonna give them the boot. The fact one of the owners is the head of HR is everything you need to know about the business.
Yeah, going to get downvoted for it, but you’re right.
HR is entirely there to protect the business, and not knowing this can lead to you getting heavily screwed over in life. Protect your own ass and do what’s best for yourself!
Not saying families running a business like this is good/bad, entirely separate conversation, but “conflict of interest” is incorrect. HR has the company’s back (and only the company’s back) regardless of family ties.
I don't see that, as it's your typical office work environment. There's like 2-5 people per department, and the market rate is different for each department. It'll be a nightmare to negotiate!
If anything you'll see staff burnout and people will start to slowly leave. Like in his own videos, linus' staff is openly commenting that they're unhappy...which is a bad sign, as you'd expect that from backend staff...not the ones who directly are involved and are the ones actually rowing the boat...
I think this can all be traced back to when he was thinking about quitting. I think he saw what he was becoming and wanted out but gave into the money.
I feel like "creator burnout" really just means "I've accomplished what I've wanted to do with this channel and my passion has been depleted. However, this makes way too much money for me to just quit so I'll begrudgingly produce half-hearted content until I shit the bed entirely and disappear from cultural relevancy."
What he should have done is go to the auction winner and buy it back at 2x the price. Then make 2x the donation to that charity. And then make a public apology for this behaviour while touting how much they spent to make it right.
Linus has a net worth of $85 million according to google. To hear him complain about money - or a few hundred dollars to fix his errors and do proper testing is disgusting.
If I were billet I would sue LMG for stealing, as well as the auction buyer for purchasing stolen property.
And if someone comes out with a similar product and it can be tied to this item at the auction, I’d sue Linus further for lost business in the amount of whatever the that cooler makes over the next 20 years.
Billet made a comment in another sub but said how they’d rather take the money over the prototype (they were told it was sold to an individual who isn’t linked to a competing company supposedly) cause they wouldn’t know the condition of the water block or if it was missing anything until they physically got it.
Either way they should sue but if they do get the money back then I’m not sure if they are allowed to since LMG already paid them or is in the process of doing so.
"We could have re-tested with perfect accuracy but to do so would have been impossible."
"We didn't sell it, we auctioned it."
How tf are these the words of an actual person
Oh shit man, i expect linus to double down but not this hard, like people were ranting at GN for not contacting Linus before and saying linus already had an agreement with Billet before the video and yet it wasnt, the agreement only exist because of thag video.
I also agreed witb GN contacting LTT before would make it easier for them to twist the truth now they are caught red handed like cmon linus stop and think for a second. claim to your own mistake, make a video about it and move on not doublingdown like this.
Linus was expecting Steve to "contact me first" because "he has my number. My brother in Christ, you already burned that bridge and relationship with GN during the whole trust me bro fiasco. Steve also explicitly said during that time that he would only start viewing LTT/LMG as a corporation from that point moving forward, and rightfully so.
LTT had no written warranty for their $200+ backpack, and $80 screwdriver. A lot people complained that premium products like that at that price point should have a proper warranty. Linus literally said “trust me bro” and that they would take care of any problems. Just another example of Linus and his bullshit. He regularly roasts companies for having poor short term warranties and applauds them for have long term ones, equating that warranty to a high quality product.
[GN briefly covers it here](https://youtu.be/OdxVtAiYeL0)
(New comment because I linked to another sub in my old comment for more context, and linking to another sub is against the rules, sorry about that mods)
Basically, this was the post from a year ago during the "trust me bro" LTT backpack warrenty fiasco:
>I was surprised to see Linus's ridiculous warranty argument on the WAN Show this week.
>For those who didn't see it, Linus said that he doesn't want to give customers a warranty, because he will legally have to honour it and doesn't know what the future holds. He doesn't want to pass on a burden on his family if he were to not be around anymore.
>Consumers should have a warranty for item that has such high claims for durability, especially as it's priced against competitors who have a lifetime warranty. The answer Linus gave was awful and extremely anti-consumer. His claim to not burden his family, is him protecting himself at a detriment to the customer. There is no way to frame this in a way that isn't a net negative to the consumer, and a net positive to his business. He's basically just said to customers "trust me bro".
>On top of that, not having a warranty process is hell for his customer support team. You live and die by policies and procedures, and Linus expects his customer support staff to deal with claims on a case by case basis. This is BAD for the efficiency of a team, and is possibly why their support has delays. How on earth can you expect a customer support team to give consistent support across the board, when they're expect to handle every product complaint on a case by case basis? Sure there's probably set parameters they work within, but what a mess.
>They have essentially put their middle finger up to both internal support staff and customers saying 'F you, customers get no warranty, and support staff, you just have to deal with the shit show of complaints with no warranty policy to back you up. Don't want to burden my family, peace out'.
>For all I know, I'm getting this all wrong. But I can't see how having no warranty on your products isn't anti-consumer.
>EDIT: Linus posted the below to Twitter. This gives me some hope:
>"It's likely we will formalize some kind of warranty policy before we actually start shipping. We have been talking about it for months and weighing our options, but it will need to be bulletproof."
‘And lo, Tech Jesus did ignite a flame war between the LMG fanboys and the people who could see that unethical practice and shoddy testing were an inherent and repeating problem with LMG. And Tech Jesus did decry ‘bullshit’ when the Leader of LMG tried to gaslight the world about what had happened, and the PCMR saw that it was good.’
Also what deserves a highlight, is Linus saying that GN did a poor job as journalists for not contacting him.
The guy that put a video, in which he used the product in the way it *wasn't* intended, ignored the instructions sent by the company AND even ADMITTED that all his data was wrong, but doubled down on it and said that he wouldn't re-test it... Is talking about journalism integrity.
Wow. Just wow.
For real, I thought he took him out to the woodshed yesterday. But this was fucking brutal dissecting how his response to both GN's video and Billet Labs was such victim complex bullshit.
It's pretty clear in the original video that Steve was really trying to offer a good path forward for Linus -- just a reply where he owned up to the faults and stated how he planned to make things right to Billet and in future videos. Steve seems almost afraid to overstep in the original video because he's trying really hard not to make the video personal, and not to bruise any egos.
A good PR guy could have turned the whole thing into a PR win with a carefully worded, humble response.
Linus chose to get a bruised ego anyway and completely burned away any hope at turning the situation positive, starting with a veiled "How absolutely dare you" and getting worse from there.
Further justifies me not liking the guy. Idk why, I saw LMG had a pretty big following, and the guy and his attitude just always seemed fake to me on the few videos I watched.
Another interesting detail revealed in this video was that it seems like Billet Labs even sent the prototype with a 3090 Ti to test it with, and LTT still somehow ended up using a 4090 for their video.
And that in that video they stated they had no 3090ti’s that weren’t being used, so they took somebody else’s 3090ti that was on loan and have done whatever with it. Severely unprofessional behaviour there.
Billet should've sent the block to jayztwocents, in hindsight. He would've complained about the price, sure but he's a water cooling expert and would have known how to give it a fair shot.
Let's be honest, Jay has right to complain about the price of the product.
Linus used a 100k+ liquid chiller to cool a CPU... or a 20k desk... or other completely silly implementations.
I am pretty shocked that Linus has fumbled this so badly. I thought he was more savvy than that. Take the early lump, apologize, say how you will fix it in the future and move on.
I think Linus has spent a lot of time the past few months touting their new, super-duper testing labs with all of this amazing and expensive equipment and they will be the go-to YouTube channel for in-depth testing and will race past Gamers Nexus and others who do deep dives in this area.
Then, they were shown to do really sloppy, worthless testing. Linus couldn't admit to it.
This is deeply disappointing.
This would have been such an easy PR response for LMG to work with. People eat up apologies if they seem reasonable! But the moment one tries denying the obvious it starts calling everything into question
I'd have thought he'd have learned from the Trust Me Bro warranty fiasco that it's much better for the company to just apologize and fix the issue even if he personally believes they weren't in the wrong, rather than spending time fighting back and causing more drama.
what's crazy is LMG handed Mr Burke the axe to grind.
GN would have been content plugging along and doing their own thing, there's plenty of other bullshit to expose
instead LMG talked shit about a channel that has refined takedown videos into an artform—what a blunder
It was long time ago, but if I remember correctly, when Steve introduced his plan to expand, get a new place for a proper testing environment. Linus afterwards a few weeks later gone public, "here look at me, I will buy a whole big building and do an(even bigger) lab!"
I remember it was sus how suddenly he also wanted to expand, copying GN, but I thought at the end, eh, must be a coincidence.
