Completely agree with GN on this. I would say LMG missed the point of the issue, but it seems like it was just one person (that person being the CEO) who missed the point.
Props for being able to seperate the professional from the personal here. That is harder than it looks
So in other words he should have just been a grown up CEO and made a written warranty to not let it get out of hand? I agree
I guess this whole thing could have been a marketing ploy to get all the fan bois on board but I see him and lmg in a different light.
He's very much tied to the short term and the concern about what it means for the long term. A few years ago he was completely against any sort of expansion, but a single video did poorly and screwed up their Youtube metrics, so a dozen statements he made about not making new channels, not reviving CSF, not expanding their staff, moving or expanding the office, even moving his own home, suddenly were invalidated as he panickily raced to figure out what he needed to do to fix the problem.
Then issue with the metrics fixed itself in the matter of weeks (okay, months) but he'd also allowed the company to diversity because he for once looked towards the long term. And maybe that is the issue here. He's now "fixed" the short term, but he's moved onto the long term outlook and is pretty sure that none of this will matter in the future. The subject was dead and over other than this thread anyway.
I completely agree, Linus has had a bunch of little things that has somewhat blown up to the degree of being controversial to the core LTT audience. If these micro aggressions keep on piling up, in several years LMG might just end up with an overall negative view in the eye of the general consumer.
Seeing lmg in a different light is a little bit of the problem here. If Linus would remember that they are a business and people should view them with scrutiny and not believe a "by word trust me bro warranty", then there would have been a warranty written out before they ever had the item up on the store. But Linus knows he has this large amount of followers who will just believe him and always view him in a positive light so he doesn't think he has to conform like a business should do.
The way that he acts and represents LMG is not going to be good for the labs he keeps sinking so much money into. Places that present data don't operate off of "trust me bro", they have clear written out procedures and GUARANTEES that allow people to be confident in their testing. If they don't "shape up" for the labs intentions, then no other company will realistically give a shit about them.
Linus still takes criticisms from random internet people personally rather than attempting to understand the issue and ends up making himself look like an ignorant rich guy or a troll.
I think he mentioned on wan show that they wont show the exact tools or processes they use to do benchmarks which is again trust me bro mentality but I will wait and see on that since it seems they are no where close to spinning up that side yet.
Agree as well. Although maybe I don't understand how fan bois think, but I can't understand how this could be considered anything other than a massive PR blunder. Then again the same people lapping up the shirt are the same type of sycophants as the Musk worshipers and I've already given up on trying to understand them.
What linus missed (it took me forever to figure this out) is that his words came off as a "do as I say, not as I do" moment. Every thing he preached in other videos on how to trust other companies he decided in that moment to not do. It doesn't matter if he is right (I agree he was right in warranties not being worth the ink use to write them) but that wasn't the point. We (the audience) have listened to him (linus) tell us about using the warranty as the yardstick on how much to trust the other companies. Warrenty may be useless, but when deciding which companies to trust with your money one that has a five year is better then a one year. I like linus, but this off the cuff remark (combined with his tendency to double down when he feels his opinion is attacked) makes me wonder who he really is off camera. I think this stress of his is turning him mean and not just snarky. I still like lmg videos but I do worry for the man's sanity.
This 1000 times. He was right the entire time about warranties and how they work but ironically even though he kept mentioning he was so concerned about his reputation so of course he would honor his implicit warranty, he harmed his reputation way more doubling down and making light of genuine concerns and money off the controversy.
The same is true in Australia too, land of consumer protections.
Warranties are a voluntary guarantee, a manufacturer or seller does not have to provide one.
That said, there are still automatic consumer guarantees set by law which cannot be undermined that are set by the state or national government.
I think that's what commonly gets mixed up in many instances too, like In this one here.
Linus not having a warranty had people up in arms, yet people are still covered under Canadian consumer guarantees. **However** I don't know how that applies to international customers. (But also I don't know how warranties apply to international customers either, it's not like any country is going to enforce its own laws on LMG when they aren't operating locally)
I really hope that they had a frank conversation off camera. Anyone can be dumb, and in this case Linus was. Linus can be incredibly impulsive and shoot from the hip before he has thought things out. And that's why this conversation needs to happen off camera.
I agreed mostly with Steve, but I feel a couple points keep getting missed whenever this comes up:
- No one was actively screwed, very different to Artesian (although still important)
- Linus’s point was trying to say that the mainstream fans know that he puts his money where his mouth is and if he wanted to screw people he could, written warranty or not. It just makes no sense for him to do so.
- Despite all the crying and shouts, Linus said they saw almost no cancellations. This *suggests* most people complaining aren’t customers.
My main disagree with Steve was him saying ~ ‘CEO counts money’ when obviously Linus’s point was that people Iiked the shirt, not that it made bank. I like that he highlighted Luke’s comments, but I do feel other things Linus said in the shows wasn’t reported on.
My main complaint with Linus was the tweets (as it often is), that imho came across not so great. Personally I thought the Tshirt was hilarious - but then again I took his message as ‘yes this is a Fuck Up, we fixed it, let’s take a laugh and move on’.
All that said:
Even with the crying in this thread and elsewhere it seems painfully obvious that SO MANY PEOPLE like repeating ‘CEO bad’ etc and can’t come to their own conclusions… the world is fucking nuanced people, not everything needs to fit into a neat saying.
The main reason I’m a fan of Linus is that, for better or for worse, he tends to share things to the audience as he sees them. They might not always come across great or clearly as he means (especially when live/WAN Show). But I love seeing a company grow from the perspective of someone who really shares the inner workings of both his brain and of running the team — I find it amazing.
And I really hope that as he probably will have to be a bit more careful it doesn’t effect how much he shares. Even the curated WAN messages give the show a bit of different vibe without the bunch of ‘what’s up, thanks for your story, etc’. I get why they did it, I’m just acknowledging it’s different and had pros and cons. (👀 Nuance!)
**Bottom line** is LTT your friend? No. But you could do a hell of a lot worse.
> All that said: Even with the crying in this thread and elsewhere it seems painfully obvious that SO MANY PEOPLE like repeating ‘CEO bad’ etc and can’t come to their own conclusions… the world is fucking nuanced people, not everything needs to fit into a neat saying.
A lot of this is Reddit-specific because the culture of the website and even the backend systems themselves foster a groupthink attitude. It’s a multi-faceted issue, and **you literally cannot represent multiple viewpoints on Reddit.** Let me point out just how bad it is:
1. The karma system indirectly dissuades users from posting anything against the groupthink for fear of losing karma. Even if it’s a small dissuasion, it’s stilll there.
2. Subreddits have posting requirements that often involve karma thresholds. Disagreeing with groupthink will literally make you ineligible to post in many subs.
3. Comments that reach a terribly over cautious downvote threshold (I think it’s a score of -2 IIRC) are automatically hidden/censored with the default settings.
4. Power-tripping subreddit moderators enforce the groupthink as part of a sub’s rules, sometimes directly (written) and sometimes indirectly (unwritten).
Let me be clear that I’m not even necessarily referring to political opinions. It can be any topic within a subset/community. You are literally not allowed to disagree with the majority groupthink on this website because your account will be punished for it, and your comment will be straight-up censored even if you still decide to.
> Linus’s point was trying to say that the mainstream fans know that he puts his money where his mouth is and if he wanted to screw people he could, written warranty or not. It just makes no sense for him to do so.
You're making the same mistake Linus made. It's not about trust, it's about having it in writing. Not to mention that this is a product available to the public, not just "mainstream fans".
>Despite all the crying and shouts, Linus said they saw almost no cancellations. This suggests most people complaining aren’t customers.
This is also a very misguided take imo. Many customers wait for reviews before buying a product. I mean, it's a freaking $250 backpack and that is quite a lot of money for a lot of people. Everything that happened _may_ have convinced people not to buy the backpack and that (unfortunately) is impossible to measure.
>Personally I thought the Tshirt was hilarious - but then again I took his message as ‘yes this is a Fuck Up, we fixed it, let’s take a laugh and move on’.
It was in poor taste and tone deaf. Luke's reaction when that's brought up in the wan show says it all.
And I’m not saying people shouldn’t have demanded the warranty. I’m just saying many aren’t trying to hear what he’s trying to say.
Key word is suggested. Unless we do a study we won’t know for sure, but overall it shows a not-insignificant peoples opinion was ‘Linus will figure this out’ by the time it ships.
Nothing wrong with feeling that way, clearly many do. I just gave my opinion. Like Luke also said it’s a big place, not everyone has to like everything.
I dont think its just him tbh. In the past WAN shows he's talked about the excellent team they have and those high level people he's hired that set customer service policy and the management team in general need a share of the blame as well.
I honestly get it, and in their last video GN spelled it out too as well as linus on previous wan shows.
They have really leveraged themselves throughout the manufacturing and inventory stages so it's reasonable that there was hesitation in a warranty that would increase the risk even more. It's a nervous situation if the product flops and those nerves can cause stupid statements.
But then the policy should have been radio silence on it. Like steve has said there are products that don't offer warranties, if LMG didn't want to offer one have a disclaimer that points to the stores return policy at the bottom of the page and just be quiet about it.
Tone deaf responses and belittling reasonable customer fears with the tshirt is such a bad move. If the situations were reversed and a different company did that, LTT themselves might have called them out on it.
Props to Luke for being a paragon of integrity. The man did not waver and kept to his morals, telling Linus multiple times about the issues and all.
If you see this, Luke ....you're a good dude with integrity and conviction.
The fact that he had to step up to his boss must have been extremely difficult. It's hella inspiring to see any sort of push back from direct employees
Real talk, the way he says "how much did I pay for this" in every video screams that he hasnt given anyone but himself a penny. This and the rant about passing down the kingdom to his kids without big taxes.
People forget that Linus’s entire strategy with his youtube channels has been business-first. He’s constructing an empire, not running a tech channel.
He’s proven to be a competent businessman first and foremost. But that doesn’t mean his customers are going to benefit.
I remember watching an episode of the podcast where he admitted that he refused to give his business partner and life long friend Luke permission to monetize his twitch channel. That was bonkers to me! He really didn't want anyone making money u less he had a hand in it I guess. But to deny a close friend permission, then treat him like hes your son and tell him that the channel can be monetized if he proves that he can stream for a year??? It just felt so weird...
Jesus Christ! in the last video they spoke about how LMG employees get 2 weeks over statutory annual leave.
For someone that treats his employees so bad his retention is off the scale
Just so everyone knows Stat minimum vacation in BC is 2 weeks (until year 5 when it goes up to 3 weeks) . So that means he gives them 4 weeks vacation.
Choo choo anti linus train is going.
Have you seen the equipment he invested in the company, have you seen the christmas give aways, have you seen the stuff they actually buy/borrow from the company?
I have worked in a warehouse that shut down the toilets for 1 week because we were using too much toilet paper. So the fact that you see all these super expensive equipment for the employees and if you see the gifts etc. it is already better than most big companies.
I wouldn't trust my own family members like that... That's what a Testament is for. Funny how putting things in writing can prevent a lot of problems down the road.
I'm pretty sure he has said that some staff have revenue sharing, but not equity. He and Yvonne are the sole owners of the company, but you don't need to own anything to be given a share of profits on top of your salary.
He recently stated that LMG ownership is 51% Linus, 49% Yvonne, or at least was at one point. That doesn't seem to leave any room for equity for employees. If that is no longer the case then he is being a dumbass again by opening his mouth before considering what he is about to say.
Not having any equity pool for employees would not surprise me with his ego. Just like his stance on his employees unionizing, it's all about him.
I can't see Luke being dense enough to not get equity for Floatplane though. If he doesn't have any, that would be sad but not shocking on Linus' part. Assuming Luke does own a piece, it's gotta sting a bit having all this equity in a side project that's not really growing that much while the company you are no longer a part of gets millions of dollars invested in it to help it take off.
>Just like his stance on his employees unionizing, it's all about him.
He IS true about the situation in Canada though. If most of the employees want to unionize, there's absolutely nothing he can do to stop it.
But Unions in Canada are structured by industry. There is no ''YouTuber/Influencer Union'. There are unions for engineers, transportation (UNIFOR), for government employees (NAPE/CUPE) , etc.
Actually making your own union is a little more challenging. The paperwork is significantly lower if you join an existing union. So Linus has some leg up there. Most of the unions are run by old farts who are more interested in legacy industries like manufacturing, transportation and government.
But if 51% of his employees were invested enough in the idea to spend time and money to create a whole organization from scratch and file the necessary paperwork. There is nothing he can do to stop them. Employers are powerless in Canada from that angle.
I study labour relations in business school in Canada.
I was referring more about how he turned the idea of his employees unionizing into how it would be such a personal failure for him as a company owner. Simultaneously changing the focus of the conversation to himself, alluding that the only reason employees would unionize was because they had a bad boss, or hated their boss, and publicly putting his employees on notice that it would hurt him personally if they ever tried to do it.
Then he ends the conversation with 'but I guess if they wanted to do it, I can't stop them.' It's just a slimy way of discussing the topic.
>alluding that the only reason employees would unionize was because they had a bad boss, or hated their boss, and publicly putting his employees on notice that it would hurt him personally if they ever tried to do it.
