- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- cross-posted to:
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
- [email protected]
TLDR:
Over work
Mentally draining/abusive workplace
harassment
(maybe intentionally) bad management practices
lack of any signs of improvement
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Up to this point, I’ve been thinking Linus and his company were just a bit sloppy and pushing hard enough that things were slipping through and while he was currently looking awful, I had hoped he would correct course.
But after this, fuck that, it’s a company run by assholes and whether or not Linus had a direct hand in any of this, he’s the one leading the company and either creating the culture or enabling it. I don’t want to see him succeed anymore. I don’t want to see any of his sponsors succeed either. I hope his revenue falls but his commitments had assumed it would increase and more people speak out about the shitshow it was while he watches it all fall apart and that he spends the rest of his life wishing he had just taken the $100 million.
This is essentially my thought process. I was trying to overlook labs “growing pains” but now I’m unsubbed from their floatplane and not watching their videos on YouTube.
Holy shit what a disaster
Jesus fuck what is going on over there?
Big personalities with no large company experience grew too quick.
Linus stepping back from the CEO role happened way too late, and he’s obviously still the leader too. I can’t help but think his own defensiveness and ego are a big factor that prevented the company from maturing. His response to every negative thing besides low productivity is “this is fine, I’ll take care of it”, which let the culture get so much worse than is reasonably excusable as simple unprofessionalism. Flubbing workplace sexual harassment is a serious leadership fuckup.
More like small personalities.
100%. I’ve seen this a lot and it is textbook “company of friends learning how to be an actual company.”
Hope they go down the right path and don’t double-down on a terrible culture, which happens wayyyyy too often.
You don’t get into social media related field whether that is making, producing, editing videos or on various social platforms without being all about the drama.
Lol that is not correct, plenty of people are very professional about social media. But the shitty ones make the news so they’re the ones we hear about.
Oooooof
https://youtu.be/M8NFhjj0bUk?t=611
edit: sorry about the tone mismatch but it was kinda funny
Damn sad to see, Ive felt the dread of over work but mines not even close to hers. Hope she recovers
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They sell a backpack for 250bucks. Then the zips break on super easy and when there were lack of warranty concerns the response was ‘trust me bro’. Sure they have done better since with that issue but the arrogance factor was on display for all to see back then.
Why is a youtube channel a big company? I don’t get it. They don’t even make anything. Just record some unboxings and go home.
Just because it’s something that you don’t care for doesn’t change the fact that millions people are watching. Ad deals and sponsorships are a billion dollar industry. They have more than 5 channels that have a collective subscriber count of over 20 million.
They’re more medium than big, but still, they aren’t small.
Have you watched their videos about their offices? I know in the grand scheme of things having a couple of buildings is “medium”, but for a niche media company yes that’s pretty big.
They have three buildings. Although one of them isn’t currently in use and they’re looking to sell.
They own 3 buildings in the most overpriced city in the western world. That is a lot of money.
One word. Revenue.
Do you not know how YouTube works?
They make money from video adverts, sponsorships, and selling shitty LTT branded products.
I wouldn’t call the merch shitty at all.
Overpriced compared to other companies in the same quality category? Maybe. But it’s actually not bad quality and all my family members complimented me on the quality.Eh I was being a bit moody and flippant when I wrote that.
That said, I don’t think I have ever, nor wound I ever buy merch from anything. It’s just not my scene, but I’m sure I waste my money on things others wouldn’t enjoy so each to their own I guess.
May I ask why you buy merch? Is it to support the (already rich) creators, is it because you genuinely like the products, you just want cool merch, or something else?
I usually only buy stuff I like/enjoy design wise.
I’m usually not someone that would buy a band shirt and would most likely gravitate to buying the CD instead.In regards to LTT: I enjoy their designs and feel. So far I bought a CPU/HDD/multi nep t-shirt, a waffle shirt and 2 flannel shirts.
That I support them is just a side product.
I believe that Linus genuinly meant it when he says “I don’t want to produce garbage” and for that alone I would spend the 5€ more.For now I will not buy anything anymore and watch their next steps.
It seems inconceivable that they could grow to the point of having so many employees. They don’t do anything that I would consider valuable. Clearly other people in the world disagree or else they wouldn’t be making money.
Inconceivable?
It’s not up for debate. You can quite easily get ball park figures from Google for the amount of revenue a channel can generate from subscriber count, viewers per video, viewer retention, etc.