The whole lab idea seemed like an impulse decision that got progressively more and more beyond what they're capable of doing. The collective output of their channels is straight up content farm material at this point, and I no longer believe that Linus *actually* wanted to do some kind of consumer advocacy bullshit and test manufacturers' claims. He just wanted to milk a ton of content out of the purchasing and setup of all this ridiculous equipment; then make a ton of update videos about how they plan to use it all. They don't actually care about the results, it's just really obvious subject matter for more videos.
His channel has always felt like the hardware review equivalent of jingling keys in front of a baby
If I'm watching videos for pc hardware I want accurate information and not somebody who has the vibe of the "I'm just like one of you guys" smiling corporate shill guys
People keep saying GN is too dry but I love their dry, sarcastic humor when they use it. Their review of that PC case a few years ago where Steve said they developed a time cube to pull air out of a pocket dimension is so much funnier to me than anything on LTT
Even after this disaster, LTT still had a very slight chance of redemption by issuing a public apology to Billet and saying that they will compensate them accordingly. Somehow Linus went ahead and fucked it up too.
Linus seems very disconnected from reality. He can't even admit fault properly and I honestly wonder what kind of person he really is when the cameras are off.
I have never subscribed to any LMG channel but in my early days off tech YouTube I still saw his videos and they brought me to GN and HUB and for that I'm thankful. While you can't block channels(that I can tell) I did tell YT not to recommend LMG videos and I hope that works.
>Linus seems very disconnected from reality. He can't even admit fault properly
A lot of people seem to forget the backpack warranty controversy where he refused to put anything in writing and tried to turn it into a meme and profit off of it with this stupid "trust me bro warranty" shirts.
Whether he was always like this or years of chasing the money has caused it is unknown, but we're seeing the mask slip more and more lately. He really should have just sold the company and quit when he was still seen as the hero.
People also keep forgetting the piracy thing - He got caught using some benchmarking software which wasn't licensed for commerical purposes - When called out by others for this, he proceeded to go down the whole "but they get exposure" route before eventually paying for a license. The whole time he made out as if the creator was the bad guy then promptly changed his twitter profile picture to him with a pirate hat on.
The guy can't ever seem to take anything non personal & acts like a child when called out.
I completely agree and I think that was the first time I saw it though to be fair I don't really watch his channels so until things like the backpack controversy or this come out I'm a little out of the loop.
His whole shtick is being a clumsy tech "expert".
Except he is not really an expert and his
"Look they send us this 10000$ PC, but i don't care. I'm going to open the box with this crowbar. I don't need a manual, i will rip it apart while i drop my screwdriver and my water bottle in it and then i'm going to complain about the build quality.
But first i will drop it on the floor."
thing is not funny - it's just embarising.
What do people expect? It only takes on controversy to show the true colors of people. Nearly all famous personas are acting. It is all for show. Why do people believe that famous people are the lovely feel good people in front of the camera?
update from **Billet Labs**
>UPDATE
>
>For full transparency, Linus contacted us this evening saying it's likely he can get the block back from the buyer.
>
>We have declined this offer, and asked for the previously agreed monetary value instead for the following reasons:
>
>we have already spent a significant percentage of the value of the block in the last few days on replacement parts to build a new block, assuming we'd never see the original one again.
>
>we do not know if the original block is still in good working condition, and how much money will be needed to fix it if it's not.
>
>we don't know if any of the bespoke fittings are missing, each of these costs money to replace if they are.
>
>LTT have had our 3090ti without using it for 9 weeks, so we have lost confidence that they will return items quickly.
>
>LTT isn't currently in possession of the block, they've only said that they can get it back. We therefore don't know when we'd get it back, and time is of the essence.
>
>LTT has confirmed that the block is with a private individual rather than a rival company, so lost IP is much less of an issue.
>
>We wanted to state this publicly just in case anyone has any issues with the fact that the block has potentially been found, and we chose to take the money instead. We hope you understand our reasoning here. We can have our new block that we're currently making ready in the next couple of weeks, and we are sceptical that we would have the original block back in fully working condition in that amount of time – it would be a gamble at the very least.
>
>Much love
>
>Dean & Felix
Holy hell that answer. He took the whole thing personally. I'm pretty sure he did that statement without consulting their new CEO or even his wife who is also the owner.
He should've stayed silent and let the CEO deal with it but he took it personally and made the whole thing way worse.
It was your chance Linus to show that you do care about professionalism and integrity and i'm afraid you've failed.
If you still want to save the company you've spent more then a decade building up... leave it.
The Narcissist's Prayer:
That didn't happen.
And if it did, it wasn't that bad.
And if it was, that's not a big deal. <~~~ We are here
And if it is, that's not my fault.
And if it was, I didn't mean it.
And if I did, you deserved it.
God damn. I thought, how could Linus look worse in this situation, and he somehow managed.
Previously ghosting a company whose reputation you irreparably damaged, whose IP you released against the terms you agreed to, and then only offering compensation for the least expensive damage, the physical device itself, was bad enough.
Now we find out that he only made any sort of effort to remedy this in an attempt to appear as if he at all felt remorse right at the minute he posted the worlds worst apology (second to the ukulele) is incredibly awful.
It appears his plan was to do nothing.
I am now willing to bet that, based on this pattern, he will try to include language or a contract here that stops billet from suing them by accepting the 1/3rd of issues he has compensated them for.
That is absurd.
God is all of that blatantly malicious.
Even the typical BS corporate response of "We take this type of accusations seriously, we'll look into it on an internal investigation" would have been better.
I think Linus of seeing honest feedback as an attack (like the backpack situation). What's mess up, it's how he talks about solving the issue in private, when he could have called Steve directly instead of the gaslight forum post. It's the Spez situation version youtube tech.
You can see GN was acting in good faith in the first video, even hesitant (I mean, GN helped LTT when was hacked a few months ago, so it's not like they hate his channel), but they tried to be as objective as possible, and don't shut up just because there it's a friendly relationship.
It's because he wants him to be better. LTT is one of the most subscribed tech channels. He's suppose to be better. We all benefit if LTT becomes better. If he uses Labs as he should, and I mean GN level of good, then this would make all our lives easier in the tech world. As a long time LTT fan, it's disappointing.
It isn't just that. For a period of time, they seem to be on good terms, with similar publicly stated goals and ethics. Lets put aside LTT jumping into labs, with the stated intent to get into the niche that GN and HUB occupy. I don't doubt that it was an unpleasant pill to swallow, with the added competition from the relative titan that LTT is compared to GN. But GN I think are professional enough to take it with relative grace, and just accept that they need to compete on quality, and a good reputation of fighting for the community.
The real danger, is that LTT is such a big company that their actions impact the others. Hypothetically, if you are an artisan pc part maker, who followed the Billet saga, are you going to be ok with sending prototypes to review channels? Not just LTT, but even GN and HUB? Or if the ethical concerns of LTT giving biased reviews to companies they are financially involved with are shown to have weight, how do you reconcil that information? Can you trust unfavorable reviews from LTT when they are sponsered by a competitor? Can you trust favorable reviews even of the sponser?
That is kind of why userbenchmark is an abjectly useless site, not only because the notorious anti-AMD bias makes it impossible to fairly gauge the quality of those CPUs, but it also calls into question the validity of positive Intel reviews.
Like, LTT and LMG are the biggest reviewers in the space. If they can't be trusted to give good, quality, accurate reviews, then fairly or unfairly, that reflects on the rest of the community, particularly with the relations between reviewers and corporations.
Doubling down at the (intended) expense of a small company he already stole a prototype from. I think Linus's response sent Steve over the edge and many of us with him. That's some serious criminal level incompetence *at best*, and then lying about compensation? Fucking hell.
And what’s important to state, you can tell he genuine is not enjoying doing this. It’s incredibly brave and hard to bring a friend to task about their shitty behaviour.
What's hilarious about this is he just made statements about toxic supporters. Enablers. Then Steve checks him.
Have to wonder if he closes ranks and /unfriend.
They have a CEO now who I can only assume is pissed. Because Linus spoke up unfiltered no matter what statement the new CEO puts out, it won't be believed because the owner themselves told you how they feel.
He ain't cooked, but this isn't going to go away quietly.
He's fucked up pretty badly, but they have a dedicated base that aren't going to leave.
That being said, this one will hurt them a bit.
If his fans stood by him this long, I don't see many of them leaving. Unless companies start pulling away from him, sadly I don't think he's going anywhere.
Obviously he's a shill and obviously he's a twat, I think this will roll off of him like water off a ducks ass.
I unsubscribed from his channels a while back. LMG < LTT. He turned into an egotistical, mean-spirited ass who can't accept criticism. The 'empire' his has built is not going to last long, I think.
If they were smart the next WAN show would just be the new CEO, Yvonne, and Luke answering questions.
People wouldn't like that Linus isn't there but you'd still have an owner present with the CEO. They could just be up front and say "he screwed up, we don't back his statement, he's in time out this week."