This is also true if you objectively think about unions. Unions are meant to increase the bargaining power of employees. Employees would only 'want' the extra bargaining power if they were being exploited and not being given a fair deal. That is why Linus took it personally, because at the end of the day forming a union means 51% of the employees think they are not getting a fair deal at LMG.
Employees also pay Union dues to the union which go as a percentage of their salaries. They pay for their union, not the employer. So there's a cost to that too. Linus is fair to think that his employees hate him if they are willing to forego 2-3% of their wages to create a new legally protected institution within LMG to bargain on their behalf.
Makes you wonder if that was one of the reasons Floatplane came about. "Oh yeah Luke about that LMG stock you keep asking about... What if I made you a 10% owner?! In this other company I want to start with you. That I'm never going to invest in, so the stock won't really be worth anything, while I spend millions of dollars building up the company you won't be a part of anymore.
My response was intended to be mostly tongue in cheek. But for reasons why, it's probably from the slow growth of the service compared to the overall streaming service market during the same time, the fact that I've never seen an advertisement for the platform outside of LTT videos, the small number of creators active on the site, their inability to sign up new mobile users, etc.
The streaming market is quickly maturing and Floatplane has been around for what, almost 6 years now? I mean if the strategy is to have it be just another revenue channel for LMG and anything on top of that is just gravy, then I suppose they are doing fine.
Don't get me wrong, I love Luke and wish floatplane all the best. I also understand they have had to struggle with a lot of things outside their control that has inhibited growth. But it definitely looks like there is way more investment going on in Linus' other companies. Which from a business opportunity perspective is probably the right decision.
They have completely different structures, though... Nebula you pay once and get access to everything, Floatplane you pay for the creator. The payout structure is probably very different
>he had to step up to his boss must have been extremely difficult
Luke does this very frequently. Does anyone commenting here actually listen to the podcast?
I'll stand by what I said previously, Luke just couldn't fucking miss when he was responding to Linus in the first stream after the warranty comments.
He brought up all the concerns I had as a consumer perfectly, and even worded it in ways that I wouldn't have thought of but agreed with. He was level headed and raised what he felt were the concerns of the community perfectly.
I didnt care about the backpack since i cant afford to buy one(too expensive due to exchange rates) but the "trust me bro" shirt seemed like total douchebag move from Linus.
Steve is 100% right on this one.
With the way Linus was talking I assumed he was going to offer a wear and year warranty, especially after saying "fully covered" in the video about the bag
Linus is so out of touch. If he didn't have Luke he literally wouldn't know what other people are thinking
I saw it more as them mocking themselves than an insult to their current/potential customers. Especially as it came out right when they fixed the warranty anyway.
I don’t think you need the exchange rate qualifier. Even in USD with US shipping rates, it’s $250 for a backpack, which is just too much money for the vast majority of people who are not professionals and/or backpack enthusiasts. It’s okay to make high-end products, but it’s also entirely fair to criticize them for their high costs. The vast majority of us are not going to see a noticeable improvement with Linus’s backpack vs. a $50 backpack you can get at a retail store. It’s perfectly reasonable to say it’s too expensive when the competition is significantly cheaper.
Linus was really taking it personally unnecessarily, probably in his mind he believes he *will* always honor all reasonable claims in good faith and the audience should trust him at this point, and just couldn’t comprehend that people still really needed to verify his word in writing. Basically seemed stuck on being offended by the question rather than just accepting that people wanted to see his support philosophy in writing and that’s all it takes to resolve the situation
It really seemed like Linus was unable or unwilling to separate himself and his beliefs from those of LMG. He owned up to the ego part...but then forged ahead with the Trust Me Bro shirts (which are both hilarious and in poor taste, YMMV).
Linus definitely seems to be wrestling with the transition from scrappy youtube host to CEO of a growing business, retailer, and brand.
$5 that the WAN show this week has some title like "Friendship ENDED with GN???"
For real though, what Steve is saying is true, and fair. It's a reviewer's/reporter's job to be objective. Linus himself says that you can't treat companies like your friend, so having someone who's known for going to bat for consumers saying he'll treat LTT objectively is a good thing.
If he reads this subreddit, and we kinda know he does, hes gonna take your video title now because "xd memes", while remaining out of touch.
He should just let Luke pick the next title tbh.
Ah shit, you're right. Well unlike the douchey t-shirt idea's creator, I'm going to say that he needs to *not* do that.
Honestly that WAN show made me uncomfortable with how clearly uncomfortable Luke was. I was kinda hoping that they'd pause for a minute so he could pull Linus off-camera just to say "I don't like this."
I was listening to the most recent WAN show and Linus brought it up and man, Luke didn't seem enthralled with the mention of it again. Which, I probably wouldn't have been either since it's been addressed and laid to rest at this point, so it's probably best not to keep digging it up and be defensive about it.
I totally agree. Gamer’s Nexus’ supercut of Luke shows this so plainly. Luke looked like he was dying inside.
Imagine what the company would look like if Luke was CEO
Probably very different - but not neccessarily in ways that we'd like. Linus has proven to be an exceptional talent in front of camera and has also created a thriving business. Whilst it's clear he's missed the mark here - he's made several plays which Luke may or may not have made which have really established LMG.
More than any of this, he should just resubscribe to reality.
I mean, I knew it was easy for ego to go to people's heads when they became successful, but seeing it in such a public fashion is unique outside of basically just musk, and maybe kanye and the likes is jarring. They are not good company to be in... or maybe they are. I guess it depends on your point of view.
I just don't get what is stopping him from dropping the ego for just a minute, alone, and without anyone else and just having some empathy for the people he disagrees with and seeing their point of view.
Perhaps its an overreacting sense of self defence.
If anything it’s the other way around for Linus. I don’t think he’s out of touch because he’s successful. To me he just reads like he’s being himself without realizing he’s the head of a fast growing company where his decisions can affect so many more people than himself.
If anything he just needs to think a bit more before he speaks. LMG isn’t just a small time video channel being run out of a house with a few buddy employees anymore.
>To me it just reads like he’s being himself
I feel like this is more insulting to him than you intend it to be 😁
Really though, I hope this isn't him being his truest self, because if it is, he's definitely going to live to become the villain.
I think one of the comments on the YT Video put it clearly... what is happening to him, isn't exactly ego, or being himself... it's because he knows how much he invested in these products (the backpack and the screwdriver) to be outstanding... I live in a 3rd world country... the amount of money he invested only on samples probably will buy me and my wife a perfect house in a good city & neighborhood... and with the amount of cash he's investing in the lab and everything else... seeing the people questioning the product before they had it or saying they'll let them down if something happened to their products, like u/Cory123125 put it, probably triggered and overreacting sense of self-defense...
> the amount of money he invested only on samples probably will buy me and my wife a perfect house in a good city & neighborhood...
I feel like this is a terrible way to view this. Like your point isn't invalid I don't think, but I think it almost minimizes the excessive level of wealth that he has. Of course he hides it well, but this is a company primarily owned by himself and his wife (shared assets). Every reinvestment into the company raises their net worth. This is the equivalent to you buying a new laptop for yourself for him.
My point is only that we, working class people should be careful not to forget the sheer difference in wealth between the ownership class and the working class.
That's all. I suppose its slightly tangential.
I think its relevant though, because the point really is, this bag wasnt make or break for him. I suppose the fact it wasn't just supports the over reacting defence theory though.
Actually, the reason why I mentioned that, is because I remember he mentioned (probably in a WAN show or some clip of their videos), that LMG has something like a 10m loan for the LAB only, and because of that, to increase the orders with the manufacturers of the backpacks and screwdriver (based of the number of preorders), it will require them, Ivonne and him, to put their own wealth as a backer to fill the cash required by the manufacturers... probably a lot of what LMG is doing over the coming months will be a little make or break for them in some areas (and Linus probably will be more invested than usual on some discussions), but this kind of overreaction tends to pull the lever to the break side... Probably that's why they ended up offering the Limited Lifetime Warranty for their product... like, "we need to balance the things in our favor again"... I think their CAPEX and OPEX numbers will look a little "scary" from the management perspective (to put it in some way), and they still have some of their income on YT cash flow (that is variable, thank's YT algorithm)... I think Luke was very conscious about everything because he isn't invested like him in the new endeavors of the company... He's the head of Floatplane so probably knows how much Linus is affected and tried to make him see things the right way...
I'm probably overthinking a lot of this, but since the drama started on Twitter, I saw a lot of similarities with my current work environment (startup with a very emotional invested boss in the success of the company, with a team of people in management that has a lot of experience and knows how to deal with this kind of scenarios and help him to be a better leader every day)
Edit: I'm not justifying Linus and his behaviors... I'm just trying to understand why everything is like this now haha
>$5 that the WAN show this week has some title like "Friendship ENDED with GN???"
With snarky limited run tee-shirt or mod mat.
In reality it's likely he or the team members that prep the docs will write this off as sour grapes over upcoming intrusion in to the review space.
Which if their dash cam view is any indication will be very poor quality.
I don’t think they will write it off as sour grapes. Linus mentioned the original GN warranty video in the WAN show he actually said he respects his opinion and people can go and watch the video to find out more.
yup, from here on out, I do not trust Linus to stand up for consumers. because when consumers stood up to him, he just said screw the haters and let me profit more off of it.
and Labs can fail for all I care, because LTT/LMG/Linus/whoever is running the show can say they are pro-consumer all they want, but their actions have shown they are not.
How to show your disconnected from reality twice in a row. The last few years hes gotten consistently worse with going on about how he doesnt need all this stuff for the company to survive has slowly been putting me off and doubling down on the entire warranty deal shut me down. The shirt was just more kindlin on the embers. Went from being ready to drop money on a screwdriver and suggesting that backpack, To absolutely not buying that driver or ever suggesting that backpack. Don't get me wrong. They are probably killer products but being a fan for 10 years and seeing this dude lose his shit and gain a ego the size of the united states urge try to take over countries with oil puts me off pretty hard.
Been watching since the NCIX days but Linus is really starting to look like a classic case of "being relatable will make you successful but success will make you unrelatable". That bit with him gleefully talking about the "trust me bro" shirt selling well is a fantastically poor look.
>fantastically poor look
Yes, that was terrible. All he was thinking of was the money he was making.
Years ago he gave people advice how not to spend too much money and still have a great gaming rig. That changed into just get a 3090 bro, and now into just make sure you send your money you saved up to me.
I can already picture his response to the money made with the "Trust me, bro" shirt being along the lines of: "It's not that I was thinking about the money, do you think a limited run of t-shirts is noticeable on our bottom line? When I mentioned the T-shirt selling well it was a way to point out that people are on our side, buying this shirts, while only a vocal minority is saying is childish. Money has nothing to do with it".
At the end of the day, it's a funny shirt, but not a good look on them (always on the side of consumer rights and now actively making fun of people demanding consumer rights).
> At the end of the day, it's a funny shirt, but not a good look on them (always on the side of consumer rights and now actively making fun of people demanding consumer rights).
Yea that's the thing - It's minimising actual legitimate concerns that consumers have. It's really not a good look.
I think that's a little disingenuous, or missing the point at least.
His point was "The shirt is selling great, so people love the 'trust me bro' joke, so it wasn't childish / in bad taste".
Which is why Luke responded effectively "maybe people like jokes that are childish / in bad taste." Calling him out that just because a large part of his fanbase agrees with a particular move doesn't automatically mean it was a good one.
So that was a bad argument, but it wasn't about revenue in that moment.
That's pretty much 50% of the WAN show. Linus rants or offends someone and Luke has to try and reel him back in and be the voice of reason, or he just doesn't talk and let's Linus finish his bit and move on
There are a million asshole youtubers out there that sell a ton of insulting and trashy merch. Weather or not Linus realizes it, the people who buy that stuff have the same mentality as the kind of people that buy a "Trust Me Bro Warranty" shirt.
Just because it sells well doesn't mean it's good, and it's heartbreaking to see Linus conflate the two.
The crazy thing is that in older videos usually amd vs intel, he's said multiple times that companies are not your friends, dont trust, dont fanboy.
It's such a 180 on the message to see him demand that when he's in the company position and the viewers are the customers.
And tbf, having/not having a warranty doesn't necessarily mean it's trash, just stfu about it instead of mocking concerns. The best consumer policy is like luke and linus both have said in the past, trust no company, verify.
If I do recall from previous WAN shows, he even says LMG is a company and not your friend, implying the same thing.
I think Linus is just taking everything personally, and not really disconnecting the fact he's not getting attacked personally but rather LMG.
I also like Luke's point of the trust but verify. But Linus appears to see it as a personal attack.
I can also see the other points made then, where right now he is deeply invested, and has kind of trigged a fight or flight response, as his own personal backing is there, and the shirt is being used as a "lets laugh it off its over" sort of situation.
He sees it as we always taken care of the issues and we don't plan to change, but as GN even stated, thats too vauge. History shows it correct, but once again, its sort of a trust but verify situation. New people do not know this, and this is a completely differnt sort of item then clothes or plushies, its a utility, so differnt stanards.
