Sponsor: Arctic Liquid Freezer II ARGB on Amazon https://geni.us/8BokJIn HW News this week, we start with a discussion about Linus Sebastian's recent reply t...
Solid summary, yep. I will say though that while I understand your anger and certainly share in your disappointment, Linus has a pretty good (but not spotless, not by a long shot) track record of doing the right thing and being a decent dude, and I think he deserves a bit more grace than the more vitriolic comments have been giving him. Saying he’s a piece of shit is a bit much, in my opinion.
As a long-time viewer, it’s hard to see. I hope he sits and thinks on this whole situation, and comes around to apologise to Billet, to GN, and to the community he spent so long building. In the absence of that, I really hope someone from LMG outlines the steps they’ll take moving forward to address the points raised in the GN videos. I love LMG’s content, it would be a shame to lose them over all this.
I was almost ready to be with you, but after reading the tweet from Madison elsewhere in the thread, Linus is going to have to go above and beyond to fix things.
Oof. I’m glad she finally felt like she could speak out properly. How she was treated is simply awful. At this point I just really hope I’m not wrong about Luke, I like him 😞
See, everything’s really actually tooootally fine and Linus is a totes wonderful dude who runs a happy little family worth a hundred million dollars.
Except his employees endure various forms of abuse and are visibly afraid of him at least some of the time. So much suffering is clearly a price many are willing to accept. Companies drive people to breakdowns and literal suicide and… oh well, I guess? What are people gonna do, think a little? Care a little? Post one tweet (or Xcretion or whatever the fuck) on the way to go buy the latest from a company that just killed someone, or destroyed their mental health and ability to live, or maybe “just” (said very sarcastically) groped them a bit and caused a crapload of undue stress besides? No wonder my mind’s all fucked up: I look at the people around me and few of them would so much as skip a DLC to make this world any better. Everything is fucked and it’s only going to get worse and I feel like I’m gonna implode if I have to see one more comfortable prick explain how his precious fucking rich white guy parasocial pal only accidentally constantly screws people over. He’s really a nice guy, actually! Probably tons of fun to have a beer with! Funny on screen!
What’s some peon’s life, or a dozen, or a hundred or thousand or million of them compared to the complete comfort of someone who’s just such a good ol’ boy?
FWIW, Luke was clearly trying to prod Linus into acknowledging the problem of the “trust me, bro” warranty on the WAN show instead of treating it like a joke. I think he was also making some expressions of dissatisfaction about how that cooler block review was handled, which is a major part of this.
Obviously, there’s only so far he can push things on his employer’s platform. Plus, the two of them have been friends for a long time. But I do wonder if he’s going to break in the not so distant future.
One hundred percent, he’s always seemed like the voice of reason (I mention that in other comments, too). In the video from today he even said part of his job is wrangling Linus, which made me wince, because how the hell is that even supposed to work? Linus can take responsibility for his own damn mouth, frankly; if he’s not sanity-checking responses with Luke that’s a failure on Linus’ part, not on Luke’s.
Without Luke on the wan show Linus would be useless. It would be one guy saying whatever comes off the top of his head ranting uncontrollably about everything.
He knows when he goes off on a subject and Luke is there that Luke is going to challenge him if he’s being an ass, so you get a better quality of content from Linus than he would produce on his own.
Linus isn’t going to watch his mouth, that’s honestly his shtick.
I agree! Together, they’re a very entertaining team. I’d like to clarify though, what I mean by “Linus can take responsibility for his own mouth” is not that he has to abandon the spicy takes, but that he needs to listen more closely to what he says and correct himself if he’s being unreasonable. I don’t think it’s fair to rely on other people to do it for him.
That said, this does seem like one of the things they are addressing; per the video, Linus said that future crisis communication will be handled through the other executives, which strikes me as a simple and effective solution. The main problem for most people I think is letting their emotions cloud their thinking in situations like this; I’m the same way! And, lucky enough to have a few people who talk me through and keep me level. Maybe for the WAN show he and Luke can have a safe word, and Linus can simmer down if he hears it 😂
If you can stop your friend/boss saying something stupid (which they may regret saying later if they change their mind) then how does responsiblity make that not worthwhile?
Oh it would definitely be worthwhile, if Linus would listen, but have you ever tried to stop someone from saying or doing something when they don’t want to listen to you? It’s impossible.
I feel what you’re saying and I feel like I should be agreeing with you. But we do have to be careful here.
What we know and what we see coming out of LMG is what they want us to know and see. When there’s a video of Linus making it right, It’s because they wanted to make a video showing him making it right. You’re not going to see videos of him making it wrong and screwing over people, (if he does) It would be bad for business.
Likewise one ex employee’s statement of bad treatment there isn’t gospel He has hundreds of people. There are plenty of people that have left and there’s not a lot of consensus that I found that things are horrible there other than pace.