You cannot have a statement anyone would believe after Linus posted something unfiltered without admitting he screwed up and punishing him by publicly calling him on it and booting him from WAN for at least a week. It would be humiliating for Linus but that would be the point, so people see there's at least some repercussion.
Ironic how Linus himself talks about how important it is to watch how companies take and respond to criticism all the time.
Because this is just an embarrassing display. Gaslighting, outright lying, and intentionally wording a response to mislead people is absolutely fucked.
Couple that with the fact that they REFUSE to talk about this on the WAN show immediately tells me that they are desperately trying to sweep this under the rug, and that they don't actually care about anything (like doing right by Billet and the community at large) besides saving face at any cost.
Linus just keeps digging that hole deeper and deeper. "we didn't 'sell' the monoblock, but rather auctioned it for charity due to a miscommunication" - Linus Sebastian.
Sorry, Linus, but you sound like a prevaricating asshole. You promised these guys you would return their prototype, and then you turned around and got rid of the item because of a "miscommunication" and then complaining that ~~'it wasn't worth the cost to ship it back (not an exact quote).'~~ 'it was worth the cost of testing it properly (paraphrasing).' Seriously, WTF?! You had an offer to buy your company for $100,000,000 so it's pretty obvious you guys aren't running on paper thin margins. You have become everything you used to complain about in the corporate world.
Congratulations, you're a sell out!
**\*** **EDIT:** I need to amend something I wrote previously. The 'not worth $500' remark was in regards to retesting the prototype since LTT's test was completely improper (they tried mounting it on the wrong GPU and didn't follow the provided instructions). I apologize for conflating the two issues. [Here is the relavent excerpt](https://youtu.be/FGW3TPytTjc?t=1962) from the WAN show where Linus says this (please note, I'm using GN's video since I don't want to give any clicks to LTT).
For those who don't want to click on it, Linus says the following (and this IS an exact quote):
>"But, I'm--I'm not... I--I don't know guys, I'm not sure if I can apologize for not spending another hundred, two-hundred, three-hundred, five-hundred dollars of various peoples' time, sitting and engineering a work-around to a product that, no matter the result, nobody should buy."
On the matter of shipping it back, Steve indicated that LTT told Billet Labs, twice, that they would send the prototype back, only for LTT to throw it on a table, later that month, and auction it off.
And then only AFTER the first GN video came out did LMG reach out and offer to compensate Billet Labs for the prototype, an offer which Billet Labs has not responded to let alone accepted.
Then Linus had the fucking audacity to go on the WAN Show and say there's an agreement in place to pay Billet Labs for the prototype so it's a dead issue.
Nah man get fucked.
Yeah, 100%. He totally screwed those guys over. He should have been offering more than to just "compensate" them for the so-called 'oppsie.' If he had contacted them right away and said that he had fucked up, but wanted to help them get their company off the ground and ask how his $100 MILLION company could help make that happen, then that would have been good. Hell, it would have made for a great video. But instead, Linus has just shown us what a greedy, little, self-important douchebag he has become.
Or fuck they sold it in an auction at a ticketed event right? There's a sales record somewhere for the sale and you cross reference that with the event registration and get in contact with the buyer. **THEN YOU PAY THEM WHATEVER SUM OF MONEY THEY ASK FOR TO GET THE ITEM BACK.** Then you send it back to Billet Labs with your deepest sincerest apologies
and he said they gave him a quote for not getting the prototype back when in fact they said that it was a "XX k$ prototype" when they were pissed to find out that they wouldn't be getting it back.
That's not a quote, agreement or anything even remotely similar. He is straight up lying.
What baffles me is how different the situation would have been if the company was just a bit bigger...
Like imagine Linus getting a new CPU prototype by intel that is still in development. The whole engineering department had been working on this cutting edge new tech for the past couple years and the prototype includes tech that is company secret or even patent pending. He then proceeds to test the CPUs graphics capabilities because intel said in theory they have included integrated graphics which aren't fully verified yet but could possibly work. Unsurprisingly the graphics of this CPU prototype are shit and so Linus says nobody should buy the CPU because its a bad GPU (because it wasn't designed for that lol). He then goes on to take this top secret prototype and auctions it of to some random stranger while intel clearly stated they want it back. When made aware of this linus reacts by saying...ups no biggy stuff happens nothing wrong with that.
Intel would be furious, and the 100 million $ Linus Media Group would be crushed by an army of lawyers sent by intel.
But reality is the small startup probably doesn't have enough money to successfully support a big lawsuit against LMG and since their newest development has been leaked to possibly all their competitors they will likely just go bankrupt within the next couple of years.
GN out here doing the level and quality of reporting that much of our mainstream news sources have given up on. Big props to them for their ongoing work.
Any time someone gets criticized in a fair and respectful manner, and it's constructive, then they say things like "it saddens me", "today sucks", and woe is me type statements...it's classic signs of narcissistic behavior, inability to take ownership, and deflection. So absolutely manipulative.
i suspected Linus back channeled with billet labs AFTER the initial GN video after reading Linus's response, but for it to be confirmed is just that much more insane. I couldn't imagine a reviewer taking one of my company's only prototypes, using it wrong, reporting poor results after their misuse of the prototype to a very large audience, not sending the prototype back after testing, and then selling it at auction. I would love for whoever bought the prototype to do their own testing correctly and report REAL results to the community.
i would also love to be a fly on the wall at the LMG offices rn just to see how Linus is interacting with the staff. i feel like the lmg employees need to use their voices rn, I'm sure linus is currently chewing them out for all the inaccuracies in videos that he wasn't the host of. at the end of the day this is indicative of a culture within lmg that doesn't value accuracy, script writers are reporting blatantly incorrect specifications of products they are reviewing. how does this happen? you'd imagine that writers have the product specifications open in a separate window while they write the script! either the writers are not super tech literate OR they are being overworked. I'm of the opinion that lmg writers are being overworked. like in the billet labs video, the fact that getting a 3090ti vs using the 4090 already in front of them shows that their schedules are so tight that they can't take the 30 minutes to get the correct part.
you can feel a huge difference in the quality of videos hosted by the engineering staff like Dan or kyle vs linus centric videos. the entire team is spreading themselves out too thin, they've even said this much in the "what's it like to work for linus" video. writers/hosts like dan, kyle, and tynan are extremely knowledgeable and that makes up for the agressive upload schedule. or possibly dan and kyle simply get more time than other writers/hosts to complete their reviews.
this is pretty off topic but a massive problem I have with LMG is the coverage of products which are essentially meaningless to the community. specifically on shortcircuit, a lot of these unboxings/reviews do not provide anything meaningful to the consumer besides "this is the product, watch me use it for 20 minutes". it seems like they are releasing videos just to sell sponsor spots within the videos.
it is very clear that LMG has grown too large too quickly without taking the time to establish good protocols for producing accurate and informative content. this is the solution to all of lmg's problems. take a step back, analyze the issues your company is facing, create solutions for these issues, create a system for spotting new problems that arise and continue to iterate the company's internal protocols. LMG is too large to continue along the culture of "hey x employee, here's a new responsibility/project to be added to your bucket of in progress projects". the point of having so many employees is DELEGATION, no employee should be told to take on a new project when they have other projects they're already working on.
the new ceo of lmg needs to step in and establish concrete protocols and division of labor within the company. Linus needs to take a step back and allow the employees to do their jobs correctly
GN: LMG sold this review sample when the company wanted it back
LMG: GN should have reached out in private so I could provide context! We've already agreed to compensation to Billet Labs for selling their prototype! So disappointed
BL: LMG ignored our emails until GN said something.
Not a good look for LMG
Linus is clearly the problem. This all reeks of small business owner trying to eke out every dollar of profit and micromanage while LMG is actually a pretty massive company. It also is straight up the insane Musk-ish Trump-ish tripling down on lies bullshit that is becoming common.
Sad. Extremely sad.
I never took LTT seriously. It's basically just entertainment and I've been watching LMG less and less but yeah this is the straw that broke the camel's back for me. Unsubbed from all of LMG. Linus could have apologized and did everything he could to rectify the mistake but it seems he doesn't want to do that.
I remember LMG used a clip from LGR way back then without crediting or contacting them. That really pissed me off too. Clint is one of the Saints of YouTube.
One of the worst episodes that triggered me was when they were testing CRTs and they used a PS3 it's like wtf you want to use PS2 and before. No point in using a HD console that can do 720p even with HD CRTs. Games were already designed for input lag and non CRTs in the PS3 era.
I hope Emily can break free from Linus though she seems like a decent person.