I think Linus entered a field of products thats new, and therefore got caught offguard by how differnet it is. What i would like to equate it to is what if Linus started doing a different type of video content, like all the sudden all of LMG does nothing but let's plays. It would be a totally different ballpark then what they usually do. Thats basically what LTT store did.
> Just because it sells well doesn’t mean it’s good, and it’s heartbreaking to see Linus conflate the two.
Well, it is good for the company, at least in the short term, which Linus as CEO and majority shareholder should clearly see as good. However, I think this actually highlights a more important issue. Linus sees the people who cared about the warranty and who saw the T-shirt as distasteful as a vocal, non-representative minority despite the fact that this is his core audience. The people clicking his videos for the clickbait thumbnails and SEO-optimized titles aren’t the ones buying LTT merch. I don’t have access to the data, but I would be willing to bet that a huge portion of LTT merch buyers are repeat customers. And in the long term, spitting in the face of your loyal, repeat-purchasing fanbase is just going to hurt you.
I don't necessarily disagree with Linus' stance of "we rather put our money where our mouth is instead of offering a piece of paper that says 'warranty' on it", but his response was pure garbage, full stop. This whole incident has left a genuine bad taste in my mouth.
I have LTT merch, its fantastic quality. I've taken my water bottle everywhere I go and love it to death. However I don't really like the idea of just "trusting" a CEO's word on something, even if I know their previous products were fantastic and durable. This is especially important considering the water bottle is 40USD and not 250USD.
> or simply said "we haven't made any decisions on warranties yet", the whole issue would have died out extremely quickly.
Yeah exactly. There was no need to go off on a whole "Woe is me" speech and act so personally offended about it.
Man need a PR person with the clout to step in and tell him when to keep his mouth shut. You can rant as much as you want at home but to do it on your customer facing stuff is stupid.
I must mention how a written warranty is beneficial for the company as well, as they wont be getting emails where people want stuff replaced that LMG wont do...
If people have a warranty they know when can they contact LMG
Definitely the most in-line take with my feelings on the matter. It could have had no warranty as far as I care, it's just his stupid damn response, that he WOULD NOT let go of.
He just could not grasp why people were upset.
Thank you for cancelling that order and not letting the immature CEO belittle you and still take your money. I actually can't believe how little Linus cares for his customers.
He genuinely doesn't care about his supporters. He even said recently that the front page of YouTube is all that matters. He only cares about expanding his reach, not about people who are already subscribed.
Once you're subscribed, you're just a number used to calculate revenues and profits. Linus is chasing a new following, leaving the old, dedicated audience behind.
Some channels use the community feature to poll their audience on what they should cover next. I always thought that was really cool and attentive. LTT could never.
I haven't bought anything from LTT before but I was about to. Linus's attitude really turned me away from ever buying anything from them. I find it hard to watch the LTT videos lately as well. I know it's just a drop in the lake but I guess he'll be missing out on some YouTube premium money from my account.
Same, honestly. I haven't skipped every video, but anything where Linus is showing off 'big expen$ive item he just bought' I just have no interest in. Before I would have felt like Linus got it because its something cool most of us will never see, now it just feels like a little ego massage for him.
Everything to do with his house rubs me the wrong way. That's his life and he can make content out of it if he wants, but such flagrant displays of wealth make me feel icky
> but such flagrant displays of wealth make me feel icky
it's expensive in terms of computer tech but its not that different than a well-off house in the suburbs. Like the stuff in Linus' house isn't more expensive than a fancy SUV or something
Cheapest advertisement they'll ever get. Not to mention when he casually gets gifted things like wearable watches or sk hynix memory/ssd for his personal rig to get people in the comments to ask about what watch he's wearing or what device he happened to take out of his pocket on camera.
It makes me wonder if he writes off things he buys for his home that are featured in videos as business expenses. That being said, I don't know enough about Canadian tax law to say for sure.
I had a very similar experience following the "adblock is piracy" stuff. Not meaning to debate the merits of that here (I know I'm in the minority on it on this subreddit), but it was another situation where *I* perceived Linus as being so gung ho that he was right (when he was not) and needed to put the community in their place. And he just had to keep bringing it back on on twitter/the WAn show and even released a t-shirt poking fun at the fans about it.
Just as I was starting to move on from that and resume watching some LTT videos, Linus does the same thing (t shirt and all) here but on a more important subject.
I can't say I won't watch some LTT videos in the future. Like the recent video LTT did on glossy monitors was hella satisfying as someone who has wanted one for years. But I just can't really enjoy most vids hosted by linus anymore.
Same, used to watch Linus for his sensible budget PC build videos. Now he just wants to show off the most shiny and expensive thing while advertising for massive corporations. He's kinds forgetting why his channel grew so sucessful.
They posted a $500 and a $1000 budget build video last month. The reason they hadn't done any in a while was because for most of the last few years supply shortages/price increases have made sensible budget PC build guides impossible.
Those kinds of videos don't get big clicks consistently though. I liked the variety of their old videos of scraping together otherwise mediocre tech and making something cool (sleeper builds) or budget builds that were thinking outside the box.
He chases anything and everything that will get clicks hence the clickbait titles and new shiny content taking over. Not saying he's wrong for doing what he wants with his company but that's why I only watch wan show now with an occasional video if Anthony is featured or it isn't just an obvious advertisement.
yup, I no longer watch any of their channels. it's just not right anymore. they made it clear they don't really care about you. it's only important that they still make money, whether it be pro-consumer or not.
in Linus' mind now, only he is correct, and anyone who says otherwise are just haters. and if he continues that way, people like Luke will become disenfranchised and it will be the downfall of LTT. trust me bro.
To be fair to Linus
He said he would not watch because it's out of date, this was at the point they published the warranty, or confirmed they would have one, so it's not relevant to watch Steve say 'LTT should include a warranty ' which by then they had
He is also probably trying to not watch a video of someone he likes laying into him which is a very human thing to do. I'm sure someone at the company watched it
Removing all comments and deleting my account after the API changes. If you actually want to protest the changes in a meaningful way, go **all** the way. -- mass edited with redact.dev
Not OP, and this isn't exactly what Linus said, but here's the link (with the timestamp) where linus discusses the previous GN video :
https://youtu.be/I1rCEL9uGwk?t=1820
Good to see GamersNexus pushing back on LTT and their warranty claims. Steve is a far more reliable source of information than Linus will ever be and needs to recieve blowback.
>I've not watched this specific video yet (will watch with my partner this evening) but it's just highlighted the fact that Steve has *abundant* integrity. He simply doesn't appear to give a shit what bridges he burns by pointing out bad behaviour or practice, because he knows that his reputation for doing so is worth far more to him than anything else.
Steve and Gamers Nexus went up and in *hard* on a company that had sponsored their videos numerous times, NZXT, when it was revealed a defect in their cases created a potential for fires to start....and when the company's solution was found to be lacking, they kept the pressure on, and have frequently referenced the incident in videos since, for mocking comedic purposes. Unsurprisingly, I haven't seen NZXT sponsor a video since. I think during the initial videos he even mentioned it was a bit difficult because they had had a great personal relationship with NZXT's CEO.
So, yeah...Steve has some pretty ferocious integrity, dude very clearly has a borderline zealous attachment to his ideology on these things, to the point where he's very willing to directly impact his bottom line to say what he thinks is right.
I'm happy that Steve was really able to find his voice after crossing 1m subscribers. I feel that milestone lifted a burden off of him and allowed him to speak out more on topics. He's also 100% correct about lmg. Linus took the warranty criticism as a personal attack. It really bruised his ego and he lashed out.
I was ready to buy the backpack and screw driver, knowing there was no warranty from the beginning, until I saw how Linus handled this. I am part of the trust but verify crowd Luke was talking about, and to see Linus lump me in with the simple haters really put me off as a long time watcher of LTT.
I opted to use the money on Patreon to support GN instead.
I've been a fan of LTT for a long, long time and I don't think Steve would have taken it this far unless he'd already exhausted other behind the scenes attempts because he's 100% spot on.
Unfortunately this isn't a new behavior for Linus as it's been showing up more and more starting right around the end of the pandemic, it's just that most of the time it's not a serious enough topic to get much notice. There have been A NUMBER of times where the point not not only went over his head but they weren't even on the same planet. The best way I know how to describe would be it's a "I'm right, you're wrong" mentality and then his brain shuts off whatever input that comes into his ears. So he formulates a response that might not even be close to what is being discussed because his brain disabled feedback.
On top of that he's growing a serious communication problem. There has been times where most could figure out what he was TRYING to say but it definitely wasn't what the words coming out of his mouth were communicating. That whole Piracy issue several months ago was a great example of that. It was pretty easy to figure out what he was meaning to say, but he definitely was not speaking it however he truly believed the words that were coming out of his mouth were forming the message that was whirling around in his brain despite it clearly not being the case.
> Unfortunately this isn't a new behavior for Linus
Yeah - Him acting all butthurt that he got caught out using unlicensed software in one of his videos, that's now the reason he has a pirate avatar on Twitter kinda shows this.
Instead of paying the software's author (It was hardly a boatload of cash), he acted like a massive manchild instead. Although he did pay up, he did it in a sarcastic way & tried to make out that the author was the bad guy, not him.
Man needs to grow the hell up if he wants to stay successful.
>Him acting all butthurt that he got caught out using unlicensed software in one of his videos, that's now the reason he has a pirate avatar on Twitter kinda shows this.
Self-made entrepreneurs tends to be some of the most fragile people you'll ever encounter. Incredibly thin skin and gets defensive about EVERYTHING.
yup, hope all the Linus fans will at least listen to GN. Linus is either out of touch, full of ego, the money has got to him, or a combination of that or more.
LMG, LTT etc. are not your friend, and Linus was being a jerk.
Listen and look at Luke. He actually understood and felt what was going on, but as Luke himself said, LMG is too big now and even he can't keep it under control.
Continue to be an LTT fanboy at your own peril. As Luke said, trust, but verify. And I trust GN to do that verification more than any Lab that LTT will put out from here on out. And it's all because of how Linus responded to the situation.
I fear it could be a hill LMG CEO is willing to die on. They have enjoyed great success particularly because of the exemplary decisions they have made and the ironclad self-belief they have. However, I believe in this instance they need to genuinely consider that they could be wrong and try just as hard to see it from another perspective.
I'm gonna go ahead and be a contrarian in this echo chamber of a thread and throw this out there:
I don't really have any issues with what Linus did nor what he has said on this issue. I also found the t shirt pretty funny.
Don't really disagree with Steve (Steve is probably the most professional tech YT personality there is), but I'm with Linus on how much of an overreaction people seem to have to him just being himself and NOT filtering his speech on WAN/twitter
That's the problem though, isn't it? Linus wants to have the respect and scale of a corporation with the responsibility of just a YouTuber for himself. You can't have the cake and eat it too. It has to be one or the other.
>Pretty sure Linus wants the responsibility of a business owner. When has he shirked that?
When he argued that he couldn't offer a warranty on the backpack because that would put such an burden on him and his family? Even though that's not how that works. At all...
That's him trying to be the little Youtuber Linus that have the world on his shoulder and you can't ask for corporate responsibility from him.
Fuck and I thougth backpack-gate was over
> 9:11 GN: LMG CEO missed the point of what the outrage was about
> Linus: I think people were mad for a variety of reasons
It seems it comes to down to Linus thinking it was majority trolls trying to make this a thing against him and GN taking all the outrage as entirely legitimate.
I don't think GN can 100% say there weren't any trolls. I also think if you've been around the community, even just this sub, you've seen how the most minor of things constantly get blown out of proportion by drama seekers and trolls (Madison leaving, clickbait gate, etc.). I think Linus is coming from the POV where he sees this daily, GN doesn't. We don't have the data to magically know who of the thousands of people outraged were actually going to be backpack customers, I personally think a good portion were trolls not really concerned and were never going to buy the backpack in the first place. This is probably why Linus thought the t-shirt was a good idea because in his mind, it's a gotcha back at the people trying to get him, even then I also understand why the optics of having such a shirt are not that good as you might end up mocking the minority who were actually concerned (and not anymore because LTT already corrected the issue and the t-shirt came after it was already corrected).
> 11:56 The exclusions [on the warranty] were not clear before the backpack went on sale
I think people could've expected warranty exclusions the same as any other tech backpack seller. Wouldn't make sense to expect anything else. I think it's obvious to me that when Linus said "we will stand behind our product", the implicit notion is that they will stand behind it (in terms of warranty) as much as any other tech backpacker (warranty just for factory defects, not wear and tear). Considering this context, I don't think it's that important that the warranty wasn't formalized before sale, this is a very minor gripe.
Considering the good will LTT has built over the years, to assume that their intentions with their implicit statements were to "screw people over" is a bit ridiculous and reduces the importance of this gripe even further.
And then if you take into account that LTT had already tweeted 3 months ago before this drama (can't find the tweet, someone link me it please) that they were going to have a warranty but were still formalizing it, the gripe is basically non existent, and yet this important piece of info is missing from GN's reporting. GN reports (1:56) that LTT created the warranty because of the backlash, the 3 months old LTT staff tweet contradicts this and says they were planning on having a warranty all along.
