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You know, this is some shit that I expect when dealing with some shady asshole on ebay, but LMG?
Bro... Are you ok?
I always wondered if Linus was actually a slimy POS, but this Billet Labs situation has cemented it for me. If you haven't watched the Gamers Nexus followup video, definitely watch it.
Must nice to have all that time to care about YouTuber drama
Look, I can't say that I don't understand the sentiment, but people calling YouTubers out on their bullshit is strictly better than 'Nobody ever cares about anything outside of their 60 hour a week jobs that they work to pay for an overinflated cost of living in this hypercapitalist dystopia hellscape that they don't have the emotional capacity to care about because of said 60 hour a week jobs.'
I want to hear about this because it means somebody still cares, somebody is still paying attention to the injustice, however trivial or removed from daily life it is.
Honestly I could care less if it was just YouTuber drama. The reason I care and the reason it makes me so angry is because Billet labs is just a couple of guys trying to make a product. They aren't some big company or anything like that, it's just a couple guys working on a passion project. But then Mr Big money YouTube star does literally everything wrong, doesn't even bother to use the product properly, and proceeds to take a giant dump all over Billet labs.
Yeah, I'm going to be a little pissed off about that. Not because I care about some whiny bitch on YouTube but because I feel for the poor guys who got dragged through the mud and our potentially going to take a massive hit in their business once they finalize their product.
It's not just "YouTuber drama" though; LTT have positioned themselves as The Grand Knowledge on all things tech, so a good number of people turn to them for recommendations. And their recommendations are questionable.
We get it, you don't know who LTT is or their relevance. You can ask directly if you want to learn.
We all have to find something that's entertaining to us, no? If you don't, you deserve some
Yeah, that's not what this is. I'm relatively uninvolved, but after going through a few videos on this, they're calling out ltt and lmg because they're actively harming a small start-up and fairly directly misinforming consumers. Now that they're branding themselves as professional tech reviewers instead of entertainers, the bar is a lot higher and it seems that they are NOT clearing it.
Maybe I came to the channel late, after it's prime, but I have never seen the value of LTT & affiliates.
The review videos have seemed sub par when cross checking against multiple reviewers.
The entertainment videos felt cringey even when they covered a subject I was interested in (PlayStation dev kits, other obscure tech)
It was a quick unsubscribe when I felt my time was getting wasted.
I'm with you here. That channel and Linus have always just seemed like clickbait clowns to me, felt scummy
Outside of blatant click bait my issue with the channels is once it starts getting interesting, the video is over. Ever played RAGE1? Like that ending. (Credits roll when you think act 3 is about to start)
I'd feel their videos would be better with 10 more minutes of content and slow the fuck down on making so many videos. Why the fuck they have 7 channels?
I've been seeing this news article circling around the internet all day, and I have yet to see anyone mention what the monoblock actually is. It's starting to feel like some kind of mysterious primal artifact, like maybe the master computer from which all flavors of Linux originated.
It is a water cooling block designed for a specific graphics card. It is a new type of design and Billet Labs sent their best prototype (as in, the only one they had) to LMG for review. Linus proceeded to strap it to a video card where it didn't fit, so bad that there was a 1mm gap (which might as well be a million miles when you're talking about cooling). Of course the performance sucked due to it being strapped to a card it wasn't designed to fit, linus trashed the block and the company.
And here's the part that just fucks me off. Billet Labs SENT THEM THE CORRECT CARD WITH THE BLOCK! There is literally no valid excuse for putting it on the wrong card, Billet Labs sent them the correct one!!!
And the thing that a lot of people aren't understanding is the Billet Labs is not some large corporation, it is two guys putting hard work into a product. Unless I'm mistaken, they have regular ass jobs. People talking about them being able to sue... With what imaginary money? LMG is a 100,000,000 dollar company (at least). Their sloppy, misinformed, shitty, shameful, video basically has the power to cut them off at the knees when they did absolutely nothing wrong.