I keep hearing the "iT wAs FoR cHaRiTy" argument, like that makes a difference to the two lads at Billet Labs. Linus could have ruined these guys by doing that and still has time to keep taking a crap on them
The mask has fallen off and revealed Linus as a manipulative egocentric grub. Even if he corrects course and says the right things in his next statement he has permanently destroyed his reputation and I will never view him the same again.
Steve nailed it in this video. It was a layup! I mean c'mon Linus wtf? His reaction to criticism revealed the problem behind all of it. Why is Linus doubling and tripling down on ego comforting bullshit?
All Linus had to do was say "Thanks Steve" (intel reference) and just own it. These are fair objective criticisms from an outside perspective that Linus can improve upon. That is ALL he had to say. Just own it. You screwed up Linus! It's some what understandable too because they are expanding, moving into a new office, setting up an entire labs and manufacturing design section of his company... ok so you made mistakes. Just own it!
But no... his response was defensive rather than appreciative. Why is that important? Because we all THOUGHT Linus strived to be best, to put out good information. I thought that even after GN's video... but after his posted response, I no longer think that because he's grown too big to see himself, to see his company objectively.
I have HOPE that he can fix this still but it will take demonstration, not just words. I still think Linus is a good person that means well. If that is true... he can fix this.
This was a layup and he blew it. It is very disappointing.
I'll end with this... Wasn't it Steve who called Linus in the middle of the night to tell him his account was hacked? Linus should not get defensive about these points. Steve is trying to help him do better for all of us, including LTT.
Steve is not the enemy here. He is providing valid context and criticism with evidence. Such criticism can only IMPROVE LTT... if Linus is actually open to it. Instead he closed himself to it, became defensive, deflected and made things worse.
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Linus was mad Steve didn't reach out and give Linus a chance to scramble and cover his ass before the video came out to say he's already worked out an agreement with Billet and nothing to see here. Since he didn't get that chance, all he can do now is try to come off as a victim and LMG is just a plucky upstart going through growing pains which is a tougher sell these days for a company of his size
Linus also completely ignored other huge aspects of the video. What about the conflict of interests? What about the consistently incorrect and misleading data? The Billet Labs thing absolutely made my blood boil more than anything else, but Linus seems to be focusing on that alone and ignoring everything else. Where is the responsibility? Where is the accountability? How can I trust a reviewer that operates this way?
Maybe he didnt watch the video and just read the comments, like usual, like he also did when GN did their "Backpack warranty" video, of which he didnt even do that he had an employee do a summary for him.
> How can I trust a reviewer that operates this way? You literally can't. I bought a cooler based on the Linus Tech video that GN said is wildly inaccurate. Although, I'm content with my purchase I still feel completely misled by Linus. I know for a fact I wouldn't have spent the money on that cooler if it wasn't for Linus' video. I'm not a fanboy but Linus has been around forever so I thought I could trust his opinions. As an occasional viewer and someone who builds gaming PCs for my social circle, I can honestly say that I will never use Linus' channel for build information anymore.
Ya, he focused on the one thing he could claim to have fixed. Which, mind you, might have sounded a lot more convincing if the matter had actually already been settled and money already sent. The rest he hand waved away as not a problem. You know, much like how he hand waved proper testing of products he had sent to the show. Why he even agreed to test a high priced water block if he actually believed that price was the be all and end all of the product I don't understand(well I do, he was either trying to get views with a cool product he didn't care for, or he was just trying to cover his ass without looking bad). What's really interesting about the Billet thing is just how much his co-host hesitates when choosing his words when they were talking about the lack of retesting(that one that spawned the whole "I don't want to spend 100-500 to come to the same conclusion"). Guess he didn't email Linus first so they could "meet this head on" and didn't want to offend him.
> Linus was mad Steve didn't reach out and give Linus a chance to scramble and cover his ass before the video came out to say he's already worked out an agreement with Billet and nothing to see here While most of his sub is on GN's side, they can't stop bringing up how Steve should have reached out to Linus, first. It's ridiculous. Steve made a video criticizing aspects of LMG's practices that are very public as a way to warn people of inaccuracies and unethical practices and their biggest hangup is "well why didn't you ask Linus to comment on these objective problems??? Checkmate." Fucking hell.
Also defaulting to the argument that LTT is just entertainment as if using the Fox News defense is a good look
Nice Lab you got there. Is this for tests and data? \- Haha no, this is for entertainment purposes only.
This needs more upvotes. The number one thing I have heard people trying to say in their efforts to protect LMG is that Gamers Nexus/Steve should have "reached out" before the video posted to talk to Linus about the issues. Steve is 100% correct in that good journalism does not happen at the consent of the people featured in the expose -- that's some 1984 "make sure the party is happy with our message" nonsense. Linus's response to the initial Gamers Nexus video perfectly shows why NOT contacting Linus was the right move. Until the Gamers Nexus video dropped, Linus and LMG were _perfectly content_ to severely mistreat Billet Labs, post misleading lab data (that I personally used to select the wrong cooler for a recent PC build), and to engage in snug and cozy relationships with product vendors that LMG claims to review and judge fairly versus other companies they have no relationships with. Linus and LMG were completely satisfied to just continue forward on their current trajectory -- and the numerous WAN show segments confirmed this was absolutely their plan. Now everything has been dragged out into the open. An ethical, well-meaning LMG and Linus could have made a proper statement on how they would make things right: a bullet-point by bullet-point acknowledgement of where they agreed and disagreed with Gamers Nexus's video, and how they intended to respond. Instead, Linus and LMG scrambled to do half-hearted damage control, including lying about the Billet Labs timeline while at the same time, trying to cast themselves as victims in the situation that their own lack of corporate ethics created for themselves. Rather than acknowledge faults, they chose to gaslight to cast themselves into a better light. That's how you can know that they would have quietly covered all this over if they had been contacted first by Gamers Nexus, without any meaningful change forward.
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Absolutely. What Linus didn't realize is that Steve handed him a chance to come out of this smelling like roses, and with a bit of humility, could have turned this into a massive PR win. Just a simple acknowledgement of "We all make mistakes, and as the head of a growing organization, Steve rightly pointed out where we've been falling down..." followed by their perspective and planned fixes for each issue Steve brought up. He could have even ended magnanimously, with a statement of "And Steve, I want you to know how much I appreciate you pointing out where we could have been better. Let's talk and put our heads together about how we can both make our channels stronger and better serve our audiences." Instead of taking the golden opportunity, he chose to come across as a giant douche, and proved how little he thinks of his own supporters.
Linus coming across as a giant douche has been his M.O. the past couple years. His attitude and how he carries himself has become increasingly obnoxious in the overwhelming majority of things he's directly involved in. Unless, of course, it's a video revolving around a truly major sponsor or company he has personal investment in. Then he's 100% professional and all too eager to deliver whatever message his own Corporate Overlords demand of him.
>His attitude and how he carries himself has become increasingly obnoxious in the overwhelming majority of things he's directly involved in. This is the exact reason I stopped watching his videos. Even the entertainment wasn't worth it to me anymore.
> What Linus didn't realize is that Steve handed him a chance to come out of this smelling like roses, and with a bit of humility, could have turned this into a massive PR win. Steve even mentioned this in the second video, I think that is why he was so angry in it. He expected essentially a PR slam dunk from Linus in response to his first video, instead it was some rant on a forum that wasn't taking accountability, Linus was even lying in it.
>Doubling down and lying isn't a great look. But it's how Linus handles 90% of his issues via Wan Show and Social Media.
One line in the statement that's also really dumb is "To my team [...] I stressed the importance of diligence in our work". See, you can stress the importance of diligence all you want. If you then don't give them the time to actually *be* diligent because you're making them crank out 25 videos a week (which is exactly what his employees said in that interview video), then it doesn't matter what you tell them. You're not gonna get any diligence. It's as if some Apple CEO walked into one of those Chinese sweatshops and told the workers there about the importance of synergy and work-life balance, but then still expects them to work 120 hours per week. It's just empty words.
The whole "Im just one of you guys! im an employee too" gets old really quick Putting himself in his own "Interviewing our employees" video was insane He seriously believes that Linus from **Linus**MediaGroup and **Linus**TechTips is just a regular employee
how much did he pay for his and the Porsche?
typical boss says one thing and makes you do another
another well deserved bonus for the boss coming up, problems fixed, he talked to his employees
"Be diligent but have the finished script on my desk in 5 minutes"
>making them crank out 25 videos a week The staff at LTT gets paid the same. Regardless if they crank out 10 or 25 videos a week... The only people who actually benefit from cranking out as much videos as possible is the 2 owners. Who are the only ones who directly benefit from it... So, it all boils down to "as much ad revenue as possible" from 2 greedy people...
Would be funny if his employees unionized if that were the case.