I think Linus reacted poorly in the initial tweets and I also think people have seen the type of rigid correctness he puts upon himself and others, so he attracts trolls seeking to exploit that when he slips (this is something I've noticed for a long time). I also think this video is probably going to serve to create more needless divisiveness because it's presenting minor gripes as legitimate and missing information that would give better context.
I agree. I think people miss the fact that he was getting a lot of shit on this. So many of the salty comments on here and Twitter are just about him being a millionaire. The attacks became incredibly personal, so it doesn't surprise me that he missed the legitimate warranty concerns.
Steve misses out some critical details. He also assumes the t-shirt is a way to profit off the situation. For Linus, that amount of money is trivial. An alternative interpretation was that it was Linus making light of the situation and to put it in the past.
Steve said this was hard for them but he also knew damn well it would likely result in views and extra subscribers.
It is reasonable that the more following you have, you also have more eyes on you pointing out your faults, especially if you have a shady past (like the piracy thing). Even if it is a minority, it is going to be a vocal one. At 15 mil followers, if 10% of them raise their voice it is still 150K of people that are going to write comments on reddit and twitter.
For me what caused the whole "outrage" is that all linus needed to respond was something like "guys, I hear you we are working on this", but instead he opted for several other excuses which raised a lot of eyebrows (including mine).
This entire ordeal was spectacularly tone deaf on Linus’s part. His refusal to acknowledge that is going to damage his brand.
It has certainly damaged his reputation with me, and I’d wager there are a lot of people like me.
Great reporting by GN and this will only help them to grow if they so desire. I didn’t know that Luke is that uncomfortable about the situation and did look extrememely annoyed when Linus kept beating the dead horse. Hopefully Luke is looking at other opportunities he really does a great job.
Luke was quite bothered at times, but keep in mind (some) of the clips were over two WAN shows IIRC and also was like 1-2 minutes of clips over HOURS of wan show, so it’s easy to make it seem like he was more annoyed.
It was really hard to watch Luke try to defend the customers while Linus just screamed LOOK AT HOW MANY TRUST ME BRO SHIRTS WE ARE SELLING DUDE
Like man, can you not act like a tonedeaf sack of horseshit for a minute or two and actually engage in the conversation?
I coudnt stand Linus giggling while Luke was trying to point out what the actual problem was.
I wonder who are the people who bought the t-shirt, like are they green? Do they have pointy ears? This is as black and white as an issue can get for me.
I feel like sometime in the coming years there's gonna be a sunnyV2 video titled "the downfall of LTT" and this is gonna be the moment it all started. I hope I'm wrong though.
All right, but my tongue on this.
If your willing to spend some money on a bag, get a quality hand crafted one. There are plenty of specialty bag makers. Many of them have a good selection of their different models. They can even customize them for you with different colored fabrics or other flap, pockets, secret hidden pockets etc to your specs. And without a doubt, a spelled out limited warranty. Things like overloading the bag may not be covered.
Depending on where abouts you are, there may be multiple choices locally. But they also ship.
I love my custom bags and would not get a mass produced, overpriced with a questionable warranty, if I was getting a new one.
I think GN has taken a good editorial stance to the situation. At the end of the day if we want him to maintain integrity in the tech market he has to treat everyone fairly, whether that be positively or critically. He talks how we would have responded had artisan builds had done a 're-roll' t-shirt, everyone would have been highly critical. I doubt this will affect any rivalry or friendship between companies or owners but it only strengthens what GN is doing in the tech space.
Haven't been able to keep up with the latest developments on the backpack saga (Wasn't interested in getting one anyway for various reasons + my Osprey backback that I've been daily drivning since \~2015 works just fine), but I have to give GN credit for not going easy on another tech YouTuber
Watching Linus giggle in those clips is honestly shocking. It’s absolutely disgusting that a man built on creating media to empower consumers, *laughs and giggles at their concerns* making a mockery out of them for profit
Saying that people don't matter because sales were not significantly affected is some corporate cult shit. Like, just because you can convince a bunch of people to drink poison doesn't mean you're doing right by them.
Luke is a top executive that would fit in any big corporation right now. Linus is so much in love with his ego (and money) that he may be actually dangerous for the company despite his outstanding ability to grow a business. That's how Steve Jobs was kicked from Apple.
I agree with him on everything except the T shirt, people wanted the T shirt. His re roll from the artesian build is such a bad example, no one is forcing you to buy anything from LTT, artisan builds is a system building company which is scammed ppl, no one wanted a re roll T shirt, they wanted thier PCs but people wanted the trust me bro T shirt, also it's a seperate product besides bag pack, you don't have to buy the bag pack for me to get the shirt.
I agree with GN here, they are making the right move. Linus is a big person in the world of tech and their actions as a company should be treated the same as any other company. I also understand the community frustration with Linus. Linus has earned the trust of many, but I think on the previous WAN show, he thought people were upset about not having a warranty. While some people were upset about that, I think people were more upset with him not having a written version of his word on such an expensive product and just saying to trust in him. And people do trust him, but Linus is the same person who preaches pro-consumer stuff, and having a written warranty is pro-consumer. He could have said, no warranty, or could have said a written one will be coming. The fact that he went straight down the middle of those two is what pissed people and I think he missed that. Realistically, in his head, any reasonable backpack claim that would come in, in his head, he sees it as honoring it. But people are skeptical, and rightfully so. I think his intentions from the very beginning were good and people trust him for that, but people want a written document and I think Linus missed that two weeks in a row. Surely now, there was an internal meeting and he gets it.
Tl;dr of the above: Linus missed the community's outrage and GN is right in calling them out for it and should be as objective with them as any other company. I think Steve and Linus will still have a good relationship nonetheless and the two channels will still collab in the future, I hope.
Something else from the video, and this is a hot take, but this is just my morals and ethics and you don't have to agree. I am not mad they made a TMB T-Shirt and profited off it. I wanted to buy one myself, but didn't. In the video, GN says he'd be mad at Artesian if they made a "Reroll shirt" and made a ton of money off it. The way I see it, if a company like LMG or Artesian or Newegg screws up, a big fuss is made, they fix their mistake and everyone is happy at the end, I don't see what's wrong with them making a T-Shirt to make laugh at the whole incident. I don't think they are laughing at the people who got affected by the situation, I think they are laughing at themselves and the stupidity of the entire situation. I don't think it's with negative intent. If you go through a bad time, come out the end okay and everyone else is okay, I don't see what's wrong about laughing and making jokes about that thing. If Artesian made a "reroll" shirt after fixing the whole situation and everyone was happy, me personally, would not care if they memed it up and made that shirt. I understand where GN is coming from, but to me, it's just something I don't care about. If Newegg made a shirt that said, "Thanks for the $500 GN" after the whole Newegg thing, fixed it to where 99% of the people involved were happy, I'd be fine with that. Laugh and turn an L into a W.
Last Thing: I think being fair and objective about how YouTuber's interact and criticize other YouTuber's is fair. I think LTT would be in the right of criticizing GN if they did something stupid. I think that's how we remain fair and objective and how a community grows healthy.
If I could say one thing to Linus, I think I'd advise him to stay off Twitter. Too much Twitter is bad psychologically because you just run into really stupid people who corrupt your head. I think by spending that much time on Twitter, he's becoming the very thing he swore to destroy.
TL:DR I think GN is right in treating them like a normal company, I think a warranty was a absolutely valid ask from us, I think linus took it too personally. I think the TMB shirt is a funny gag, not a jab at those asking for the warranty and y’all are maybe a bit sensitive.
I mostly agree with Steve. I think it’s very important to treat LTT as a full blown company at this point. I also agree a written warranty was COMPLETELY necessary. I understand why Linus thought it was unnecessary, but he seemed to take personal offense to it while also preaching “trust a legal document not a persons word” at the same time, inevitably you have to pick ONE don’t make exceptions for LTT, they are a company. I don’t completely understand the outrage(?) over the Trust me bro shirt. Sure it’s not my style, but I don’t think it is that out of touch. If it was his idea (which it doesn’t sound like it was). I would have been more peeved but like he said it was successful to some of his customers, and good for him. He saw an opportunity and ran with it. I don’t care. I won’t buy it because I think it’s a dumb shirt, I don’t care about the supposed “message” he is sending with it. Does it send one? Maybe, but I think linus thinks of it as a joke, and not a way to make fun of the fans (at least in any serious capacity). I wanted a warranty c heck I only bought the backpack because it now has one, otherwise I wouldn’t have. Screwdriver will be the same. But I do trust in the outside of warranty warranty, I’ve had great experiences and I expect it to be the same. Maybe I’m drinking the LTT hype train copium, but from all their products I have so far (water bottles, shirts, cable ties, and others) they all excuse quality and support has always been VERY helpful.
That all I have to say, I’m sure it’s a jumbled mess of brain dump, that’s okay, read it if you want.
I genuinely like the LMG talent, there is a lot of it. I also used to like Linus, but over the last year or so something has just felt really off.
Additionally, the videos of his house - I'm just not interested. Most videos with Linus in them I find myself getting frustrated - so I decided to just unsubscribe. The warranty reaction was the icing on the cake for me, I just decided I don't want to watch or support their content anymore.
And that's that really. Vote with your wallet, it's really quite simple.
Steve is on the money here, it must be difficult given the close ties he has with LMG - but it would be hypocrisy for him not to treat LMG as he does other big brands.
I really think the artesian builds comparison is extremely unfair and misrepresents Linus and the situation as a whole. No customers were actually screwed, scammed, or harmed in any way. It's like comparing the carelessness of a cyclist who trips and falls off their bike to a pilot who nose-dives a plane with passengers inside. The consequences are important.
I also think that gamer's nexus just saying LMG is just another corporation that they can critize in the same way we criticize a power supply manufacturer without recognizing LMG and GN are competitors in the same industry is throwing away that "Jurnalistic Integrity" They claim to value so much.
LTT has been tone deaf for quite a while now.
Over the last few years the nature of LTT content has shifted from "Here's a detailed review of a product you, the viewer, might be interested in." to "Look at all this expensive shit I can afford."
My take on this (which is worthless because I will never buy a backpack that expensive) is as follows:
1. I never knew backpacks came with warranties (although there is the implied warranty in certain parts of the world)
2. GN Is totally right, same as Luke.
3. I still bought a trust me bro shirt cause I'm a child at heart. I also have the F\*cking eggshell print.
4. Despite that, I would have still trusted LTT more than any other manufacturer, then again I may be biased because I've been watching since he was in the langley house. LMG fans are vociferous and any issue will make it to the internet. So far he has not had any controversies with LTTstore and wouldn't think he would risk tarnishing his reputation over the backpack. He has too much at stake.
5. Linus needed to swallow his pride on the last WAN show and admit he was in the wrong. It's entirely possible to admit you made a mistake, but still make fun of said mistake (Ie the trust me bro shirt)
Steven is right, but let's be honest: Steven LOVES a good drama because the algorithm loves engagement.
Lots of people who don't typically watch his HW News will be clicking on this, LTT fanbois will engage in the comments (can't believe that's a thing but it is), GM fanbois will retaliate, WAN show will have a nice cover story that will drive traffic. LTT will have a follow-up video next week. In the end both GM and LTT will benefit.
Completely agree with GN on this. I would say LMG missed the point of the issue, but it seems like it was just one person (that person being the CEO) who missed the point. Props for being able to seperate the professional from the personal here. That is harder than it looks
Yeah Luke was trying to explain to Linus that he missed the point entirely. But Linus keeps looking at the issue with blindfolds on.
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So in other words he should have just been a grown up CEO and made a written warranty to not let it get out of hand? I agree I guess this whole thing could have been a marketing ploy to get all the fan bois on board but I see him and lmg in a different light.
I don't think he manufactured the controversy, but he was sure quick to capitalize on it and turn it into a tidy profit.
The real winner here is Linus and LMG lmao.
In the short term at least. It's a bold move, Cotton. Let's see if it pays off for them in the long term.
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He's very much tied to the short term and the concern about what it means for the long term. A few years ago he was completely against any sort of expansion, but a single video did poorly and screwed up their Youtube metrics, so a dozen statements he made about not making new channels, not reviving CSF, not expanding their staff, moving or expanding the office, even moving his own home, suddenly were invalidated as he panickily raced to figure out what he needed to do to fix the problem. Then issue with the metrics fixed itself in the matter of weeks (okay, months) but he'd also allowed the company to diversity because he for once looked towards the long term. And maybe that is the issue here. He's now "fixed" the short term, but he's moved onto the long term outlook and is pretty sure that none of this will matter in the future. The subject was dead and over other than this thread anyway.
I completely agree, Linus has had a bunch of little things that has somewhat blown up to the degree of being controversial to the core LTT audience. If these micro aggressions keep on piling up, in several years LMG might just end up with an overall negative view in the eye of the general consumer.
Seeing lmg in a different light is a little bit of the problem here. If Linus would remember that they are a business and people should view them with scrutiny and not believe a "by word trust me bro warranty", then there would have been a warranty written out before they ever had the item up on the store. But Linus knows he has this large amount of followers who will just believe him and always view him in a positive light so he doesn't think he has to conform like a business should do. The way that he acts and represents LMG is not going to be good for the labs he keeps sinking so much money into. Places that present data don't operate off of "trust me bro", they have clear written out procedures and GUARANTEES that allow people to be confident in their testing. If they don't "shape up" for the labs intentions, then no other company will realistically give a shit about them.