There is so much more to this, but whatever. Linus is a garbage person. I feel as though Luke is a decent guy but afraid to give Linus the reality check that he desperately needs.
Anyway, the first sentence answered your question I think. I rambled and ranted.
I feel as though Luke is a decent guy but afraid to give Linus the reality check that he desperately needs.
I honestly don't understand why Luke puts up with him. I'd have left years ago. Although I have never been friends with the pompous tit to begin with.
Probably because it’s the best paying job he can ever get. What’s he gonna do when he leaves? Which other podcast/YouTube channel can he work for that’s in the Greater Vancouver Area? If he leaves his live would get upended, he either needs to move or switch careers and in both cases probably takes a salary cut. This is how shitty bosses like Linus retain employees. Just look at other shitty companies where employees don’t have transferable skills that only apply to one very specific industry, like for example the gaming industry. Employees don’t leave even when the bosses behave terribly, like Riot Games
I get it.
Imagine you start working with your friend, and you start to get successful. He starts acting like an asshole more and more, the friend part shrinks and the boss part grows, and he's oblivious to that.
But he also trusts you, would happily fund you building new things, and has an enormous audience. He's only willing to share a small slice of the pie, but it's a very big pie
Now either you leave and get a normal job, or you stay, get lots of autonomy, minor fame, and maybe a ton of money down the line, but you have to handle a narcissist.
Also by staying, you can steer the narcissist now and again - and that ripples out into the viewers
Thanks, the context you provided was important. If it was just the first sentence I would have been left with "ah, it's a water-cooling block... wait, why is it such a big deal that it got auctioned off and lost? Water cooling blocks aren't unusual. I have one in my computer right now." The rest of the comment explained why this particular block was at the heart of such a fiasco and why losing it is so harmful.
Aside from that, when people criticized the video because he was essentially bashing a small company made by 2 dudes^1 , he then went on a rant on a WAN show saying that he wouldn't review the thing again because he is not going to waste employee time and money into doing a proper review. And that he does't really care because, ultimately, he thinks it's a product that nobody should ever buy because it's too expensive, even if the performance was great.
All said by the dude that used to make the weirdest shit and pay a shit ton of money for garbage, but god forbid someone made a waterblock for water cooling enthusiasts (you know, the kind of person that likes spending money on these products just for funsies, like audiophiles).
When you mentioned it was only two people, I got curious.
Turns out, it's a small company operating out of london, and one of the directors lives two streets away from me.
If it wasn't weird, I would absolutely take a basket of sympathy cookies or something over.
That block is the internet, Jen. It's incredibly important that you protect it or the elders will be irate
It's a novel design of watercooler, on one side you screw a CPU, on the other side you screw a GPU, in the middle you screw the water pipes. So you get an i7-13700k + rtx 4090 in the size of an ITX motherboard, and because everything is screwed together is super rigid.
is a super niche and super expensive stuff that cater to 0.000001% of PC users, but seeing him shitting on the product like this ("it's a shitty and expensive product that doesn't make sense and nobody should buy it") is painful
After all isn't he always buying expensive and niche stuff for himself like insisting on having the monitor, keyboard and mouse cables converted to fiber optic because the PC must be in a custom rack design in the basement cooled with the water of the swimming pool. That instead is a cheap idea that everyone can do?
Wait they sent a 3090 too? Why Linus tried it with a different GPU then?
Because they're a disorganized clusterfuck and he couldn't be bothered to slightly delay filming to get the proper card. Because for whatever reason they've decided they must churn out content at such a high pace that everything they do is like this now.
Honestly the only videos from the last year where I remember things not being totally jank were videos with Emily, but she's barely been in anything since coming out a few months ago.
Because they lost the GPU, I kid you not.
The logistics team is like four people and they have a gigantic warehouse of mess. They sometimes show it in videos, I'm surprised they can find anything.