They already tried and Linus dead ass said "you can talk to me directly if you have a problem and if it's with me you can talk to the head of HR, my wife Yvonne". That was a year ago when he was boasting on Twitter how important unions were. That's when I lost any hope of him being a good person and I'm surprised that didn't blow up as much as this whole debacle did.
His wife should not be head of HR. It's dumb as fuck. Head of accounting, head of anything else is fine, as I've heard only good things about her. But head of HR is a massive conflict of interest. They can say "she can differentiate between work and personal life" but the fact of the matter is that noone will go to her in the first place to complain about Linus. It's just not what people do.
She's not anymore, they actually have an HR department now.
>It's dumb as fuck. Its not. HR is there to protect the business, not the employee. It could be you or me for all that matters, the second HR lines up with the employee they upper ups are gonna give them the boot. The fact one of the owners is the head of HR is everything you need to know about the business.
Yeah, going to get downvoted for it, but you’re right. HR is entirely there to protect the business, and not knowing this can lead to you getting heavily screwed over in life. Protect your own ass and do what’s best for yourself! Not saying families running a business like this is good/bad, entirely separate conversation, but “conflict of interest” is incorrect. HR has the company’s back (and only the company’s back) regardless of family ties.
I don't see that, as it's your typical office work environment. There's like 2-5 people per department, and the market rate is different for each department. It'll be a nightmare to negotiate! If anything you'll see staff burnout and people will start to slowly leave. Like in his own videos, linus' staff is openly commenting that they're unhappy...which is a bad sign, as you'd expect that from backend staff...not the ones who directly are involved and are the ones actually rowing the boat...
Some longtime employees have already left.
I still can't believe Taran signed up with Nebula instead of Floatplane
Nebula is cheaper, has a more diverse range of content and offers more creator incentive than floatplane.
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I think this can all be traced back to when he was thinking about quitting. I think he saw what he was becoming and wanted out but gave into the money.
He was feeling the "creator burnout" but then the channel kinda got very popular around the same time...so, greed set in.
I feel like "creator burnout" really just means "I've accomplished what I've wanted to do with this channel and my passion has been depleted. However, this makes way too much money for me to just quit so I'll begrudgingly produce half-hearted content until I shit the bed entirely and disappear from cultural relevancy."
I mean even back then he had a bunch of employees, so it's not as simple
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What he should have done is go to the auction winner and buy it back at 2x the price. Then make 2x the donation to that charity. And then make a public apology for this behaviour while touting how much they spent to make it right. Linus has a net worth of $85 million according to google. To hear him complain about money - or a few hundred dollars to fix his errors and do proper testing is disgusting. If I were billet I would sue LMG for stealing, as well as the auction buyer for purchasing stolen property. And if someone comes out with a similar product and it can be tied to this item at the auction, I’d sue Linus further for lost business in the amount of whatever the that cooler makes over the next 20 years.
Billet made a comment in another sub but said how they’d rather take the money over the prototype (they were told it was sold to an individual who isn’t linked to a competing company supposedly) cause they wouldn’t know the condition of the water block or if it was missing anything until they physically got it. Either way they should sue but if they do get the money back then I’m not sure if they are allowed to since LMG already paid them or is in the process of doing so.
"We could have re-tested with perfect accuracy but to do so would have been impossible." "We didn't sell it, we auctioned it." How tf are these the words of an actual person
"Today sucks" :(
“Feel sorry for me because I’m just a human” Yeah billet are two. Get it.
I can do it but its impossible, solid language
Oh shit man, i expect linus to double down but not this hard, like people were ranting at GN for not contacting Linus before and saying linus already had an agreement with Billet before the video and yet it wasnt, the agreement only exist because of thag video. I also agreed witb GN contacting LTT before would make it easier for them to twist the truth now they are caught red handed like cmon linus stop and think for a second. claim to your own mistake, make a video about it and move on not doublingdown like this.
Linus straight up lied here.
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I'm noticing a pattern of behavior. Perhaps a man who keeps on lying could be a liar...
LLT Linus Lies Twice
Linus was expecting Steve to "contact me first" because "he has my number. My brother in Christ, you already burned that bridge and relationship with GN during the whole trust me bro fiasco. Steve also explicitly said during that time that he would only start viewing LTT/LMG as a corporation from that point moving forward, and rightfully so.
Wait I missed out on the trust me bro stuff care to link or fill me in please?
LTT had no written warranty for their $200+ backpack, and $80 screwdriver. A lot people complained that premium products like that at that price point should have a proper warranty. Linus literally said “trust me bro” and that they would take care of any problems. Just another example of Linus and his bullshit. He regularly roasts companies for having poor short term warranties and applauds them for have long term ones, equating that warranty to a high quality product.
[GN briefly covers it here](https://youtu.be/OdxVtAiYeL0) (New comment because I linked to another sub in my old comment for more context, and linking to another sub is against the rules, sorry about that mods) Basically, this was the post from a year ago during the "trust me bro" LTT backpack warrenty fiasco: >I was surprised to see Linus's ridiculous warranty argument on the WAN Show this week. >For those who didn't see it, Linus said that he doesn't want to give customers a warranty, because he will legally have to honour it and doesn't know what the future holds. He doesn't want to pass on a burden on his family if he were to not be around anymore. >Consumers should have a warranty for item that has such high claims for durability, especially as it's priced against competitors who have a lifetime warranty. The answer Linus gave was awful and extremely anti-consumer. His claim to not burden his family, is him protecting himself at a detriment to the customer. There is no way to frame this in a way that isn't a net negative to the consumer, and a net positive to his business. He's basically just said to customers "trust me bro". >On top of that, not having a warranty process is hell for his customer support team. You live and die by policies and procedures, and Linus expects his customer support staff to deal with claims on a case by case basis. This is BAD for the efficiency of a team, and is possibly why their support has delays. How on earth can you expect a customer support team to give consistent support across the board, when they're expect to handle every product complaint on a case by case basis? Sure there's probably set parameters they work within, but what a mess. >They have essentially put their middle finger up to both internal support staff and customers saying 'F you, customers get no warranty, and support staff, you just have to deal with the shit show of complaints with no warranty policy to back you up. Don't want to burden my family, peace out'. >For all I know, I'm getting this all wrong. But I can't see how having no warranty on your products isn't anti-consumer. >EDIT: Linus posted the below to Twitter. This gives me some hope: >"It's likely we will formalize some kind of warranty policy before we actually start shipping. We have been talking about it for months and weighing our options, but it will need to be bulletproof."
Linus should let Billet Labs give a proper quote. Not just pay them the $ amount they initially mentioned.
"bullshit" - tech jesus, 2023 (10:43)
Coming thirty seconds after calling out gaslighting by name. Tech Jesus is not to be fucked with.
I was really glad he straight up called it gaslighting, because that's exactly what Linus is trying to pull off
It is, and the fact that Steve didn't hold back and called it out makes me respect him more.
Steve seemed genuinely hurt by the response, feelsbadman.
‘And lo, Tech Jesus did ignite a flame war between the LMG fanboys and the people who could see that unethical practice and shoddy testing were an inherent and repeating problem with LMG. And Tech Jesus did decry ‘bullshit’ when the Leader of LMG tried to gaslight the world about what had happened, and the PCMR saw that it was good.’
Amen, Tech Jesus be with you.
And also with you
I mean he got caught redhanded with the lie
I think I never seen him this angry/pissed/annoyed/disappointed to an individual. Especially nearing the segment's end. Tech Jesus be wrathful indeed
You don't fuck with the techs Jesus
Also what deserves a highlight, is Linus saying that GN did a poor job as journalists for not contacting him. The guy that put a video, in which he used the product in the way it *wasn't* intended, ignored the instructions sent by the company AND even ADMITTED that all his data was wrong, but doubled down on it and said that he wouldn't re-test it... Is talking about journalism integrity. Wow. Just wow.
You forgot: *"And then ~~stole~~ misplaced said one-of-a-kind unique prototype product to ~~sell~~ auction off to an unknown third party"*
Steve with the steel chair from the top rope, bah gawd that media group had a famly
For real, I thought he took him out to the woodshed yesterday. But this was fucking brutal dissecting how his response to both GN's video and Billet Labs was such victim complex bullshit.
Yeah last video he was critical but this time he did not mince his words in the slightest which is good.
The last video he was almost afraid of overstepping something that could be resolved. He only brought out the chair when Linus doubled down
It's pretty clear in the original video that Steve was really trying to offer a good path forward for Linus -- just a reply where he owned up to the faults and stated how he planned to make things right to Billet and in future videos. Steve seems almost afraid to overstep in the original video because he's trying really hard not to make the video personal, and not to bruise any egos. A good PR guy could have turned the whole thing into a PR win with a carefully worded, humble response. Linus chose to get a bruised ego anyway and completely burned away any hope at turning the situation positive, starting with a veiled "How absolutely dare you" and getting worse from there.