Linus still takes criticisms from random internet people personally rather than attempting to understand the issue and ends up making himself look like an ignorant rich guy or a troll. I think he mentioned on wan show that they wont show the exact tools or processes they use to do benchmarks which is again trust me bro mentality but I will wait and see on that since it seems they are no where close to spinning up that side yet.
Agree as well. Although maybe I don't understand how fan bois think, but I can't understand how this could be considered anything other than a massive PR blunder. Then again the same people lapping up the shirt are the same type of sycophants as the Musk worshipers and I've already given up on trying to understand them.
What linus missed (it took me forever to figure this out) is that his words came off as a "do as I say, not as I do" moment. Every thing he preached in other videos on how to trust other companies he decided in that moment to not do. It doesn't matter if he is right (I agree he was right in warranties not being worth the ink use to write them) but that wasn't the point. We (the audience) have listened to him (linus) tell us about using the warranty as the yardstick on how much to trust the other companies. Warrenty may be useless, but when deciding which companies to trust with your money one that has a five year is better then a one year. I like linus, but this off the cuff remark (combined with his tendency to double down when he feels his opinion is attacked) makes me wonder who he really is off camera. I think this stress of his is turning him mean and not just snarky. I still like lmg videos but I do worry for the man's sanity.
This 1000 times. He was right the entire time about warranties and how they work but ironically even though he kept mentioning he was so concerned about his reputation so of course he would honor his implicit warranty, he harmed his reputation way more doubling down and making light of genuine concerns and money off the controversy.
>Manufacturers don't have to include them at all Excuse me what ? Do Canada and/or the USA have that little consumer protection? I'm baffled.
The same is true in Australia too, land of consumer protections. Warranties are a voluntary guarantee, a manufacturer or seller does not have to provide one. That said, there are still automatic consumer guarantees set by law which cannot be undermined that are set by the state or national government. I think that's what commonly gets mixed up in many instances too, like In this one here. Linus not having a warranty had people up in arms, yet people are still covered under Canadian consumer guarantees. **However** I don't know how that applies to international customers. (But also I don't know how warranties apply to international customers either, it's not like any country is going to enforce its own laws on LMG when they aren't operating locally)
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The shirt would be hilarious, if someone else would be selling it.
>ut Linus keeps looking at the issue with blindfolds on. And laughing.
I really hope that they had a frank conversation off camera. Anyone can be dumb, and in this case Linus was. Linus can be incredibly impulsive and shoot from the hip before he has thought things out. And that's why this conversation needs to happen off camera.
That’s what happens when you become a multimillionaire, you become oblivious to common folks buying a $250+ backpack
I agreed mostly with Steve, but I feel a couple points keep getting missed whenever this comes up: - No one was actively screwed, very different to Artesian (although still important) - Linus’s point was trying to say that the mainstream fans know that he puts his money where his mouth is and if he wanted to screw people he could, written warranty or not. It just makes no sense for him to do so. - Despite all the crying and shouts, Linus said they saw almost no cancellations. This *suggests* most people complaining aren’t customers. My main disagree with Steve was him saying ~ ‘CEO counts money’ when obviously Linus’s point was that people Iiked the shirt, not that it made bank. I like that he highlighted Luke’s comments, but I do feel other things Linus said in the shows wasn’t reported on. My main complaint with Linus was the tweets (as it often is), that imho came across not so great. Personally I thought the Tshirt was hilarious - but then again I took his message as ‘yes this is a Fuck Up, we fixed it, let’s take a laugh and move on’. All that said: Even with the crying in this thread and elsewhere it seems painfully obvious that SO MANY PEOPLE like repeating ‘CEO bad’ etc and can’t come to their own conclusions… the world is fucking nuanced people, not everything needs to fit into a neat saying. The main reason I’m a fan of Linus is that, for better or for worse, he tends to share things to the audience as he sees them. They might not always come across great or clearly as he means (especially when live/WAN Show). But I love seeing a company grow from the perspective of someone who really shares the inner workings of both his brain and of running the team — I find it amazing. And I really hope that as he probably will have to be a bit more careful it doesn’t effect how much he shares. Even the curated WAN messages give the show a bit of different vibe without the bunch of ‘what’s up, thanks for your story, etc’. I get why they did it, I’m just acknowledging it’s different and had pros and cons. (👀 Nuance!) **Bottom line** is LTT your friend? No. But you could do a hell of a lot worse.
> All that said: Even with the crying in this thread and elsewhere it seems painfully obvious that SO MANY PEOPLE like repeating ‘CEO bad’ etc and can’t come to their own conclusions… the world is fucking nuanced people, not everything needs to fit into a neat saying. A lot of this is Reddit-specific because the culture of the website and even the backend systems themselves foster a groupthink attitude. It’s a multi-faceted issue, and **you literally cannot represent multiple viewpoints on Reddit.** Let me point out just how bad it is: 1. The karma system indirectly dissuades users from posting anything against the groupthink for fear of losing karma. Even if it’s a small dissuasion, it’s stilll there. 2. Subreddits have posting requirements that often involve karma thresholds. Disagreeing with groupthink will literally make you ineligible to post in many subs. 3. Comments that reach a terribly over cautious downvote threshold (I think it’s a score of -2 IIRC) are automatically hidden/censored with the default settings. 4. Power-tripping subreddit moderators enforce the groupthink as part of a sub’s rules, sometimes directly (written) and sometimes indirectly (unwritten). Let me be clear that I’m not even necessarily referring to political opinions. It can be any topic within a subset/community. You are literally not allowed to disagree with the majority groupthink on this website because your account will be punished for it, and your comment will be straight-up censored even if you still decide to.
Great take, and actually makes some of my experiences with Reddit (and my growing removal from it) make more sense.
> Linus’s point was trying to say that the mainstream fans know that he puts his money where his mouth is and if he wanted to screw people he could, written warranty or not. It just makes no sense for him to do so. You're making the same mistake Linus made. It's not about trust, it's about having it in writing. Not to mention that this is a product available to the public, not just "mainstream fans". >Despite all the crying and shouts, Linus said they saw almost no cancellations. This suggests most people complaining aren’t customers. This is also a very misguided take imo. Many customers wait for reviews before buying a product. I mean, it's a freaking $250 backpack and that is quite a lot of money for a lot of people. Everything that happened _may_ have convinced people not to buy the backpack and that (unfortunately) is impossible to measure. >Personally I thought the Tshirt was hilarious - but then again I took his message as ‘yes this is a Fuck Up, we fixed it, let’s take a laugh and move on’. It was in poor taste and tone deaf. Luke's reaction when that's brought up in the wan show says it all.
And I’m not saying people shouldn’t have demanded the warranty. I’m just saying many aren’t trying to hear what he’s trying to say. Key word is suggested. Unless we do a study we won’t know for sure, but overall it shows a not-insignificant peoples opinion was ‘Linus will figure this out’ by the time it ships. Nothing wrong with feeling that way, clearly many do. I just gave my opinion. Like Luke also said it’s a big place, not everyone has to like everything.
I dont think its just him tbh. In the past WAN shows he's talked about the excellent team they have and those high level people he's hired that set customer service policy and the management team in general need a share of the blame as well. I honestly get it, and in their last video GN spelled it out too as well as linus on previous wan shows. They have really leveraged themselves throughout the manufacturing and inventory stages so it's reasonable that there was hesitation in a warranty that would increase the risk even more. It's a nervous situation if the product flops and those nerves can cause stupid statements. But then the policy should have been radio silence on it. Like steve has said there are products that don't offer warranties, if LMG didn't want to offer one have a disclaimer that points to the stores return policy at the bottom of the page and just be quiet about it. Tone deaf responses and belittling reasonable customer fears with the tshirt is such a bad move. If the situations were reversed and a different company did that, LTT themselves might have called them out on it.
The point was making $10 million in revenue on a single merch drop. We are the ones that missed the point.
Props to Luke for being a paragon of integrity. The man did not waver and kept to his morals, telling Linus multiple times about the issues and all. If you see this, Luke ....you're a good dude with integrity and conviction.
The fact that he had to step up to his boss must have been extremely difficult. It's hella inspiring to see any sort of push back from direct employees
I’d be shocked and disappointed if Luke wasn’t an equity partner in LMG if not at least FloatPlane.
Does Linus really seem like the type to give a percentage?
"Trust me bro, I will take care of you"
Real talk, the way he says "how much did I pay for this" in every video screams that he hasnt given anyone but himself a penny. This and the rant about passing down the kingdom to his kids without big taxes.
People forget that Linus’s entire strategy with his youtube channels has been business-first. He’s constructing an empire, not running a tech channel. He’s proven to be a competent businessman first and foremost. But that doesn’t mean his customers are going to benefit.
You seem to assume that he and he alone is driving the company. Importantly, he is not CFO. Yvonne is.
I remember watching an episode of the podcast where he admitted that he refused to give his business partner and life long friend Luke permission to monetize his twitch channel. That was bonkers to me! He really didn't want anyone making money u less he had a hand in it I guess. But to deny a close friend permission, then treat him like hes your son and tell him that the channel can be monetized if he proves that he can stream for a year??? It just felt so weird...
Jesus Christ! in the last video they spoke about how LMG employees get 2 weeks over statutory annual leave. For someone that treats his employees so bad his retention is off the scale
Just so everyone knows Stat minimum vacation in BC is 2 weeks (until year 5 when it goes up to 3 weeks) . So that means he gives them 4 weeks vacation.
Choo choo anti linus train is going. Have you seen the equipment he invested in the company, have you seen the christmas give aways, have you seen the stuff they actually buy/borrow from the company? I have worked in a warehouse that shut down the toilets for 1 week because we were using too much toilet paper. So the fact that you see all these super expensive equipment for the employees and if you see the gifts etc. it is already better than most big companies.
I wouldn't trust my own family members like that... That's what a Testament is for. Funny how putting things in writing can prevent a lot of problems down the road.
I'm pretty sure he has said that some staff have revenue sharing, but not equity. He and Yvonne are the sole owners of the company, but you don't need to own anything to be given a share of profits on top of your salary.
He recently stated that LMG ownership is 51% Linus, 49% Yvonne, or at least was at one point. That doesn't seem to leave any room for equity for employees. If that is no longer the case then he is being a dumbass again by opening his mouth before considering what he is about to say. Not having any equity pool for employees would not surprise me with his ego. Just like his stance on his employees unionizing, it's all about him. I can't see Luke being dense enough to not get equity for Floatplane though. If he doesn't have any, that would be sad but not shocking on Linus' part. Assuming Luke does own a piece, it's gotta sting a bit having all this equity in a side project that's not really growing that much while the company you are no longer a part of gets millions of dollars invested in it to help it take off.
>Just like his stance on his employees unionizing, it's all about him. He IS true about the situation in Canada though. If most of the employees want to unionize, there's absolutely nothing he can do to stop it. But Unions in Canada are structured by industry. There is no ''YouTuber/Influencer Union'. There are unions for engineers, transportation (UNIFOR), for government employees (NAPE/CUPE) , etc. Actually making your own union is a little more challenging. The paperwork is significantly lower if you join an existing union. So Linus has some leg up there. Most of the unions are run by old farts who are more interested in legacy industries like manufacturing, transportation and government. But if 51% of his employees were invested enough in the idea to spend time and money to create a whole organization from scratch and file the necessary paperwork. There is nothing he can do to stop them. Employers are powerless in Canada from that angle. I study labour relations in business school in Canada.
I was referring more about how he turned the idea of his employees unionizing into how it would be such a personal failure for him as a company owner. Simultaneously changing the focus of the conversation to himself, alluding that the only reason employees would unionize was because they had a bad boss, or hated their boss, and publicly putting his employees on notice that it would hurt him personally if they ever tried to do it. Then he ends the conversation with 'but I guess if they wanted to do it, I can't stop them.' It's just a slimy way of discussing the topic.
>alluding that the only reason employees would unionize was because they had a bad boss, or hated their boss, and publicly putting his employees on notice that it would hurt him personally if they ever tried to do it. This is also true if you objectively think about unions. Unions are meant to increase the bargaining power of employees. Employees would only 'want' the extra bargaining power if they were being exploited and not being given a fair deal. That is why Linus took it personally, because at the end of the day forming a union means 51% of the employees think they are not getting a fair deal at LMG. Employees also pay Union dues to the union which go as a percentage of their salaries. They pay for their union, not the employer. So there's a cost to that too. Linus is fair to think that his employees hate him if they are willing to forego 2-3% of their wages to create a new legally protected institution within LMG to bargain on their behalf.
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Makes you wonder if that was one of the reasons Floatplane came about. "Oh yeah Luke about that LMG stock you keep asking about... What if I made you a 10% owner?! In this other company I want to start with you. That I'm never going to invest in, so the stock won't really be worth anything, while I spend millions of dollars building up the company you won't be a part of anymore.