His response to GN is obviously trash, written in a moment of anger. He tends to put his foot in his mouth on live streams when he starts getting angry about a subject.
Him not sending back the prototype block, honestly is probably standard operating procedure. I wouldn’t send anything to them that I didn’t expect to lose. They receive so much equipment from so many places that they don’t even open for years, that they’re probably kind of blind to it actually being a hardship on a smaller place. I see the lie about him saying he already offered to pay them back a bit more problematic.
As far as his actual reputation or his character alignment sheet, we don’t really know. I would assume that if he was chaotic evil that we would hear a hell of a lot more about that. The guy he brought in to run the place is an insulating factor. When it was pitched it seemed that he was there to insulate Linus from the company, it’s also likely that he’s there to insulate the company from Linus.
Honestly the only thing out of all this that rings unassailably true is the untrustworthy data claim. He’s placing himself and his company to be a ultimate source of truth for benchmarking. But he comes right out and says that he won’t strive to make a better benchmark for a product for $500 when the number is obviously off. There really isn’t a lot of room for that in what he’s trying to build. If you’re going to come out and prove that power supplies, video cards, CPUs and motherboards make the numbers they say they’re going to make, you’re not going to do that with incorrect testing, shrugs and accusations. He’s going to need to be honest to a fault and transparent. If he expects us to take the data seriously he’s going to have to get out of this “oh that’s good enough I’d trust it so you should trust it” mentality.
But the gist of it is that the video was a much more considered response to the situation (closer to what I expected out of them from the get), and now we will wait and see to see if they make good on it. We don’t have to “trust them, bro”; people are watching, and we will hold them to account if they don’t follow through. All that means for me is that I simply don’t watch this kind of content if I can’t trust it. What drew me to LTT in the first place was the genuinely useful information coupled with high entertainment value; if they can get that balance back, and stick to the guidelines they say they’ll publish, then I see no reason not to accept that they’re doing the right thing with regard to their testing and the accuracy of their reporting.
Same goes for their response to Madison’s statements, and their “crunch culture” in general. I agree that Madison is just one voice of many, but that doesn’t mean she’s the only one either. What I hope is that it never happens again, but if it does I hope the support for Madison this time will encourage anyone else to speak out about such issues.
TL;DR, Indeed, don’t take them at their word that they’ll do better. Watch, and see if they do.
Solid summary, yep. I will say though that while I understand your anger and certainly share in your disappointment, Linus has a pretty good (but not spotless, not by a long shot) track record of doing the right thing and being a decent dude, and I think he deserves a bit more grace than the more vitriolic comments have been giving him. Saying he’s a piece of shit is a bit much, in my opinion.
As a long-time viewer, it’s hard to see. I hope he sits and thinks on this whole situation, and comes around to apologise to Billet, to GN, and to the community he spent so long building. In the absence of that, I really hope someone from LMG outlines the steps they’ll take moving forward to address the points raised in the GN videos. I love LMG’s content, it would be a shame to lose them over all this.
I was almost ready to be with you, but after reading the tweet from Madison elsewhere in the thread, Linus is going to have to go above and beyond to fix things.
Link for any wanderers who haven’t seen it yet: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1691693740254228741.html
Oof. I’m glad she finally felt like she could speak out properly. How she was treated is simply awful. At this point I just really hope I’m not wrong about Luke, I like him 😞
See, everything’s really actually tooootally fine and Linus is a totes wonderful dude who runs a happy little family worth a hundred million dollars.
Except his employees endure various forms of abuse and are visibly afraid of him at least some of the time. So much suffering is clearly a price many are willing to accept. Companies drive people to breakdowns and literal suicide and… oh well, I guess? What are people gonna do, think a little? Care a little? Post one tweet (or Xcretion or whatever the fuck) on the way to go buy the latest from a company that just killed someone, or destroyed their mental health and ability to live, or maybe “just” (said very sarcastically) groped them a bit and caused a crapload of undue stress besides? No wonder my mind’s all fucked up: I look at the people around me and few of them would so much as skip a DLC to make this world any better. Everything is fucked and it’s only going to get worse and I feel like I’m gonna implode if I have to see one more comfortable prick explain how his precious fucking rich white guy parasocial pal only accidentally constantly screws people over. He’s really a nice guy, actually! Probably tons of fun to have a beer with! Funny on screen!
What’s some peon’s life, or a dozen, or a hundred or thousand or million of them compared to the complete comfort of someone who’s just such a good ol’ boy?
Sorry, was this directed at me, or more of a general comment about the reaction from the community?
FWIW, Luke was clearly trying to prod Linus into acknowledging the problem of the “trust me, bro” warranty on the WAN show instead of treating it like a joke. I think he was also making some expressions of dissatisfaction about how that cooler block review was handled, which is a major part of this.