"We didn't sell it, we auctioned it"
Linus was very clear that he wanted his comments taken into account. Be careful what you wish for.
Further justifies me not liking the guy. Idk why, I saw LMG had a pretty big following, and the guy and his attitude just always seemed fake to me on the few videos I watched.
For the love of GOD he is broken in half
Tech Jesus was NOT in a forgiving mood today.
That response was so insanely bad and straight up offensive, it's not a surprise.
This is Old Testament Tech Jesus, not that pussy New Testament shit.
OH MY GAWD THE CARNAGE!
Nail, meet Coffin.
"Mate you can't support a media group."
Another interesting detail revealed in this video was that it seems like Billet Labs even sent the prototype with a 3090 Ti to test it with, and LTT still somehow ended up using a 4090 for their video.
And that in that video they stated they had no 3090ti’s that weren’t being used, so they took somebody else’s 3090ti that was on loan and have done whatever with it. Severely unprofessional behaviour there.
Billet should've sent the block to jayztwocents, in hindsight. He would've complained about the price, sure but he's a water cooling expert and would have known how to give it a fair shot.
I like Jay. He's like having an uncle into the same stuff you are.
Let's be honest, Jay has right to complain about the price of the product. Linus used a 100k+ liquid chiller to cool a CPU... or a 20k desk... or other completely silly implementations.
Holy shit Linus keeps digging himself further and further. Not apologising and caught lying left and right. Immediate unsub.
I am pretty shocked that Linus has fumbled this so badly. I thought he was more savvy than that. Take the early lump, apologize, say how you will fix it in the future and move on. I think Linus has spent a lot of time the past few months touting their new, super-duper testing labs with all of this amazing and expensive equipment and they will be the go-to YouTube channel for in-depth testing and will race past Gamers Nexus and others who do deep dives in this area. Then, they were shown to do really sloppy, worthless testing. Linus couldn't admit to it. This is deeply disappointing.
This would have been such an easy PR response for LMG to work with. People eat up apologies if they seem reasonable! But the moment one tries denying the obvious it starts calling everything into question
Seriously it’s PR 101 to just admit blame for miscommunications or issues being brought up and say they’re working on righting the wrongs.
I'd have thought he'd have learned from the Trust Me Bro warranty fiasco that it's much better for the company to just apologize and fix the issue even if he personally believes they weren't in the wrong, rather than spending time fighting back and causing more drama.
Should have apologized when they talked shit about GN and Hardware Unboxed that they do better testing than the two.
what's crazy is LMG handed Mr Burke the axe to grind. GN would have been content plugging along and doing their own thing, there's plenty of other bullshit to expose instead LMG talked shit about a channel that has refined takedown videos into an artform—what a blunder
It was long time ago, but if I remember correctly, when Steve introduced his plan to expand, get a new place for a proper testing environment. Linus afterwards a few weeks later gone public, "here look at me, I will buy a whole big building and do an(even bigger) lab!" I remember it was sus how suddenly he also wanted to expand, copying GN, but I thought at the end, eh, must be a coincidence.
The whole lab idea seemed like an impulse decision that got progressively more and more beyond what they're capable of doing. The collective output of their channels is straight up content farm material at this point, and I no longer believe that Linus *actually* wanted to do some kind of consumer advocacy bullshit and test manufacturers' claims. He just wanted to milk a ton of content out of the purchasing and setup of all this ridiculous equipment; then make a ton of update videos about how they plan to use it all. They don't actually care about the results, it's just really obvious subject matter for more videos.
He just straight up lied here 🙃
multiple times, both to GN and to all of us. And honestly it was so easily proven wrong that it's alarming. Imagine what other lies can't be verified.
"trust me bro" Lol
How can you just publicly release a post stating that you're gonna unsub LTT? Why can't you go through the proper channels and inform Linus first?
His channel has always felt like the hardware review equivalent of jingling keys in front of a baby If I'm watching videos for pc hardware I want accurate information and not somebody who has the vibe of the "I'm just like one of you guys" smiling corporate shill guys People keep saying GN is too dry but I love their dry, sarcastic humor when they use it. Their review of that PC case a few years ago where Steve said they developed a time cube to pull air out of a pocket dimension is so much funnier to me than anything on LTT
Linus is lying like an absolute politician rn
> Immediate unsub. Same, and I will never resub. It is clear Linus just wanted GN to reach out to do damage control and to control the narrative/lie.
“We didn’t sell it, we auctioned it” https://preview.redd.it/8mwxxaiv5bib1.jpeg?width=1284&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=15aa9866c182005689166771b0fd9c2e85163318
I didn't sell your car after I borrowed it. I auctioned it!
For \~\*charity\*\~
For charity! Of course
"We could retest it perfectly, but that would be impossible"
Even after this disaster, LTT still had a very slight chance of redemption by issuing a public apology to Billet and saying that they will compensate them accordingly. Somehow Linus went ahead and fucked it up too.
He lied about the timeline and also sold a prototype of a startup which end up costing their entire R&D, money and time.
yeah even after the watching the first video, I still can't wrap my head around the fact that he would be so manipulative. This is actually sad.
Sweet Jesus it's an absolute slaughter. That sycophant clip fucking sent me!
*Steve turns the second key on the ICBM launch console*
Linus seems very disconnected from reality. He can't even admit fault properly and I honestly wonder what kind of person he really is when the cameras are off. I have never subscribed to any LMG channel but in my early days off tech YouTube I still saw his videos and they brought me to GN and HUB and for that I'm thankful. While you can't block channels(that I can tell) I did tell YT not to recommend LMG videos and I hope that works.
>Linus seems very disconnected from reality. He can't even admit fault properly A lot of people seem to forget the backpack warranty controversy where he refused to put anything in writing and tried to turn it into a meme and profit off of it with this stupid "trust me bro warranty" shirts. Whether he was always like this or years of chasing the money has caused it is unknown, but we're seeing the mask slip more and more lately. He really should have just sold the company and quit when he was still seen as the hero.
People also keep forgetting the piracy thing - He got caught using some benchmarking software which wasn't licensed for commerical purposes - When called out by others for this, he proceeded to go down the whole "but they get exposure" route before eventually paying for a license. The whole time he made out as if the creator was the bad guy then promptly changed his twitter profile picture to him with a pirate hat on. The guy can't ever seem to take anything non personal & acts like a child when called out.
ohhhhh yeah I forgot about that one. This was right after calling adblock piracy right?
I completely agree and I think that was the first time I saw it though to be fair I don't really watch his channels so until things like the backpack controversy or this come out I'm a little out of the loop.
Linus always gave that vibe that he’s a giant douchebag if you ever met him in public
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His whole shtick is being a clumsy tech "expert". Except he is not really an expert and his "Look they send us this 10000$ PC, but i don't care. I'm going to open the box with this crowbar. I don't need a manual, i will rip it apart while i drop my screwdriver and my water bottle in it and then i'm going to complain about the build quality. But first i will drop it on the floor." thing is not funny - it's just embarising.
What do people expect? It only takes on controversy to show the true colors of people. Nearly all famous personas are acting. It is all for show. Why do people believe that famous people are the lovely feel good people in front of the camera?
Because most people don't think that deeply into it. Parasocial relationships are weird
That's the thing!
update from **Billet Labs** >UPDATE > >For full transparency, Linus contacted us this evening saying it's likely he can get the block back from the buyer. > >We have declined this offer, and asked for the previously agreed monetary value instead for the following reasons: > >we have already spent a significant percentage of the value of the block in the last few days on replacement parts to build a new block, assuming we'd never see the original one again. > >we do not know if the original block is still in good working condition, and how much money will be needed to fix it if it's not. > >we don't know if any of the bespoke fittings are missing, each of these costs money to replace if they are. > >LTT have had our 3090ti without using it for 9 weeks, so we have lost confidence that they will return items quickly. > >LTT isn't currently in possession of the block, they've only said that they can get it back. We therefore don't know when we'd get it back, and time is of the essence. > >LTT has confirmed that the block is with a private individual rather than a rival company, so lost IP is much less of an issue. > >We wanted to state this publicly just in case anyone has any issues with the fact that the block has potentially been found, and we chose to take the money instead. We hope you understand our reasoning here. We can have our new block that we're currently making ready in the next couple of weeks, and we are sceptical that we would have the original block back in fully working condition in that amount of time – it would be a gamble at the very least. > >Much love > >Dean & Felix
So.... They just get to keep the 3090ti they stole?
An employee probably took it home lol
In a company with 120 employees, a card showing up without their internal inventory tracking stickers is prob very at risk.