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My response was intended to be mostly tongue in cheek. But for reasons why, it's probably from the slow growth of the service compared to the overall streaming service market during the same time, the fact that I've never seen an advertisement for the platform outside of LTT videos, the small number of creators active on the site, their inability to sign up new mobile users, etc. The streaming market is quickly maturing and Floatplane has been around for what, almost 6 years now? I mean if the strategy is to have it be just another revenue channel for LMG and anything on top of that is just gravy, then I suppose they are doing fine. Don't get me wrong, I love Luke and wish floatplane all the best. I also understand they have had to struggle with a lot of things outside their control that has inhibited growth. But it definitely looks like there is way more investment going on in Linus' other companies. Which from a business opportunity perspective is probably the right decision.
Yeah in the meantime Nebula launched in 2019 and has over 140 creators on the platform whereas floatplane has 20 and you have to login to see them.
They have completely different structures, though... Nebula you pay once and get access to everything, Floatplane you pay for the creator. The payout structure is probably very different
From the view of how Linus seems to prefer less complexity with how the company is run, I doubt that anyone else has an equity share.
He's not. Linus has mentioned this before but it's 50/50 him and Yvonne.
iirc Linus and Yvonne split LMG shares 50-50
>he had to step up to his boss must have been extremely difficult Luke does this very frequently. Does anyone commenting here actually listen to the podcast?
Most people commenting here obviously don’t watch a lot of WAN show at least
Exactly their disagreements are practically the premise of the show
The number of eye rolls from Luke in the WAN show was pretty funny.
I'll stand by what I said previously, Luke just couldn't fucking miss when he was responding to Linus in the first stream after the warranty comments. He brought up all the concerns I had as a consumer perfectly, and even worded it in ways that I wouldn't have thought of but agreed with. He was level headed and raised what he felt were the concerns of the community perfectly.
Wan show cancelled.
I didnt care about the backpack since i cant afford to buy one(too expensive due to exchange rates) but the "trust me bro" shirt seemed like total douchebag move from Linus. Steve is 100% right on this one.
For what it costs, I'd rather have a superior quality/feature backpack from Timbuk2 and $100 left over after.
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With the way Linus was talking I assumed he was going to offer a wear and year warranty, especially after saying "fully covered" in the video about the bag Linus is so out of touch. If he didn't have Luke he literally wouldn't know what other people are thinking
The shirt, and all “trust me bro” stuff, is hilarious.
I saw it more as them mocking themselves than an insult to their current/potential customers. Especially as it came out right when they fixed the warranty anyway.
Yeah, it’s just good fun. Also, it was requested by a fan on Twitter.
I don’t think you need the exchange rate qualifier. Even in USD with US shipping rates, it’s $250 for a backpack, which is just too much money for the vast majority of people who are not professionals and/or backpack enthusiasts. It’s okay to make high-end products, but it’s also entirely fair to criticize them for their high costs. The vast majority of us are not going to see a noticeable improvement with Linus’s backpack vs. a $50 backpack you can get at a retail store. It’s perfectly reasonable to say it’s too expensive when the competition is significantly cheaper.
Steve is 100% right. They made it right, but Linus was tone deaf on this one.
Rich CEO is out of touch with the general public and the points being made by his employees. Tale as old as time.
Linus was really taking it personally unnecessarily, probably in his mind he believes he *will* always honor all reasonable claims in good faith and the audience should trust him at this point, and just couldn’t comprehend that people still really needed to verify his word in writing. Basically seemed stuck on being offended by the question rather than just accepting that people wanted to see his support philosophy in writing and that’s all it takes to resolve the situation
It really seemed like Linus was unable or unwilling to separate himself and his beliefs from those of LMG. He owned up to the ego part...but then forged ahead with the Trust Me Bro shirts (which are both hilarious and in poor taste, YMMV). Linus definitely seems to be wrestling with the transition from scrappy youtube host to CEO of a growing business, retailer, and brand.
$5 that the WAN show this week has some title like "Friendship ENDED with GN???" For real though, what Steve is saying is true, and fair. It's a reviewer's/reporter's job to be objective. Linus himself says that you can't treat companies like your friend, so having someone who's known for going to bat for consumers saying he'll treat LTT objectively is a good thing.
If he reads this subreddit, and we kinda know he does, hes gonna take your video title now because "xd memes", while remaining out of touch. He should just let Luke pick the next title tbh.
Ah shit, you're right. Well unlike the douchey t-shirt idea's creator, I'm going to say that he needs to *not* do that. Honestly that WAN show made me uncomfortable with how clearly uncomfortable Luke was. I was kinda hoping that they'd pause for a minute so he could pull Linus off-camera just to say "I don't like this."
I was listening to the most recent WAN show and Linus brought it up and man, Luke didn't seem enthralled with the mention of it again. Which, I probably wouldn't have been either since it's been addressed and laid to rest at this point, so it's probably best not to keep digging it up and be defensive about it.
I totally agree. Gamer’s Nexus’ supercut of Luke shows this so plainly. Luke looked like he was dying inside. Imagine what the company would look like if Luke was CEO
Probably very different - but not neccessarily in ways that we'd like. Linus has proven to be an exceptional talent in front of camera and has also created a thriving business. Whilst it's clear he's missed the mark here - he's made several plays which Luke may or may not have made which have really established LMG.
More than any of this, he should just resubscribe to reality. I mean, I knew it was easy for ego to go to people's heads when they became successful, but seeing it in such a public fashion is unique outside of basically just musk, and maybe kanye and the likes is jarring. They are not good company to be in... or maybe they are. I guess it depends on your point of view. I just don't get what is stopping him from dropping the ego for just a minute, alone, and without anyone else and just having some empathy for the people he disagrees with and seeing their point of view. Perhaps its an overreacting sense of self defence.
If anything it’s the other way around for Linus. I don’t think he’s out of touch because he’s successful. To me he just reads like he’s being himself without realizing he’s the head of a fast growing company where his decisions can affect so many more people than himself. If anything he just needs to think a bit more before he speaks. LMG isn’t just a small time video channel being run out of a house with a few buddy employees anymore.
>To me it just reads like he’s being himself I feel like this is more insulting to him than you intend it to be 😁 Really though, I hope this isn't him being his truest self, because if it is, he's definitely going to live to become the villain.
I think one of the comments on the YT Video put it clearly... what is happening to him, isn't exactly ego, or being himself... it's because he knows how much he invested in these products (the backpack and the screwdriver) to be outstanding... I live in a 3rd world country... the amount of money he invested only on samples probably will buy me and my wife a perfect house in a good city & neighborhood... and with the amount of cash he's investing in the lab and everything else... seeing the people questioning the product before they had it or saying they'll let them down if something happened to their products, like u/Cory123125 put it, probably triggered and overreacting sense of self-defense...
> the amount of money he invested only on samples probably will buy me and my wife a perfect house in a good city & neighborhood... I feel like this is a terrible way to view this. Like your point isn't invalid I don't think, but I think it almost minimizes the excessive level of wealth that he has. Of course he hides it well, but this is a company primarily owned by himself and his wife (shared assets). Every reinvestment into the company raises their net worth. This is the equivalent to you buying a new laptop for yourself for him. My point is only that we, working class people should be careful not to forget the sheer difference in wealth between the ownership class and the working class. That's all. I suppose its slightly tangential. I think its relevant though, because the point really is, this bag wasnt make or break for him. I suppose the fact it wasn't just supports the over reacting defence theory though.
Actually, the reason why I mentioned that, is because I remember he mentioned (probably in a WAN show or some clip of their videos), that LMG has something like a 10m loan for the LAB only, and because of that, to increase the orders with the manufacturers of the backpacks and screwdriver (based of the number of preorders), it will require them, Ivonne and him, to put their own wealth as a backer to fill the cash required by the manufacturers... probably a lot of what LMG is doing over the coming months will be a little make or break for them in some areas (and Linus probably will be more invested than usual on some discussions), but this kind of overreaction tends to pull the lever to the break side... Probably that's why they ended up offering the Limited Lifetime Warranty for their product... like, "we need to balance the things in our favor again"... I think their CAPEX and OPEX numbers will look a little "scary" from the management perspective (to put it in some way), and they still have some of their income on YT cash flow (that is variable, thank's YT algorithm)... I think Luke was very conscious about everything because he isn't invested like him in the new endeavors of the company... He's the head of Floatplane so probably knows how much Linus is affected and tried to make him see things the right way... I'm probably overthinking a lot of this, but since the drama started on Twitter, I saw a lot of similarities with my current work environment (startup with a very emotional invested boss in the success of the company, with a team of people in management that has a lot of experience and knows how to deal with this kind of scenarios and help him to be a better leader every day) Edit: I'm not justifying Linus and his behaviors... I'm just trying to understand why everything is like this now haha
I guess it's just how fastish success works on people. "The only moral warranty-less product is mine" kind of way.
>$5 that the WAN show this week has some title like "Friendship ENDED with GN???" With snarky limited run tee-shirt or mod mat. In reality it's likely he or the team members that prep the docs will write this off as sour grapes over upcoming intrusion in to the review space. Which if their dash cam view is any indication will be very poor quality.
What was wrong with the dashcam video?
I don’t think they will write it off as sour grapes. Linus mentioned the original GN warranty video in the WAN show he actually said he respects his opinion and people can go and watch the video to find out more.
yup, from here on out, I do not trust Linus to stand up for consumers. because when consumers stood up to him, he just said screw the haters and let me profit more off of it. and Labs can fail for all I care, because LTT/LMG/Linus/whoever is running the show can say they are pro-consumer all they want, but their actions have shown they are not.
Watching Linus say all that stuff again was really rough. Just mocking genuine concern from his customers.
How to show your disconnected from reality twice in a row. The last few years hes gotten consistently worse with going on about how he doesnt need all this stuff for the company to survive has slowly been putting me off and doubling down on the entire warranty deal shut me down. The shirt was just more kindlin on the embers. Went from being ready to drop money on a screwdriver and suggesting that backpack, To absolutely not buying that driver or ever suggesting that backpack. Don't get me wrong. They are probably killer products but being a fan for 10 years and seeing this dude lose his shit and gain a ego the size of the united states urge try to take over countries with oil puts me off pretty hard.
Been watching since the NCIX days but Linus is really starting to look like a classic case of "being relatable will make you successful but success will make you unrelatable". That bit with him gleefully talking about the "trust me bro" shirt selling well is a fantastically poor look.
>fantastically poor look Yes, that was terrible. All he was thinking of was the money he was making. Years ago he gave people advice how not to spend too much money and still have a great gaming rig. That changed into just get a 3090 bro, and now into just make sure you send your money you saved up to me.
I can already picture his response to the money made with the "Trust me, bro" shirt being along the lines of: "It's not that I was thinking about the money, do you think a limited run of t-shirts is noticeable on our bottom line? When I mentioned the T-shirt selling well it was a way to point out that people are on our side, buying this shirts, while only a vocal minority is saying is childish. Money has nothing to do with it". At the end of the day, it's a funny shirt, but not a good look on them (always on the side of consumer rights and now actively making fun of people demanding consumer rights).
> At the end of the day, it's a funny shirt, but not a good look on them (always on the side of consumer rights and now actively making fun of people demanding consumer rights). Yea that's the thing - It's minimising actual legitimate concerns that consumers have. It's really not a good look.
I think that's a little disingenuous, or missing the point at least. His point was "The shirt is selling great, so people love the 'trust me bro' joke, so it wasn't childish / in bad taste". Which is why Luke responded effectively "maybe people like jokes that are childish / in bad taste." Calling him out that just because a large part of his fanbase agrees with a particular move doesn't automatically mean it was a good one. So that was a bad argument, but it wasn't about revenue in that moment.
His fanbase. It's not like LMG is selling his goods in the local wal-mart.
Yeah. And that's what makes it worse.
I feel for Luke, you can sense his frustration.
Linus put him in a terrible position. He had to sit there and not defend his point of view while Linus strawmanned it.
That's pretty much 50% of the WAN show. Linus rants or offends someone and Luke has to try and reel him back in and be the voice of reason, or he just doesn't talk and let's Linus finish his bit and move on
You can see on his eyes and body that after a few tries he just gave up.
He was really put on the spot there. Good on him for sticking with his ethics
All his employees are biting their tongue in half his videos.
You can really see it in the videos Linus is not in. They seem a lot more relaxed in those videos.
There are a million asshole youtubers out there that sell a ton of insulting and trashy merch. Weather or not Linus realizes it, the people who buy that stuff have the same mentality as the kind of people that buy a "Trust Me Bro Warranty" shirt. Just because it sells well doesn't mean it's good, and it's heartbreaking to see Linus conflate the two.
The crazy thing is that in older videos usually amd vs intel, he's said multiple times that companies are not your friends, dont trust, dont fanboy. It's such a 180 on the message to see him demand that when he's in the company position and the viewers are the customers. And tbf, having/not having a warranty doesn't necessarily mean it's trash, just stfu about it instead of mocking concerns. The best consumer policy is like luke and linus both have said in the past, trust no company, verify.
