1y ago

LTT is starting to lose subscribers

103 comments

I remember hearing about this guy enough that I was interested so I subscribed, and checked out a video of his once, I forget the topic but the title sounded pretty interesting. This was a few years ago.
Within 3 minutes I had unsubscribed. Why?
Well, he spent the first few minutes of the video being an annoyingly arrogant rich guy whilst also wasting time on things that had nothing at all to do with the topic of the video.
It was when he had his camera man follow him through his house or office or whatever it was, tacky "check out my millionaire crib" style, like a show for kids, and he went into a room, pointed at a big wall of NAS racks and said something like "I've got thousands and thousands of dollars worth of hard drives and I don't even use them! Hahaha", and I was like.... Yeah. Screw this guy.
Some people might like a guy who baits grown up tech viewers with an interesting topic only to then waste their time with childish, arrogant behaviour, but I clocked him as a tosser within 3 minutes and never bothered with him again.
That's just my personal experience, I can't imagine what having to be around someone like that every day would do to a person, my gosh :-(
- It's really unfortunate because their early content was actually pretty entertaining. They'd document the fun projects they were doing, or showcase some wacky PC build they were doing, or they'd have PC build competitions where they'd have to build a themed PC within a certain budget, and they'd be judged at the end. I don't think those competitions had prizes, they just did it for fun. Most of their content was just for fun. They'd do sponsored stuff or reviews here and there, but for the most part it was just for fun.
  Then Linus became a multi millionaire, and the whole thing went to shit.
- I never got the appeal of any influencer flaunting their shit. Look, I'm happy your successful, good on you, but I watch videos to learn and grow, I really don't give a shit how many cars you have unless you're going to be teaching me about each one's internals and unique features.
  
  Exactly! If he'd started with "look at how many hard drives I have set up in here" and then went on to show a really interesting novel use for them, I'd have maybe stuck around.
  Though his personality was a little over the top regardless, but that can be forgiven in small doses if the content is particularly unique and engaging.
- I don't understand how the channel even got that popular in the first place with Sinus' personality being what it is
  
  Sinus Lebastian? Never heard of that guy.
- He's literally the male version of the Kardashians. Tech bros are super obsessed with him
- Sounds like the stupid TV show Top Gear. I never liked those annoying smug idiots, I watched Fifth Gear instead.
  
  Funny you should mention Top Gear! As someone from the UK, I'm embarrassed that Jeremy Clarkson is famous globally, he's such a bigoted, xenophobic, sexist man, and an embarrassment to our country :-(
  
  It's interesting that you talk about top gear because top gear was an entertainment show first and a car show 87th. If you think top gear was a car show you missed the point.
- I clocked him as a tosser
  UK?
  
  Haha yeah :-)

I completely understand why others are unsubbing, but I enjoy the content and want to see how the new CEO ends up handling all of this. Threads like this seem to be inviting everyone to post about how they never liked LTT in the first place, but I wanted to write this down because I'm sure I'm not the only one who actually enjoyed the content and the cool technology and unique solutions they found when building PCs and cooling them.
- I unsubscribed to show them how seriously I take the issues. If they improve and the investigation succeeds, I will resubscribe. And I did enjoy LTT, which is why I was subscribed.
- I mean I don't watch GPU reviews because they are mostly boring anyways. I only watch for the janky videos and pushing the boundaries and building wanly stuff.
  The Madison claims need to be taken serious, but it's not like this couldn't be individuals that need to be singled out and kicked out.
  So I really don't get the rage
- I really do like his content, I put it on generally when I get home from work and Im cooking dinner.
  I'm willing to buy that this was a series of unintentional fuckups and accidentally bad business practices. But I'm also not going to support them if they cant conduct their business ethically, so thats why I unsubbed and shitcanned my Floatplane subscription.
  If I feel that they addressed this shit to standards that I'm willing to support their business I'll probably click the buttons again.
- Yeah I think LTT has done a lot of great stuff and could do some really amazing stuff yet. I enjoy the content and have supported them, but nobody's perfect. I don't think anything they've done is worth an unfollow at this point, personally, but I understand why some may not agree.
  I think Linus has gotten lost in the sauce. It's been apparent that everyone there has been exhausted for a while, and I think Linus hasn't cared for the people working for him as much as his desire for a media empire, which has led to overworking and an unsustainable work environment.
  Linus' take on unions was shitty. IDK if a union could ever start there, but it seems like it could really help the company become more sustainable and keep it on course, because it seems like if the employees had their voices heard things might not have got so bad.
- Lemmy (just like Reddit) loves a good dog-pile. It was pretty predictable to see coming tbh
- I agree, though I stopped taking their hardware reviews seriously. I could tell they were rushing and being sloppy. One of the things I was starting to get excited about was their pushing of manufacturers to improve repairability. I love what framework is doing, for example. Steve is big on this as well, but the more voices the better. The amount of stuff going into landfills is really starting to bother me.
- the cool technology and unique solutions they found
  Cool technology they barely know how to use. The storage server and Linux challenge videos demonstrated that very nicely. These guys are not tech experts.