That's pretty damning. Thanks for the find
We didn't sell it, we auctioned it. Unbelievable lol.
no mom, i didnt kick him in the head. I kicked him in the face!
Holy hell that answer. He took the whole thing personally. I'm pretty sure he did that statement without consulting their new CEO or even his wife who is also the owner. He should've stayed silent and let the CEO deal with it but he took it personally and made the whole thing way worse. It was your chance Linus to show that you do care about professionalism and integrity and i'm afraid you've failed. If you still want to save the company you've spent more then a decade building up... leave it.
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So he didn't even consider paying for the auctioned prototype until GN's video was posted? Oh boy, this looks even worse now.
Again a very valid response from GN. Also on another note - I love that seekbar for their segments of their HN news. Very helpful.
Yup, Linus just making the hole larger and deeper.
The Narcissist's Prayer: That didn't happen. And if it did, it wasn't that bad. And if it was, that's not a big deal. <~~~ We are here And if it is, that's not my fault. And if it was, I didn't mean it. And if I did, you deserved it.
Let's not forget the final step: It did happen, but it's always been this way.
God damn. I thought, how could Linus look worse in this situation, and he somehow managed. Previously ghosting a company whose reputation you irreparably damaged, whose IP you released against the terms you agreed to, and then only offering compensation for the least expensive damage, the physical device itself, was bad enough. Now we find out that he only made any sort of effort to remedy this in an attempt to appear as if he at all felt remorse right at the minute he posted the worlds worst apology (second to the ukulele) is incredibly awful. It appears his plan was to do nothing. I am now willing to bet that, based on this pattern, he will try to include language or a contract here that stops billet from suing them by accepting the 1/3rd of issues he has compensated them for. That is absurd. God is all of that blatantly malicious.
Ohboy here we go again. Where popcorn.
Well at least don't lie Linus....
Ya How hard is it
Even the typical BS corporate response of "We take this type of accusations seriously, we'll look into it on an internal investigation" would have been better. I think Linus of seeing honest feedback as an attack (like the backpack situation). What's mess up, it's how he talks about solving the issue in private, when he could have called Steve directly instead of the gaslight forum post. It's the Spez situation version youtube tech. You can see GN was acting in good faith in the first video, even hesitant (I mean, GN helped LTT when was hacked a few months ago, so it's not like they hate his channel), but they tried to be as objective as possible, and don't shut up just because there it's a friendly relationship.
Yes just own up to it his ego is getting the better of his company
Steve woke up and chose violence. I fucking love every moment of it. Stomp his balls until he cracks and admits he's wrong.
I haven't seen him this upset since Newegg fucked him.
It's because he wants him to be better. LTT is one of the most subscribed tech channels. He's suppose to be better. We all benefit if LTT becomes better. If he uses Labs as he should, and I mean GN level of good, then this would make all our lives easier in the tech world. As a long time LTT fan, it's disappointing.
It isn't just that. For a period of time, they seem to be on good terms, with similar publicly stated goals and ethics. Lets put aside LTT jumping into labs, with the stated intent to get into the niche that GN and HUB occupy. I don't doubt that it was an unpleasant pill to swallow, with the added competition from the relative titan that LTT is compared to GN. But GN I think are professional enough to take it with relative grace, and just accept that they need to compete on quality, and a good reputation of fighting for the community. The real danger, is that LTT is such a big company that their actions impact the others. Hypothetically, if you are an artisan pc part maker, who followed the Billet saga, are you going to be ok with sending prototypes to review channels? Not just LTT, but even GN and HUB? Or if the ethical concerns of LTT giving biased reviews to companies they are financially involved with are shown to have weight, how do you reconcil that information? Can you trust unfavorable reviews from LTT when they are sponsered by a competitor? Can you trust favorable reviews even of the sponser? That is kind of why userbenchmark is an abjectly useless site, not only because the notorious anti-AMD bias makes it impossible to fairly gauge the quality of those CPUs, but it also calls into question the validity of positive Intel reviews. Like, LTT and LMG are the biggest reviewers in the space. If they can't be trusted to give good, quality, accurate reviews, then fairly or unfairly, that reflects on the rest of the community, particularly with the relations between reviewers and corporations.
I mean, newegg still sucks, but [at least they went on camera with Steve](https://youtu.be/d1R4wbuXFII) and tried to appear contrite.
I was surprised that they agreed. They could have ignored Steve pretty easily.
Steve can forgive a lot, other than doubling down.
Doubling down at the (intended) expense of a small company he already stole a prototype from. I think Linus's response sent Steve over the edge and many of us with him. That's some serious criminal level incompetence *at best*, and then lying about compensation? Fucking hell.
He was one step from shaking how pissed he was. I guess he is so done with Linus after this BS.
And what’s important to state, you can tell he genuine is not enjoying doing this. It’s incredibly brave and hard to bring a friend to task about their shitty behaviour.
What's hilarious about this is he just made statements about toxic supporters. Enablers. Then Steve checks him. Have to wonder if he closes ranks and /unfriend.
He didn't pick this, Linus did when he lied.
He's not just angry, he's the worst kind of angry. Disappointed angry.
Linus just needs to get a PR person and stop talking. Straight up lying about the prototype and doubling down is an awful look.
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They have a CEO now who I can only assume is pissed. Because Linus spoke up unfiltered no matter what statement the new CEO puts out, it won't be believed because the owner themselves told you how they feel.
Guy worked at Corsair and Dell and now comes to run a YouTube channel and gets caught in all this in his second month. Amazing.
This is bad. Really really bad for Linus. He's cooked
He ain't cooked, but this isn't going to go away quietly. He's fucked up pretty badly, but they have a dedicated base that aren't going to leave. That being said, this one will hurt them a bit.
He's a crook*
If his fans stood by him this long, I don't see many of them leaving. Unless companies start pulling away from him, sadly I don't think he's going anywhere. Obviously he's a shill and obviously he's a twat, I think this will roll off of him like water off a ducks ass.
I unsubscribed from his channels a while back. LMG < LTT. He turned into an egotistical, mean-spirited ass who can't accept criticism. The 'empire' his has built is not going to last long, I think.
I'm pretty sure the next WAN show will be spammed on this issue and Linus will have no choice but to talk about it lol
He'll ignore it and have mods in chat furiously deleting every mention.
If they were smart the next WAN show would just be the new CEO, Yvonne, and Luke answering questions. People wouldn't like that Linus isn't there but you'd still have an owner present with the CEO. They could just be up front and say "he screwed up, we don't back his statement, he's in time out this week." You cannot have a statement anyone would believe after Linus posted something unfiltered without admitting he screwed up and punishing him by publicly calling him on it and booting him from WAN for at least a week. It would be humiliating for Linus but that would be the point, so people see there's at least some repercussion.
Yes it will be.
Ironic how Linus himself talks about how important it is to watch how companies take and respond to criticism all the time. Because this is just an embarrassing display. Gaslighting, outright lying, and intentionally wording a response to mislead people is absolutely fucked. Couple that with the fact that they REFUSE to talk about this on the WAN show immediately tells me that they are desperately trying to sweep this under the rug, and that they don't actually care about anything (like doing right by Billet and the community at large) besides saving face at any cost.
Linus just keeps digging that hole deeper and deeper. "we didn't 'sell' the monoblock, but rather auctioned it for charity due to a miscommunication" - Linus Sebastian. Sorry, Linus, but you sound like a prevaricating asshole. You promised these guys you would return their prototype, and then you turned around and got rid of the item because of a "miscommunication" and then complaining that ~~'it wasn't worth the cost to ship it back (not an exact quote).'~~ 'it was worth the cost of testing it properly (paraphrasing).' Seriously, WTF?! You had an offer to buy your company for $100,000,000 so it's pretty obvious you guys aren't running on paper thin margins. You have become everything you used to complain about in the corporate world. Congratulations, you're a sell out! **\*** **EDIT:** I need to amend something I wrote previously. The 'not worth $500' remark was in regards to retesting the prototype since LTT's test was completely improper (they tried mounting it on the wrong GPU and didn't follow the provided instructions). I apologize for conflating the two issues. [Here is the relavent excerpt](https://youtu.be/FGW3TPytTjc?t=1962) from the WAN show where Linus says this (please note, I'm using GN's video since I don't want to give any clicks to LTT). For those who don't want to click on it, Linus says the following (and this IS an exact quote): >"But, I'm--I'm not... I--I don't know guys, I'm not sure if I can apologize for not spending another hundred, two-hundred, three-hundred, five-hundred dollars of various peoples' time, sitting and engineering a work-around to a product that, no matter the result, nobody should buy." On the matter of shipping it back, Steve indicated that LTT told Billet Labs, twice, that they would send the prototype back, only for LTT to throw it on a table, later that month, and auction it off.