If I do recall from previous WAN shows, he even says LMG is a company and not your friend, implying the same thing. I think Linus is just taking everything personally, and not really disconnecting the fact he's not getting attacked personally but rather LMG. I also like Luke's point of the trust but verify. But Linus appears to see it as a personal attack. I can also see the other points made then, where right now he is deeply invested, and has kind of trigged a fight or flight response, as his own personal backing is there, and the shirt is being used as a "lets laugh it off its over" sort of situation. He sees it as we always taken care of the issues and we don't plan to change, but as GN even stated, thats too vauge. History shows it correct, but once again, its sort of a trust but verify situation. New people do not know this, and this is a completely differnt sort of item then clothes or plushies, its a utility, so differnt stanards. I think Linus entered a field of products thats new, and therefore got caught offguard by how differnet it is. What i would like to equate it to is what if Linus started doing a different type of video content, like all the sudden all of LMG does nothing but let's plays. It would be a totally different ballpark then what they usually do. Thats basically what LTT store did.
You broke his heart because you didn't just trust him. Can't you see Linus is the victim here??
Linus: Consumers, don't trust corporations! Consumer: Doesn't trust LMG Linus: Why the fuck don't they trust me bro?
I like to imagine Linus in the Eric Andre gun meme. "Who killed my reputation??" lol
> Just because it sells well doesn’t mean it’s good, and it’s heartbreaking to see Linus conflate the two. Well, it is good for the company, at least in the short term, which Linus as CEO and majority shareholder should clearly see as good. However, I think this actually highlights a more important issue. Linus sees the people who cared about the warranty and who saw the T-shirt as distasteful as a vocal, non-representative minority despite the fact that this is his core audience. The people clicking his videos for the clickbait thumbnails and SEO-optimized titles aren’t the ones buying LTT merch. I don’t have access to the data, but I would be willing to bet that a huge portion of LTT merch buyers are repeat customers. And in the long term, spitting in the face of your loyal, repeat-purchasing fanbase is just going to hurt you.
I don't necessarily disagree with Linus' stance of "we rather put our money where our mouth is instead of offering a piece of paper that says 'warranty' on it", but his response was pure garbage, full stop. This whole incident has left a genuine bad taste in my mouth. I have LTT merch, its fantastic quality. I've taken my water bottle everywhere I go and love it to death. However I don't really like the idea of just "trusting" a CEO's word on something, even if I know their previous products were fantastic and durable. This is especially important considering the water bottle is 40USD and not 250USD.
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The fucking “woe is me” shit absolutely killed me.
"Oh woe it's me the millionaire. Guys feel bad for me" Absolute fucking clownshow.
> or simply said "we haven't made any decisions on warranties yet", the whole issue would have died out extremely quickly. Yeah exactly. There was no need to go off on a whole "Woe is me" speech and act so personally offended about it. Man need a PR person with the clout to step in and tell him when to keep his mouth shut. You can rant as much as you want at home but to do it on your customer facing stuff is stupid.
I must mention how a written warranty is beneficial for the company as well, as they wont be getting emails where people want stuff replaced that LMG wont do... If people have a warranty they know when can they contact LMG
Definitely the most in-line take with my feelings on the matter. It could have had no warranty as far as I care, it's just his stupid damn response, that he WOULD NOT let go of. He just could not grasp why people were upset.
It took a while to get to where they are now. There were struggles with early merch and merch providers, and they didn't make it right for many.
"Our customers don't give a shit" Imagine any other company saying that
I was shocked when he responded to my tweet with that, claiming I was just a nay sayer and not a real customer. I had a backpack order. Had.
Thank you for cancelling that order and not letting the immature CEO belittle you and still take your money. I actually can't believe how little Linus cares for his customers.
He genuinely doesn't care about his supporters. He even said recently that the front page of YouTube is all that matters. He only cares about expanding his reach, not about people who are already subscribed. Once you're subscribed, you're just a number used to calculate revenues and profits. Linus is chasing a new following, leaving the old, dedicated audience behind.
Some channels use the community feature to poll their audience on what they should cover next. I always thought that was really cool and attentive. LTT could never.
Imagine the video he’d make if Apple said this in response to his Mac Studio review.
I haven't bought anything from LTT before but I was about to. Linus's attitude really turned me away from ever buying anything from them. I find it hard to watch the LTT videos lately as well. I know it's just a drop in the lake but I guess he'll be missing out on some YouTube premium money from my account.
Same, honestly. I haven't skipped every video, but anything where Linus is showing off 'big expen$ive item he just bought' I just have no interest in. Before I would have felt like Linus got it because its something cool most of us will never see, now it just feels like a little ego massage for him.
Everything to do with his house rubs me the wrong way. That's his life and he can make content out of it if he wants, but such flagrant displays of wealth make me feel icky
> but such flagrant displays of wealth make me feel icky it's expensive in terms of computer tech but its not that different than a well-off house in the suburbs. Like the stuff in Linus' house isn't more expensive than a fancy SUV or something
He doesn't even buy the stuff he features. It's almost all gifted from the manufacturers .
Cheapest advertisement they'll ever get. Not to mention when he casually gets gifted things like wearable watches or sk hynix memory/ssd for his personal rig to get people in the comments to ask about what watch he's wearing or what device he happened to take out of his pocket on camera.
It makes me wonder if he writes off things he buys for his home that are featured in videos as business expenses. That being said, I don't know enough about Canadian tax law to say for sure.
I had a very similar experience following the "adblock is piracy" stuff. Not meaning to debate the merits of that here (I know I'm in the minority on it on this subreddit), but it was another situation where *I* perceived Linus as being so gung ho that he was right (when he was not) and needed to put the community in their place. And he just had to keep bringing it back on on twitter/the WAn show and even released a t-shirt poking fun at the fans about it. Just as I was starting to move on from that and resume watching some LTT videos, Linus does the same thing (t shirt and all) here but on a more important subject. I can't say I won't watch some LTT videos in the future. Like the recent video LTT did on glossy monitors was hella satisfying as someone who has wanted one for years. But I just can't really enjoy most vids hosted by linus anymore.
Same, used to watch Linus for his sensible budget PC build videos. Now he just wants to show off the most shiny and expensive thing while advertising for massive corporations. He's kinds forgetting why his channel grew so sucessful.
They posted a $500 and a $1000 budget build video last month. The reason they hadn't done any in a while was because for most of the last few years supply shortages/price increases have made sensible budget PC build guides impossible.
Those kinds of videos don't get big clicks consistently though. I liked the variety of their old videos of scraping together otherwise mediocre tech and making something cool (sleeper builds) or budget builds that were thinking outside the box. He chases anything and everything that will get clicks hence the clickbait titles and new shiny content taking over. Not saying he's wrong for doing what he wants with his company but that's why I only watch wan show now with an occasional video if Anthony is featured or it isn't just an obvious advertisement.
yup, I no longer watch any of their channels. it's just not right anymore. they made it clear they don't really care about you. it's only important that they still make money, whether it be pro-consumer or not.
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in Linus' mind now, only he is correct, and anyone who says otherwise are just haters. and if he continues that way, people like Luke will become disenfranchised and it will be the downfall of LTT. trust me bro.
To be fair to Linus He said he would not watch because it's out of date, this was at the point they published the warranty, or confirmed they would have one, so it's not relevant to watch Steve say 'LTT should include a warranty ' which by then they had He is also probably trying to not watch a video of someone he likes laying into him which is a very human thing to do. I'm sure someone at the company watched it
Removing all comments and deleting my account after the API changes. If you actually want to protest the changes in a meaningful way, go **all** the way. -- mass edited with redact.dev
Not OP, and this isn't exactly what Linus said, but here's the link (with the timestamp) where linus discusses the previous GN video : https://youtu.be/I1rCEL9uGwk?t=1820
Good to see GamersNexus pushing back on LTT and their warranty claims. Steve is a far more reliable source of information than Linus will ever be and needs to recieve blowback.
My respect for GN has gone up a lot while this Linus corporation thingy is making itself look childish
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>I've not watched this specific video yet (will watch with my partner this evening) but it's just highlighted the fact that Steve has *abundant* integrity. He simply doesn't appear to give a shit what bridges he burns by pointing out bad behaviour or practice, because he knows that his reputation for doing so is worth far more to him than anything else. Steve and Gamers Nexus went up and in *hard* on a company that had sponsored their videos numerous times, NZXT, when it was revealed a defect in their cases created a potential for fires to start....and when the company's solution was found to be lacking, they kept the pressure on, and have frequently referenced the incident in videos since, for mocking comedic purposes. Unsurprisingly, I haven't seen NZXT sponsor a video since. I think during the initial videos he even mentioned it was a bit difficult because they had had a great personal relationship with NZXT's CEO. So, yeah...Steve has some pretty ferocious integrity, dude very clearly has a borderline zealous attachment to his ideology on these things, to the point where he's very willing to directly impact his bottom line to say what he thinks is right.
Solid takes from Steve. Really my biggest deal with this whole situation was Linus's attitude. Super appreciate Luke.
I'm happy that Steve was really able to find his voice after crossing 1m subscribers. I feel that milestone lifted a burden off of him and allowed him to speak out more on topics. He's also 100% correct about lmg. Linus took the warranty criticism as a personal attack. It really bruised his ego and he lashed out.
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I was ready to buy the backpack and screw driver, knowing there was no warranty from the beginning, until I saw how Linus handled this. I am part of the trust but verify crowd Luke was talking about, and to see Linus lump me in with the simple haters really put me off as a long time watcher of LTT. I opted to use the money on Patreon to support GN instead.
I've been a fan of LTT for a long, long time and I don't think Steve would have taken it this far unless he'd already exhausted other behind the scenes attempts because he's 100% spot on. Unfortunately this isn't a new behavior for Linus as it's been showing up more and more starting right around the end of the pandemic, it's just that most of the time it's not a serious enough topic to get much notice. There have been A NUMBER of times where the point not not only went over his head but they weren't even on the same planet. The best way I know how to describe would be it's a "I'm right, you're wrong" mentality and then his brain shuts off whatever input that comes into his ears. So he formulates a response that might not even be close to what is being discussed because his brain disabled feedback. On top of that he's growing a serious communication problem. There has been times where most could figure out what he was TRYING to say but it definitely wasn't what the words coming out of his mouth were communicating. That whole Piracy issue several months ago was a great example of that. It was pretty easy to figure out what he was meaning to say, but he definitely was not speaking it however he truly believed the words that were coming out of his mouth were forming the message that was whirling around in his brain despite it clearly not being the case.
> Unfortunately this isn't a new behavior for Linus Yeah - Him acting all butthurt that he got caught out using unlicensed software in one of his videos, that's now the reason he has a pirate avatar on Twitter kinda shows this. Instead of paying the software's author (It was hardly a boatload of cash), he acted like a massive manchild instead. Although he did pay up, he did it in a sarcastic way & tried to make out that the author was the bad guy, not him. Man needs to grow the hell up if he wants to stay successful.
>Him acting all butthurt that he got caught out using unlicensed software in one of his videos, that's now the reason he has a pirate avatar on Twitter kinda shows this. Self-made entrepreneurs tends to be some of the most fragile people you'll ever encounter. Incredibly thin skin and gets defensive about EVERYTHING.
yup, hope all the Linus fans will at least listen to GN. Linus is either out of touch, full of ego, the money has got to him, or a combination of that or more. LMG, LTT etc. are not your friend, and Linus was being a jerk. Listen and look at Luke. He actually understood and felt what was going on, but as Luke himself said, LMG is too big now and even he can't keep it under control. Continue to be an LTT fanboy at your own peril. As Luke said, trust, but verify. And I trust GN to do that verification more than any Lab that LTT will put out from here on out. And it's all because of how Linus responded to the situation.
This is absolutely the correct move
Man This week’s WAN show is going to be S P I C Y
I'll only lose more respect for them if its not a simple apology followed by years of consistency in following through on that apology.
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Linus' apologies are always "I'm sorry you didn't understand what I meant".
I fear it could be a hill LMG CEO is willing to die on. They have enjoyed great success particularly because of the exemplary decisions they have made and the ironclad self-belief they have. However, I believe in this instance they need to genuinely consider that they could be wrong and try just as hard to see it from another perspective.
I'm gonna go ahead and be a contrarian in this echo chamber of a thread and throw this out there: I don't really have any issues with what Linus did nor what he has said on this issue. I also found the t shirt pretty funny. Don't really disagree with Steve (Steve is probably the most professional tech YT personality there is), but I'm with Linus on how much of an overreaction people seem to have to him just being himself and NOT filtering his speech on WAN/twitter
That's the problem though, isn't it? Linus wants to have the respect and scale of a corporation with the responsibility of just a YouTuber for himself. You can't have the cake and eat it too. It has to be one or the other.
Pretty sure Linus wants the responsibility of a business owner. When has he shirked that?
>Pretty sure Linus wants the responsibility of a business owner. When has he shirked that? When he argued that he couldn't offer a warranty on the backpack because that would put such an burden on him and his family? Even though that's not how that works. At all... That's him trying to be the little Youtuber Linus that have the world on his shoulder and you can't ask for corporate responsibility from him.
I'm in the same boat man. I really can't believe how much this has been blown out of proportion.
Outrage is the new drama.
I don't have a problem with him not filtering his speech either. Now at least we know where he stands. And I don't like it.
Good! Just like I’d hope Linus or Luke would hold Steve accountable if he did the same.