The thing I don't get about them is they keep going on about how they want to do all this professional grade testing. Ok cool, but that requires careful planning, and that does not go long well with their 10 million videos a day at any and all costs policy that they are currently pursuing.
The company I work at has an almost identical type of chaos and a good chunk of colleagues going in, taking something and not informing it was taken until we do inventory and have 30k of stock missing in some corner someone forgot to count.
We are currently in the process of doing it but we are only ~15 heads, 6 of which are currently not on holiday, we as 1st/2nd level helpdesk need to support our customers and it's just a mess.
Now multiply that by the many employees has and how fast it needs to process it and I am kinda surprised how they havent folded yet in that regard alone.
People seem to constantly underestimate how important logistics and inventory tracking really is
I work in the freight industry and I'm constantly finding shit that isn't labeled properly, packaged properly, or even put on the correct trailer. And that's just me as one dude on a loading dock with about 150 doors and about 40 people buzzing around on forklifts.
Literally last month I found half a dozen pallets ranging in cost from $1000 - $75000 that had been pushed deep into a storage area that freight isn't supposed to be near and had been misplaced over a year prior.
The only reason I found them was because I was investigating trying to find a pallet worth almost $200,000 that someone had misplaced the day before. It was in that area as well.
Because he's a fucking cunt. Always has been. No screwdriver on the face of the earth is worth $70 and no backpack is worth $250, but if it was it should have a goddamn warranty.
There's a video of them reviewing email clients of all things and they shit on outlook for companies... Anyone who's ever used outlook vs Gmail in a corporate environment knows that outlook destroys the competition because rules > tags.
Nothing they do is rooted in reality.
Hoodies should not be $100 unless they also come with a hooker who gives great head.
Fuck LTT.
No screwdriver on the face of the earth is worth $70 and no backpack is worth $250
I don't own either of these products from them, but let me tell you, that is wrong.
I own a 200€ backpack from Samsonite and it fucking rocks, it's a different league from Amazon crap.
Also, sports gear exists, including backpacks.
To be fair, I agree with you, however I do have the screwdriver. I am a glazer and my screwdrivers get tortured to death. This screwdriver is honestly the best one I have ever owned. They did an excellent job and it absolutely is worth 70 bucks. I think they deserve some props for this, it's very clear that they put a lot of work into it.
I do have to wonder though, they wanted to have 12 bits in the holder, but the holding area wasn't large enough. Normal screwdriver bits are 40mm, The shorties that they use are 20mm... They designed the fucking handle... Just make it 40mm longer and then you can use regular size bits. I don't understand why apparently literally no one thought of this.
Regardless, it is an absolutely fantastic product and it deserves phrase.
That said, fuck LTT.
Mate, you should never think an online influencer/store is on your side. They're not.
Not even Steve from Gamer's Nexus is your friend.
Can you still practice safe exchange with them? Yes, just be informed of your rights.
Edit/addition: Didn't check the link. Thought this was about the last drama.
This addresses new issues, and it's important to solve those issues.
I feel like when Linus was still CEO, he made too many choices too fast, and that's caused the situation LMG is in now.
They have to rush content to get bills paid in time.
An extremely impulsive CEO is never good.
I've always held the opinion that any celebrity or influencer or whatever is absolutely fucked up in some way. You just have to hope they're fucked in some way that is relatively harmless
Oh and it seems this is not all of it, an ex-employee came out on twitter about sexual harassment, extremely bad work conditions and so much more.
The timing of it is weird to say at least but there's a lot.
The fact that these allegations come in quick succession is rather logical, I'd say. It's much harder to come out against someone who is a generally beloved public figure, so when the allegations finally start, many people see their chance to have their voice be taken seriously.
It's been repeatedly proven that large companies get a impenetrable wall of armour based on fear of speaking out due to fear of retribution or breaking an important connection. Once that wall is broken it allows grievances to finally pass though.
Damn this is really sad to see for the longest time LMG was one of the few companies I actually liked and trusted
The channel was much better when they were in the house and the backups were stored on a toilet.