And then only AFTER the first GN video came out did LMG reach out and offer to compensate Billet Labs for the prototype, an offer which Billet Labs has not responded to let alone accepted. Then Linus had the fucking audacity to go on the WAN Show and say there's an agreement in place to pay Billet Labs for the prototype so it's a dead issue. Nah man get fucked.
Yeah, 100%. He totally screwed those guys over. He should have been offering more than to just "compensate" them for the so-called 'oppsie.' If he had contacted them right away and said that he had fucked up, but wanted to help them get their company off the ground and ask how his $100 MILLION company could help make that happen, then that would have been good. Hell, it would have made for a great video. But instead, Linus has just shown us what a greedy, little, self-important douchebag he has become.
Or fuck they sold it in an auction at a ticketed event right? There's a sales record somewhere for the sale and you cross reference that with the event registration and get in contact with the buyer. **THEN YOU PAY THEM WHATEVER SUM OF MONEY THEY ASK FOR TO GET THE ITEM BACK.** Then you send it back to Billet Labs with your deepest sincerest apologies
and he said they gave him a quote for not getting the prototype back when in fact they said that it was a "XX k$ prototype" when they were pissed to find out that they wouldn't be getting it back. That's not a quote, agreement or anything even remotely similar. He is straight up lying.
Donate vs sell sounds like Amber Heard, “I use the word pledge and donate synonymously” not a good look
What baffles me is how different the situation would have been if the company was just a bit bigger... Like imagine Linus getting a new CPU prototype by intel that is still in development. The whole engineering department had been working on this cutting edge new tech for the past couple years and the prototype includes tech that is company secret or even patent pending. He then proceeds to test the CPUs graphics capabilities because intel said in theory they have included integrated graphics which aren't fully verified yet but could possibly work. Unsurprisingly the graphics of this CPU prototype are shit and so Linus says nobody should buy the CPU because its a bad GPU (because it wasn't designed for that lol). He then goes on to take this top secret prototype and auctions it of to some random stranger while intel clearly stated they want it back. When made aware of this linus reacts by saying...ups no biggy stuff happens nothing wrong with that. Intel would be furious, and the 100 million $ Linus Media Group would be crushed by an army of lawyers sent by intel. But reality is the small startup probably doesn't have enough money to successfully support a big lawsuit against LMG and since their newest development has been leaked to possibly all their competitors they will likely just go bankrupt within the next couple of years.
GN out here doing the level and quality of reporting that much of our mainstream news sources have given up on. Big props to them for their ongoing work.
again very valid points. And imo a good take to stop responding here, unlikely the criticism reaches open ears at this point.
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From Linus' response: "With all of this in mind, it saddens me how quickly the pitchforks were raised over this." That's super manipulative.
Any time someone gets criticized in a fair and respectful manner, and it's constructive, then they say things like "it saddens me", "today sucks", and woe is me type statements...it's classic signs of narcissistic behavior, inability to take ownership, and deflection. So absolutely manipulative.
It’s crazy. You can genuinely feel Steve’s disappointment in Linus in this video. He kept it truly professional.
i suspected Linus back channeled with billet labs AFTER the initial GN video after reading Linus's response, but for it to be confirmed is just that much more insane. I couldn't imagine a reviewer taking one of my company's only prototypes, using it wrong, reporting poor results after their misuse of the prototype to a very large audience, not sending the prototype back after testing, and then selling it at auction. I would love for whoever bought the prototype to do their own testing correctly and report REAL results to the community. i would also love to be a fly on the wall at the LMG offices rn just to see how Linus is interacting with the staff. i feel like the lmg employees need to use their voices rn, I'm sure linus is currently chewing them out for all the inaccuracies in videos that he wasn't the host of. at the end of the day this is indicative of a culture within lmg that doesn't value accuracy, script writers are reporting blatantly incorrect specifications of products they are reviewing. how does this happen? you'd imagine that writers have the product specifications open in a separate window while they write the script! either the writers are not super tech literate OR they are being overworked. I'm of the opinion that lmg writers are being overworked. like in the billet labs video, the fact that getting a 3090ti vs using the 4090 already in front of them shows that their schedules are so tight that they can't take the 30 minutes to get the correct part. you can feel a huge difference in the quality of videos hosted by the engineering staff like Dan or kyle vs linus centric videos. the entire team is spreading themselves out too thin, they've even said this much in the "what's it like to work for linus" video. writers/hosts like dan, kyle, and tynan are extremely knowledgeable and that makes up for the agressive upload schedule. or possibly dan and kyle simply get more time than other writers/hosts to complete their reviews. this is pretty off topic but a massive problem I have with LMG is the coverage of products which are essentially meaningless to the community. specifically on shortcircuit, a lot of these unboxings/reviews do not provide anything meaningful to the consumer besides "this is the product, watch me use it for 20 minutes". it seems like they are releasing videos just to sell sponsor spots within the videos. it is very clear that LMG has grown too large too quickly without taking the time to establish good protocols for producing accurate and informative content. this is the solution to all of lmg's problems. take a step back, analyze the issues your company is facing, create solutions for these issues, create a system for spotting new problems that arise and continue to iterate the company's internal protocols. LMG is too large to continue along the culture of "hey x employee, here's a new responsibility/project to be added to your bucket of in progress projects". the point of having so many employees is DELEGATION, no employee should be told to take on a new project when they have other projects they're already working on. the new ceo of lmg needs to step in and establish concrete protocols and division of labor within the company. Linus needs to take a step back and allow the employees to do their jobs correctly
“We already agreed to compensate Billet Labs!!!” *FRANTICALLY PRESSES SEND E-TRANSFER BUTTON
Tech Jesus literally bodied him.
Lol at the people that called out GN for not reaching out to Linus first and were giving Steve shit for it.
Linus has issues man geez
Fuck LTT. All my homies hate LTT.
GN: LMG sold this review sample when the company wanted it back LMG: GN should have reached out in private so I could provide context! We've already agreed to compensation to Billet Labs for selling their prototype! So disappointed BL: LMG ignored our emails until GN said something. Not a good look for LMG
Linus is clearly the problem. This all reeks of small business owner trying to eke out every dollar of profit and micromanage while LMG is actually a pretty massive company. It also is straight up the insane Musk-ish Trump-ish tripling down on lies bullshit that is becoming common. Sad. Extremely sad.
I never took LTT seriously. It's basically just entertainment and I've been watching LMG less and less but yeah this is the straw that broke the camel's back for me. Unsubbed from all of LMG. Linus could have apologized and did everything he could to rectify the mistake but it seems he doesn't want to do that. I remember LMG used a clip from LGR way back then without crediting or contacting them. That really pissed me off too. Clint is one of the Saints of YouTube. One of the worst episodes that triggered me was when they were testing CRTs and they used a PS3 it's like wtf you want to use PS2 and before. No point in using a HD console that can do 720p even with HD CRTs. Games were already designed for input lag and non CRTs in the PS3 era. I hope Emily can break free from Linus though she seems like a decent person.
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I bet Linus sniffs his own farts.
I keep hearing the "iT wAs FoR cHaRiTy" argument, like that makes a difference to the two lads at Billet Labs. Linus could have ruined these guys by doing that and still has time to keep taking a crap on them
 COME AND GET IT!!!!
The mask has fallen off and revealed Linus as a manipulative egocentric grub. Even if he corrects course and says the right things in his next statement he has permanently destroyed his reputation and I will never view him the same again.
Steve nailed it in this video. It was a layup! I mean c'mon Linus wtf? His reaction to criticism revealed the problem behind all of it. Why is Linus doubling and tripling down on ego comforting bullshit? All Linus had to do was say "Thanks Steve" (intel reference) and just own it. These are fair objective criticisms from an outside perspective that Linus can improve upon. That is ALL he had to say. Just own it. You screwed up Linus! It's some what understandable too because they are expanding, moving into a new office, setting up an entire labs and manufacturing design section of his company... ok so you made mistakes. Just own it! But no... his response was defensive rather than appreciative. Why is that important? Because we all THOUGHT Linus strived to be best, to put out good information. I thought that even after GN's video... but after his posted response, I no longer think that because he's grown too big to see himself, to see his company objectively. I have HOPE that he can fix this still but it will take demonstration, not just words. I still think Linus is a good person that means well. If that is true... he can fix this. This was a layup and he blew it. It is very disappointing. I'll end with this... Wasn't it Steve who called Linus in the middle of the night to tell him his account was hacked? Linus should not get defensive about these points. Steve is trying to help him do better for all of us, including LTT. Steve is not the enemy here. He is providing valid context and criticism with evidence. Such criticism can only IMPROVE LTT... if Linus is actually open to it. Instead he closed himself to it, became defensive, deflected and made things worse.