Like I don’t like DnD (never played it, so it’s not I hate it, more it’s not something I like) but I’m sure it brings in a lot of revenue.
Yes it is inconceivable that we as a society have decided the ad industry is worth so much money rather than doing something productive.
Not really. Most people don’t care.
I think rich YouTubers are a drop in the ocean compared to say billionaires.
You know tv ?
This is that.
Look, I’m trying to be subtle, but like 95% of what they put on the internet is basically an ad. I get that the advertisement industry is huge, but I personally find this to not be a valuable contribution to the world and in general a net negative. Maybe back in the day they could have some benefit of the doubt that their opinions are their own, but because they get paid by sponsors they are just shills. As far as I’m concerned this company is worthless and should split up.
There are far more pertinent hills to die on than the overspending of the ad industry.
Like I get it, I hate adverts. We can’t escape them online and we can’t escape them IRL. Heck they’re even on the motorways here which I find wildly irresponsible.
That said, perhaps a better cause would be climate change, inequality, poor access to healthcare etc.
Hank from Vlogbrothers runs like 10 companies, most of which are YouTube-based, and he and John together managed to raise enough money to build an entire hospital in Sierra Leone
YouTube money/exposure is no joke.
Linus has always come across in his videos as the guy that seems fun from the outside, until something goes wrong. That said, I wonder how much is from the pure stress that comes from pushing everything way too hard to try and produce content at a ridiculous pace.
For awhile their videos have felt very rushed, incomplete, and just like they could have done so much more in some of them.
It sounds like this whole thing was a wakeup call for LTT though, hopefully they can figure things out.
Pushing too hard does not explain name calling, sexual harassment, and other ways of taking advantage of power imbalances.
To me, the heavy workload is the least damning thing about it.
Yeah, I agree. When it was just “LTT pushes out content at a breakneck pace and screws up a lot” like happened with Billet, I was willing to give them a pass with the understanding that this scandal would lead them to make improvements in quality-control.
But these new allegations show a level of unprofessionalism that’s staggering. Either the company leadership is not competent to deal with sexual harassment in their business, or they’re complicit with it. A certain amount of unprofessionalism is the life-blood of the small grindset start-up where work-life balance goes out the window and everybody lives and breathes the mission, but LTT has been big-enough to grow the hell up for quite a long time, and I can’t help but think Linus’ own personality is a big reason that it developed this toxic culture.
Their videos often have this sense of “we have a general idea of what’s going on but are making up the rest as we go”.
Curious why these things come forward after the company faces some backlash. Fueling the fire, as it were
Big, if trueYou heard of that thing that happened called Me Too? So weird, right, how the victims feel stronger even they are not alone anymore?
She literally tells you she feels she can tell her story now that shit is hitting the fan, whereas she knew she’d have been shot down if it had come out in isolation.
Of course she wants to had fuel to the fucking fire. And may it burn bright!
LTT has or had a rabid fan base. I expect that if she talked out before the backlash, then the backlash would be against her. So yeah, it makes sense to strike while the iron is hot.
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To me it seems like people wouldn’t have believed Madison as strongly if she had talked about it earlier.
I just want to watch Alex make another ridiculous cooler
That tldr doesn’t do it justice.
Odd that it leaves out the big hitters such as sexual harassment, hate, and use of slurs.
For real
Agreed. I’m so sick of this shit. It breaks my heart reading her story and the fact that so many women all across the world don’t get any justice for the sexual harassment they face every day from creeps.
If this all is true, and it really sounds like it is, it’s just so depressing.
I remember watching that video of Madison & Linus back in 2019 or something like that where they did the ROG build for her. They etched birds, her favorite, into the glass case panels. I enjoyed her chemistry on set and she seemed like a happy excited young adult. Now I just get this image in my head of her being a shell of that person, miserable and lied to in a toxic environment, and having to report people touching her inappropriately. Must really suck when your “dream job” you were so excited for turns out to be a hell hole. Glad she got out.
Lots of people (particularly LTT fans) are dismissing her allegations because they think her attempts to self-mutilate to get a day off are signs of her being mentally ill and untrustworthy.
This is the kind of shit that’s gonna discourage further sexual harassment and workplace discrimination victims from speaking up.
Jesus fucking Christ it just kept going. How do these fucking insane people (the coworkers) get jobs and just like full out sexually assault people
Linus’ fan base allegedly drove a little boy to suicide, and the mother subsequently took her own life as well.
