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Rossman is a different mess, but I think it is undeniable that he has been a net positive on r2r over the years. And I think he will continue to be as long as he is someone that outlets like GN and even LMG collaborate with or reference but minimally platform.

But yeah. I think Rossman is genuinely a free speech absolutist with strong libertarian tendencies. Stuff like his "I don't care if that amazon delivery driver was racist or not, this is unacceptable" just undermines his efforts. Same with his never ending hatred of NYC because he ran a business into the ground. Also his tendency to push immediately from "ads bad" to "STEAL THAT SHIT".

Like, I immediately think of THAT Dril quote, but I do have to give it up to LMG from like three or four years ago. The idea that people SHOULD be aware of how to run adblockers and even dns level adblockers. But to also understand that they are pirating content (whether that is bad is up to the individual) and that some sites are going to block them or not work. Because that is honest and "real". And it provides a conversation that can be had between companies and consumers.

Whereas Rossman has increasingly been "If they aren't going to let you block ads, fuck 'em. Pay a different company to let you access their content without ads or giving them money" which just paints everyone who cares about privacy as a childish pirate with no respect for the work of others.

Didnt they find out about the backpack floor BECAUSE one of the customers wore through the floor? I believe i remember linus telling them that "wasnt possible" or something to that effect before recieving the backpack in question and finding out the manufacturer removed the second layer they had requested because they thought it was a mistake

The one where they hired a lawyer (that i think was infamous for protecting the Canadian logging industry)?

Yeah. That is always bullshit. Unless you are doing REALLY illegal stuff AND are documenting it to an insane level, lawyers are not mandatory reporters. Their job is not to prove there was no wrongdoing. Their job is to investigate what risk the company is at to wrongdoing that, as far as they have been told, did not exist. And their report is the risk based upon documented evidence and interviews with employees.

So when a company does a third party investigation from a law firm they paid? They are not getting a clean bill of health. They are having all potential risks identified and doing what they can to mitigate that.

A very good friend of mine who tends to be on the other side of the court room when this stuff happens likes to describe it as: Paying a law firm to investigate your company is not an STD test. It is confirming that you don't have any weeping sores and making sure you have plausible deniability for why all your condoms keep "falling off" while you stealth people.

But people hear "We investigated ourselves and found no sign of wrongdoing" and think it means... anything.

I think it was mostly that Naomi dropped it after excessive amounts of harassment. And Linus's excuse was that she misunderstood him and it is her problem for thinking that a guy saying he would only give her a business opportunity if she came to his bedroom at 3 am was sketchy. And his wife was totally CC'd to some of those emails anyway.

I recall there was a different (not going to speculate on who the timeline would line up with...) case where Linus was accused of sexual assault (possibly outright rape?) where his defense was that he was a virgin until he met his wife which... okay.

As it stands, it is basically proven that the company has severe cultural issues regarding sexual harassment and bad workplace dynamics. The sexual assault accusations are still very much in the "where there is smoke..." range. And it is why I point out that Madison's harassment claims were corroborated by former employees but her assault claims were not.

Now I'm out of the loop, what happened with Jay?

Like almost all situations: Demonstrate growth. No, not "subscribers go up" but actually show that you are better.

• I'll skip the anti-consumer stuff regarding merch because that has always been the brand and they at least learned to not tell people to argue against their own rights.
• Antagonistic behavior toward competitors: They are still doing the "we are the best because we are the best" bullshit in their marketing. They've at least started collaborating with Wendell from Level1Techs again which is nice. But just reaching out to the other channels would go a long way. Gamers Nexus and Hardware Unboxed are basically the kings of technical reviewing and would actually benefit Lab for a collab. And GN and HUB are very open about having group discords where all the tech youtubers talk to corroborate strange behavior or let people know that AMD fucked everyone over and they need to re-do all their work for the past week.
• Gross incompetence in their own tech reviews: They apparently have made it a subscriber benefit for Floatplane that people can pay to error check videos which... okay. And they've taken down a few videos where they REALLY cocked up basic facts and conclusions. But it is still the same mess they have always been.
• Fucking over small businesses: They eventually gave the cooler company money which I guess was nice? But it looks like they still do a "Linus is made and hates this horrible product" every few months when they want a viewership bonus and it isn't like they are going to do that to the companies that sponsor the LMG convention...

As for the really big ones? Sexual harassment and assault allegations?

A BIG first step would have been to get rid of james streib. Fucknuts was caught, on (audio part of a ) camera engaging in sexual harassment to the entire company during the fucking sexual harassment seminar the day after his report left the company because of sexual harassment from him and others. Whine about "people out for blood" all you want but that is the kind of cock up where you lose your job. Period. And the fact that people thought to record that meeting AND that linus and yvonne didn't do a "What the fuck is wrong with you?" to him for that says a lot about what kind of a culture the company has. And putting him front and ecenter on thumbnails shows how little LMG cares.

But also? Their response to multiple allegations of harassment and assault has been to attack and discredit the victim, sometimes through blatant threats toward other employees? Fuck 'em. The brand is tainted and this is the point where you pivot to right wing grifting.

Speaking of which. I forgot to mention the time D-Brand made really racist jokes about a customer's name and Linus Sebastient went to bat REAL hard with lots of "this wouldn't be a problem if he were a white man" level responses. So... I guess they already got the memo.

LTT is tech content like Donut media is Automotive content. It's edutainment at most.

I find it funny the amount of hate that LTT gets, it's niche entertainment and you can watch it absolutely free anywhere in the world and Linus rejected a 9 figure sum to keep ownership of something he built, say that out loud... "He turned down over $100,000,000." Yes they flog merch and have floatplane and all that bullshit but that's how they stay independent.

You can take Donut and Motortrend as examples of how it all goes to shit. MT were YT only, then moved to their own paid streaming platform, then sold out to a network and told all their international subscribers to kick rocks because the network deal was more money.

Or the Donut route, where you get bought by venture capital who suck all the fun out of the job, try to monetise everything and wind up having all the talent leave and go start their own channels because they took a fun job and just made it a job.

Yeah, as someone who has been in people management for a long time, he has a way of interacting with people that makes my HR spidey sense tingle.

It’s very subtle, but there some ways of collaborating and communicating with his employees that I’ve seen before, and are often associated with people who get shitty reviews from the ICs and peers.

Yeah, people defend Linus and other faces like MKBHD for one huge reason: Parasocial relationships.

Just look at all the conversation happening in this thread with people defending the figure of Linus (and others). Influencers, even tech influencers, make money because they can monetize those people.

And Linus appeals primarily to the folks who like thinking of themselves as the tech person in the family or at the office, but really they are no more technical than slotting a stick of RAM into a case on average.