Obviously, there’s only so far he can push things on his employer’s platform. Plus, the two of them have been friends for a long time. But I do wonder if he’s going to break in the not so distant future.
One hundred percent, he’s always seemed like the voice of reason (I mention that in other comments, too). In the video from today he even said part of his job is wrangling Linus, which made me wince, because how the hell is that even supposed to work? Linus can take responsibility for his own damn mouth, frankly; if he’s not sanity-checking responses with Luke that’s a failure on Linus’ part, not on Luke’s.
Without Luke on the wan show Linus would be useless. It would be one guy saying whatever comes off the top of his head ranting uncontrollably about everything.
He knows when he goes off on a subject and Luke is there that Luke is going to challenge him if he’s being an ass, so you get a better quality of content from Linus than he would produce on his own.
Linus isn’t going to watch his mouth, that’s honestly his shtick.
I agree! Together, they’re a very entertaining team. I’d like to clarify though, what I mean by “Linus can take responsibility for his own mouth” is not that he has to abandon the spicy takes, but that he needs to listen more closely to what he says and correct himself if he’s being unreasonable. I don’t think it’s fair to rely on other people to do it for him.
That said, this does seem like one of the things they are addressing; per the video, Linus said that future crisis communication will be handled through the other executives, which strikes me as a simple and effective solution. The main problem for most people I think is letting their emotions cloud their thinking in situations like this; I’m the same way! And, lucky enough to have a few people who talk me through and keep me level. Maybe for the WAN show he and Luke can have a safe word, and Linus can simmer down if he hears it 😂
If you can stop your friend/boss saying something stupid (which they may regret saying later if they change their mind) then how does responsiblity make that not worthwhile?
Oh it would definitely be worthwhile, if Linus would listen, but have you ever tried to stop someone from saying or doing something when they don’t want to listen to you? It’s impossible.
I feel what you’re saying and I feel like I should be agreeing with you. But we do have to be careful here.
What we know and what we see coming out of LMG is what they want us to know and see. When there’s a video of Linus making it right, It’s because they wanted to make a video showing him making it right. You’re not going to see videos of him making it wrong and screwing over people, (if he does) It would be bad for business.
Likewise one ex employee’s statement of bad treatment there isn’t gospel He has hundreds of people. There are plenty of people that have left and there’s not a lot of consensus that I found that things are horrible there other than pace.
His response to GN is obviously trash, written in a moment of anger. He tends to put his foot in his mouth on live streams when he starts getting angry about a subject.
Him not sending back the prototype block, honestly is probably standard operating procedure. I wouldn’t send anything to them that I didn’t expect to lose. They receive so much equipment from so many places that they don’t even open for years, that they’re probably kind of blind to it actually being a hardship on a smaller place. I see the lie about him saying he already offered to pay them back a bit more problematic.
As far as his actual reputation or his character alignment sheet, we don’t really know. I would assume that if he was chaotic evil that we would hear a hell of a lot more about that. The guy he brought in to run the place is an insulating factor. When it was pitched it seemed that he was there to insulate Linus from the company, it’s also likely that he’s there to insulate the company from Linus.
Honestly the only thing out of all this that rings unassailably true is the untrustworthy data claim. He’s placing himself and his company to be a ultimate source of truth for benchmarking. But he comes right out and says that he won’t strive to make a better benchmark for a product for $500 when the number is obviously off. There really isn’t a lot of room for that in what he’s trying to build. If you’re going to come out and prove that power supplies, video cards, CPUs and motherboards make the numbers they say they’re going to make, you’re not going to do that with incorrect testing, shrugs and accusations. He’s going to need to be honest to a fault and transparent. If he expects us to take the data seriously he’s going to have to get out of this “oh that’s good enough I’d trust it so you should trust it” mentality.
I kinda covered it in this comment about the latest video response: https://lemmy.world/comment/2474701
But the gist of it is that the video was a much more considered response to the situation (closer to what I expected out of them from the get), and now we will wait and see to see if they make good on it. We don’t have to “trust them, bro”; people are watching, and we will hold them to account if they don’t follow through. All that means for me is that I simply don’t watch this kind of content if I can’t trust it. What drew me to LTT in the first place was the genuinely useful information coupled with high entertainment value; if they can get that balance back, and stick to the guidelines they say they’ll publish, then I see no reason not to accept that they’re doing the right thing with regard to their testing and the accuracy of their reporting.
Same goes for their response to Madison’s statements, and their “crunch culture” in general. I agree that Madison is just one voice of many, but that doesn’t mean she’s the only one either. What I hope is that it never happens again, but if it does I hope the support for Madison this time will encourage anyone else to speak out about such issues.
TL;DR, Indeed, don’t take them at their word that they’ll do better. Watch, and see if they do.