I kinda understand arguing with other people in a comment section, but I think it’s legitimately mentally ill behavior to harass and brigade the way Linus Stans do. Just what the fuck
There are a lot of people who are in the running for “worst people on the internet”. Neo-nazis, scammers, etc. But I think gamers take the cake for the ratio of how much awful damage they do vs how trivial their justifications.
There are a lot of people spewing toxic molten flames onto the internet, but for making molehills into murderous volcanic mountains, nobody does it like gamers.
I think the correct term here would be “people who create parasocial relationships with random people on the internet” (I know, too big to call it a term). I have seen the same trait in many communities, where people go to insane lengths for their favourite person on the internet. Whether it be Anime community, K-pop community, hell, even some Taylor Swift fans will shock you with their fanaticism.
I do agree that such people exist in Gaming community as well, but comparing games to groups like Neo-Nazis, Scammers who are in their entirety represents the worst (like you cannot differentiate a good Neo-Nazi vs a bad Neo-Nazi or Scammer, all of them as bad), seems to me like making molehill into murderous volcanic mountains.
It’s bad because of how mindless it is. 0 forethought into one’s actions, it’s so easy to send a toxic message and never think about it again, then multiply that by the reach of the influencer, and you got a swarm of pure hostility holding no substance whatsoever. It’s so powerful because it’s so careless. This applies to most - if not all - fanbases, but I imagine the immaturity of the younger audiences in gaming spaces leads to this way more easily.
Let’s not forget the anger management problems. There’s a reason “heated gamer moment” is a stereotype. Also the habitual verbal abuse that was cultured during the early days of unmoderated online gaming – fortunately that’s a bit passe now.
I remember during Gamergate there were guys boasting about how gamers were the most obsessive, driven, overly-online people who would stick to whwtever task they set their minds to monomaniacally until it was done.
And if course, in Gamergate, that task was harrassment. Again.
That’s absolutely psychotic, I remember that kid, and that video, I think I remember them shouting that kid’s channel out after he didn’t want to sell the play button to him. I don’t think Linus did anything actually wrong there aside from fucking up and missing the auction lot he wanted that contained the play button, but if his stans did that then fuck those people.
“I purposefully cut my leg open so badly I would have to go to the ER to get it stapled back together.”
Until this moment, I felt like she was pushed around by bunch of sarcastic assholes. But this? While they are still assholes, I do not believe a mentally healthy person will do that, in such situation. Like, if you are in some horrible prison, in say, russia, yeah, people do cut themselves there to protest against literally torture, but… its freaking Linus team not an army of maniacs in 3rd world country, just leave them, why do you cut yourself?
I was asked about my sexual history, my boyfriends sexual history, “how I liked to fuck”.
I’d leave instantly. Holy hell. (assuming it was asked like that, nonchalantly and not as a some joke between good friends).
I feel really bad for her and hope she will find better place (at least that), and not really happy with Linus to put it lightly. Damn, this sucks.
“I’d leave instantly.” Did you read the part about her moving for this job? Or any of the other points that would make it difficult for her to do so?
“…some joke between good friends”: either you need better friends or you need to be a better friend. Making somebody uncomfortable by bringing up sex is not healthy friendship.
“… mentally healthy person…” Yeah, that’s the point, being in an environment like that isn’t conducive to mental health.
I’m not interested in any back and forth with you on these points, just maybe reflect on some things you’re saying and see if you can drum up a little more empathy.
Yeah, that’s the point, being in an environment like that isn’t conducive to mental health.
Cutting yourself because of an asshole, its not normal, that is what I wanted to say. It shows to me, that she was more vulnerable in face of abusers, from the beginning. (it does not remove abuse, it does not make Linus any less responsible, quite opposite, in fact). And if my original message does not show “drumming empathy” in high enough quantities for you, then, I am afraid it is not really my problem.
Like, if you are in some horrible prison, in say, russia, yeah, people do cut themselves there to protest against literally torture, but… its freaking Linus team not an army of maniacs in 3rd world country, just leave them, why do you cut yourself?
Weird, until exactly this moment it sounded to me like she was in a horrible prison, but then you mentioned Russia and I was like “wait, isn’t LTT supposed to be operated out of Canada? It couldn’t possibly be this bad there.”
Yes well done, you correctly grasped that she was not mentally well at that point, then somehow failed to understand how that could have happened given everything she just explained to you.