I unsubscribed immediately. What a horribly toxic work environment and unpleasant company. Where I work, and I work for a place far bigger than LTT, no matter your seniority, you’re out the door the same day if you treat a member of staff the way Madison was treated. I’ve seen it happen. The fact she suffered such abuse for years from so many members of staff is indicative of a company so heavily poisonous, they shouldn’t exist. Hopefully other fans can see through their parasocial relationship and cut the cord.
- At the risk of sounding pedantic, it wasn't for years. But yes, the Madison situation needs to be addressed. Can only hope that the culture is rectified, and whoever assaulted her is found, investigated, and fired if need be.
  
  Having worked at quite a few startups that grew to LTT’s size, there are basically two kinds of CEO/COO; those who want to drive the culture, and those who don’t believe in corporate culture.
  I feel Linus is of the second brand, and I’ve seen it enough to know that culture emerging in those conditions get out of control and becomes almost impossible to rectify.
  Good luck to LMG, but the top is where culture starts.
  
  Agreed. Their response made it worse. Watching the PR response today is why I’ve unsubscribed. No thanks.
- It’s basically caused by crunch culture. Everyone is stressed out and there is no time to breath and reflect. The constant grind turns the environment toxic. And I doubt they have a proper HR team, probably run by a family member.

Let's see what happens in a month or 3.
Even Reddit lost viewers, but they are almost back to original.
People will forget and carry on with LTT subscription.
- That is a very bleak prospect. Let's make sure it doesn't come to that.
- You are absolutely right that this won't lead to their collapse. But i would still say that in both reddits and LTT's case, even if the numbers revert back, it will have an affect longterm.
  For reddit the content quality has likely gone down and suddenly there is a viable alternative in Lemmy, which might have never gotten the chance to get of the ground otherwise. Within a month Lemmy suddenly has a decent amount of content, some communities have migrated here, and we have a number of high quality apps to choose from.
  With LTT i think this does also have the potential to hurt them, even if the subscriber numbers come back up. They've been in a process of rapid expansion for a while now, so merely getting back to those numbers or slightly growing won't cut it. Additionally i think with floatplane and the lab they've been heavily investing into their image as a reputable and trusted company for consumers. Particularly the lab where they've heavily invested. Even if ultimately the average less informed consumer is their target market, for that they will also need enthusiasts to recommend them to those.

The thing is, although LTT is important to Linus, his wife, and with direct ties, the viewers have many choices today with regards to the tech YouTubers of different nature. This makes it easy to just move one. LTT is a mass marketed channel, not particularly niche in any area of tech and there are many like it.
- Maybe, but with their size LTT can do crazy shit like water-cooling an entire server room with a pool.

I was never subbed anyway, but I also made sure to find a LTT vid and click on “don’t recommend channel” on YouTube.
Nuking from orbit is the only way to be sure.
- click on “don’t recommend channel” on YouTube.
  I'm not very into the tube and had no idea this is an option. I'll use this going forward. Thanks!
  
  It's great for when a video that you don't want to watch just will not get off your homepage.