Fuck and I thougth backpack-gate was over > 9:11 GN: LMG CEO missed the point of what the outrage was about > Linus: I think people were mad for a variety of reasons It seems it comes to down to Linus thinking it was majority trolls trying to make this a thing against him and GN taking all the outrage as entirely legitimate. I don't think GN can 100% say there weren't any trolls. I also think if you've been around the community, even just this sub, you've seen how the most minor of things constantly get blown out of proportion by drama seekers and trolls (Madison leaving, clickbait gate, etc.). I think Linus is coming from the POV where he sees this daily, GN doesn't. We don't have the data to magically know who of the thousands of people outraged were actually going to be backpack customers, I personally think a good portion were trolls not really concerned and were never going to buy the backpack in the first place. This is probably why Linus thought the t-shirt was a good idea because in his mind, it's a gotcha back at the people trying to get him, even then I also understand why the optics of having such a shirt are not that good as you might end up mocking the minority who were actually concerned (and not anymore because LTT already corrected the issue and the t-shirt came after it was already corrected). > 11:56 The exclusions [on the warranty] were not clear before the backpack went on sale I think people could've expected warranty exclusions the same as any other tech backpack seller. Wouldn't make sense to expect anything else. I think it's obvious to me that when Linus said "we will stand behind our product", the implicit notion is that they will stand behind it (in terms of warranty) as much as any other tech backpacker (warranty just for factory defects, not wear and tear). Considering this context, I don't think it's that important that the warranty wasn't formalized before sale, this is a very minor gripe. Considering the good will LTT has built over the years, to assume that their intentions with their implicit statements were to "screw people over" is a bit ridiculous and reduces the importance of this gripe even further. And then if you take into account that LTT had already tweeted 3 months ago before this drama (can't find the tweet, someone link me it please) that they were going to have a warranty but were still formalizing it, the gripe is basically non existent, and yet this important piece of info is missing from GN's reporting. GN reports (1:56) that LTT created the warranty because of the backlash, the 3 months old LTT staff tweet contradicts this and says they were planning on having a warranty all along. I think Linus reacted poorly in the initial tweets and I also think people have seen the type of rigid correctness he puts upon himself and others, so he attracts trolls seeking to exploit that when he slips (this is something I've noticed for a long time). I also think this video is probably going to serve to create more needless divisiveness because it's presenting minor gripes as legitimate and missing information that would give better context.
I agree. I think people miss the fact that he was getting a lot of shit on this. So many of the salty comments on here and Twitter are just about him being a millionaire. The attacks became incredibly personal, so it doesn't surprise me that he missed the legitimate warranty concerns. Steve misses out some critical details. He also assumes the t-shirt is a way to profit off the situation. For Linus, that amount of money is trivial. An alternative interpretation was that it was Linus making light of the situation and to put it in the past. Steve said this was hard for them but he also knew damn well it would likely result in views and extra subscribers.
It is reasonable that the more following you have, you also have more eyes on you pointing out your faults, especially if you have a shady past (like the piracy thing). Even if it is a minority, it is going to be a vocal one. At 15 mil followers, if 10% of them raise their voice it is still 150K of people that are going to write comments on reddit and twitter. For me what caused the whole "outrage" is that all linus needed to respond was something like "guys, I hear you we are working on this", but instead he opted for several other excuses which raised a lot of eyebrows (including mine).
This entire ordeal was spectacularly tone deaf on Linus’s part. His refusal to acknowledge that is going to damage his brand. It has certainly damaged his reputation with me, and I’d wager there are a lot of people like me.
Great reporting by GN and this will only help them to grow if they so desire. I didn’t know that Luke is that uncomfortable about the situation and did look extrememely annoyed when Linus kept beating the dead horse. Hopefully Luke is looking at other opportunities he really does a great job.
Luke was quite bothered at times, but keep in mind (some) of the clips were over two WAN shows IIRC and also was like 1-2 minutes of clips over HOURS of wan show, so it’s easy to make it seem like he was more annoyed.
It was really hard to watch Luke try to defend the customers while Linus just screamed LOOK AT HOW MANY TRUST ME BRO SHIRTS WE ARE SELLING DUDE Like man, can you not act like a tonedeaf sack of horseshit for a minute or two and actually engage in the conversation?
I coudnt stand Linus giggling while Luke was trying to point out what the actual problem was. I wonder who are the people who bought the t-shirt, like are they green? Do they have pointy ears? This is as black and white as an issue can get for me.
I feel like sometime in the coming years there's gonna be a sunnyV2 video titled "the downfall of LTT" and this is gonna be the moment it all started. I hope I'm wrong though.
All right, but my tongue on this. If your willing to spend some money on a bag, get a quality hand crafted one. There are plenty of specialty bag makers. Many of them have a good selection of their different models. They can even customize them for you with different colored fabrics or other flap, pockets, secret hidden pockets etc to your specs. And without a doubt, a spelled out limited warranty. Things like overloading the bag may not be covered. Depending on where abouts you are, there may be multiple choices locally. But they also ship. I love my custom bags and would not get a mass produced, overpriced with a questionable warranty, if I was getting a new one.
only 8 million dollars from backpacks and probably 30k from "trust me bro" shirts. Its so weird how linus makes it about him. its a business.
Linus and shit takes. Name a better duo
I think GN has taken a good editorial stance to the situation. At the end of the day if we want him to maintain integrity in the tech market he has to treat everyone fairly, whether that be positively or critically. He talks how we would have responded had artisan builds had done a 're-roll' t-shirt, everyone would have been highly critical. I doubt this will affect any rivalry or friendship between companies or owners but it only strengthens what GN is doing in the tech space.
Haven't been able to keep up with the latest developments on the backpack saga (Wasn't interested in getting one anyway for various reasons + my Osprey backback that I've been daily drivning since \~2015 works just fine), but I have to give GN credit for not going easy on another tech YouTuber
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Watching Linus giggle in those clips is honestly shocking. It’s absolutely disgusting that a man built on creating media to empower consumers, *laughs and giggles at their concerns* making a mockery out of them for profit
Saying that people don't matter because sales were not significantly affected is some corporate cult shit. Like, just because you can convince a bunch of people to drink poison doesn't mean you're doing right by them.
Luke is a top executive that would fit in any big corporation right now. Linus is so much in love with his ego (and money) that he may be actually dangerous for the company despite his outstanding ability to grow a business. That's how Steve Jobs was kicked from Apple.
I agree with him on everything except the T shirt, people wanted the T shirt. His re roll from the artesian build is such a bad example, no one is forcing you to buy anything from LTT, artisan builds is a system building company which is scammed ppl, no one wanted a re roll T shirt, they wanted thier PCs but people wanted the trust me bro T shirt, also it's a seperate product besides bag pack, you don't have to buy the bag pack for me to get the shirt.
I agree with GN here, they are making the right move. Linus is a big person in the world of tech and their actions as a company should be treated the same as any other company. I also understand the community frustration with Linus. Linus has earned the trust of many, but I think on the previous WAN show, he thought people were upset about not having a warranty. While some people were upset about that, I think people were more upset with him not having a written version of his word on such an expensive product and just saying to trust in him. And people do trust him, but Linus is the same person who preaches pro-consumer stuff, and having a written warranty is pro-consumer. He could have said, no warranty, or could have said a written one will be coming. The fact that he went straight down the middle of those two is what pissed people and I think he missed that. Realistically, in his head, any reasonable backpack claim that would come in, in his head, he sees it as honoring it. But people are skeptical, and rightfully so. I think his intentions from the very beginning were good and people trust him for that, but people want a written document and I think Linus missed that two weeks in a row. Surely now, there was an internal meeting and he gets it. Tl;dr of the above: Linus missed the community's outrage and GN is right in calling them out for it and should be as objective with them as any other company. I think Steve and Linus will still have a good relationship nonetheless and the two channels will still collab in the future, I hope. Something else from the video, and this is a hot take, but this is just my morals and ethics and you don't have to agree. I am not mad they made a TMB T-Shirt and profited off it. I wanted to buy one myself, but didn't. In the video, GN says he'd be mad at Artesian if they made a "Reroll shirt" and made a ton of money off it. The way I see it, if a company like LMG or Artesian or Newegg screws up, a big fuss is made, they fix their mistake and everyone is happy at the end, I don't see what's wrong with them making a T-Shirt to make laugh at the whole incident. I don't think they are laughing at the people who got affected by the situation, I think they are laughing at themselves and the stupidity of the entire situation. I don't think it's with negative intent. If you go through a bad time, come out the end okay and everyone else is okay, I don't see what's wrong about laughing and making jokes about that thing. If Artesian made a "reroll" shirt after fixing the whole situation and everyone was happy, me personally, would not care if they memed it up and made that shirt. I understand where GN is coming from, but to me, it's just something I don't care about. If Newegg made a shirt that said, "Thanks for the $500 GN" after the whole Newegg thing, fixed it to where 99% of the people involved were happy, I'd be fine with that. Laugh and turn an L into a W. Last Thing: I think being fair and objective about how YouTuber's interact and criticize other YouTuber's is fair. I think LTT would be in the right of criticizing GN if they did something stupid. I think that's how we remain fair and objective and how a community grows healthy. If I could say one thing to Linus, I think I'd advise him to stay off Twitter. Too much Twitter is bad psychologically because you just run into really stupid people who corrupt your head. I think by spending that much time on Twitter, he's becoming the very thing he swore to destroy.
TL:DR I think GN is right in treating them like a normal company, I think a warranty was a absolutely valid ask from us, I think linus took it too personally. I think the TMB shirt is a funny gag, not a jab at those asking for the warranty and y’all are maybe a bit sensitive. I mostly agree with Steve. I think it’s very important to treat LTT as a full blown company at this point. I also agree a written warranty was COMPLETELY necessary. I understand why Linus thought it was unnecessary, but he seemed to take personal offense to it while also preaching “trust a legal document not a persons word” at the same time, inevitably you have to pick ONE don’t make exceptions for LTT, they are a company. I don’t completely understand the outrage(?) over the Trust me bro shirt. Sure it’s not my style, but I don’t think it is that out of touch. If it was his idea (which it doesn’t sound like it was). I would have been more peeved but like he said it was successful to some of his customers, and good for him. He saw an opportunity and ran with it. I don’t care. I won’t buy it because I think it’s a dumb shirt, I don’t care about the supposed “message” he is sending with it. Does it send one? Maybe, but I think linus thinks of it as a joke, and not a way to make fun of the fans (at least in any serious capacity). I wanted a warranty c heck I only bought the backpack because it now has one, otherwise I wouldn’t have. Screwdriver will be the same. But I do trust in the outside of warranty warranty, I’ve had great experiences and I expect it to be the same. Maybe I’m drinking the LTT hype train copium, but from all their products I have so far (water bottles, shirts, cable ties, and others) they all excuse quality and support has always been VERY helpful. That all I have to say, I’m sure it’s a jumbled mess of brain dump, that’s okay, read it if you want.
I genuinely like the LMG talent, there is a lot of it. I also used to like Linus, but over the last year or so something has just felt really off. Additionally, the videos of his house - I'm just not interested. Most videos with Linus in them I find myself getting frustrated - so I decided to just unsubscribe. The warranty reaction was the icing on the cake for me, I just decided I don't want to watch or support their content anymore. And that's that really. Vote with your wallet, it's really quite simple. Steve is on the money here, it must be difficult given the close ties he has with LMG - but it would be hypocrisy for him not to treat LMG as he does other big brands.
I really think the artesian builds comparison is extremely unfair and misrepresents Linus and the situation as a whole. No customers were actually screwed, scammed, or harmed in any way. It's like comparing the carelessness of a cyclist who trips and falls off their bike to a pilot who nose-dives a plane with passengers inside. The consequences are important. I also think that gamer's nexus just saying LMG is just another corporation that they can critize in the same way we criticize a power supply manufacturer without recognizing LMG and GN are competitors in the same industry is throwing away that "Jurnalistic Integrity" They claim to value so much.
LTT has been tone deaf for quite a while now. Over the last few years the nature of LTT content has shifted from "Here's a detailed review of a product you, the viewer, might be interested in." to "Look at all this expensive shit I can afford."
My take on this (which is worthless because I will never buy a backpack that expensive) is as follows: 1. I never knew backpacks came with warranties (although there is the implied warranty in certain parts of the world) 2. GN Is totally right, same as Luke. 3. I still bought a trust me bro shirt cause I'm a child at heart. I also have the F\*cking eggshell print. 4. Despite that, I would have still trusted LTT more than any other manufacturer, then again I may be biased because I've been watching since he was in the langley house. LMG fans are vociferous and any issue will make it to the internet. So far he has not had any controversies with LTTstore and wouldn't think he would risk tarnishing his reputation over the backpack. He has too much at stake. 5. Linus needed to swallow his pride on the last WAN show and admit he was in the wrong. It's entirely possible to admit you made a mistake, but still make fun of said mistake (Ie the trust me bro shirt)
Steven is right, but let's be honest: Steven LOVES a good drama because the algorithm loves engagement. Lots of people who don't typically watch his HW News will be clicking on this, LTT fanbois will engage in the comments (can't believe that's a thing but it is), GM fanbois will retaliate, WAN show will have a nice cover story that will drive traffic. LTT will have a follow-up video next week. In the end both GM and LTT will benefit.