Just being the messenger here. The problem is that it's 100k of 15.6 (previously) million. People don't care, which means nor will Linus. It's incredibly likely that the "resolution" will amount to nothing, and the channel will remain dead to me.
- While youtube hasn't had much impact (I'm not sure that tracker updates subscriptions very fast either tbh); Floatplane probably will.
  From ~~42k subscribers down to ~36k. A 16% drop (~~$30k/mo at $5 per sub)
  Floatplane tracker
  
  Should have spent $500 on employee time!
- I never really liked ltt but I just don’t care how he treats employees. People can quit.
  
  What a pro-worker stance you have considering the instance you're on.

These things are always temporary. They'll lose subs for a moment, but then it'll bounce back like nothing
- Yep... it surprises me that people still think that the internet has principles or cares. Haven't we seen how weak people are for reddit already?
  
  I can't tell you how disappointed I am on how this ended. I really thought the "Landed Gentry" quip would have had the pouring gasoline to be out a fire effect.

When (tech)bros post cringe they lose subscriber
- Morshu, now thats old school

I unsubbed a couple of weeks ago because they released that always live video thing and it gave me the shits seeing the icon

Emotions are high right now. It's not a trend. I bet most of their subscribers don't know about what's going on and wouldn't care either way. If lmg promise to do better and nothing big comes out, this will be forgotten in two weeks.
- I’m curious if findings do come out. Would YouTube cancel or demonitize them?
  
  Google only cares about money and LTT pulls lots of views, so no

I unsubbed a while ago after discovering it for myself and binging, because I've noticed the consumer hate from Linus and odd microagression at nearly all times so I noped out. Everything I learn only makes sense to me tbh. It was heavily foreshadowed.

happy to contribute to the unsub count

Thanks for the reminder.

He's a narcissist so I don't think his subs have high expectations.

I unsubscribed from all LMG channels after the harmful practises came to light. That's just not on.

Who is this Linus Sex Tips and what he did?
Okay, now seriously, I know who he is but I'm too lazy to check what he did.
- Well on monday it started off with another channel pointing out that their data is systemically crap, overworked crunching empolyees, and they robbed some indie startup company, and now it's all about how they have an incredibly toxic work enviroment and sexual assault alligations.

OOTL, what's going on here?
- Former employee opening up about the toxic work environment and issues with video accuracy and ethics
  
  I thought this wasn’t new. I remember him getting in some heated waters for being anti union (or just being a shitty boss) and being creepy with that female Chinese engineer at some convention
  
  WHOA WHOA WHOA WHAT
  The Billet Labs thing was unfortunate but I think they are capable of apologizing, learning lessons, and turning things around.
  But that's not just a toxic work environment that Madison is describing. That's CRIMINAL. That's actually unforgivable. Just given how many people knew about it, I don't think it can be fixed by firing some people. And don't even think about a sorry video.
- I had to look it up myself. These two links seem to cover the controversy pretty well.
  https://www.pcgamer.com/the-recent-criticism-of-linus-tech-tips-explained/
  https://fandomwire.com/the-linus-tech-tips/
  Edit:
  Found this one too which is straight from the horse's mouth: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1691693740254228741.html
- Being transparent about your business, comes with pros and cons. Right now a female employee shared her end of the story to the web on why she quit, and you're seeing the reaction to it.
  Edit: This amplified the ongoing issue about LTT and their information integrity, which is very likely due to root causes that Linus repeatedly ignored, or worse, believed he was right and everyone was wrong.
  
  Didn't she leave about two years ago?
- https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FGW3TPytTjc
  https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X3byz3txpso
  https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1691693740254228741
- Drama
  
  Hobbydrama, which is always enjoyable.
  
  No doubt lol. There's bigger fish to fry. I'm so glad I'm learning to not participate in trendy drama. Especially when the activists won't even take time out of their super righteous elite life to tell you what's going on. It must be huge! Lol

Well, it seems like they've finally admitted to a lot of this from GN (thanks Steve). But, can we at least give them a chance to correct?
- massive sexual assault, sexual harassment, and abuse allegations dropped today from a former employee.
- Have a read through the pinned post in this community, then ask again.
  /edit: https://lemmy.ml/post/3412121 (it's not pinned anymore)
  
  Uh, wow. Was not aware of this, at all. I was aware of some previous workplace stuff from what, a few months ago. But dam.
- Little behind, eh?

103 comments