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Who?
Madison was a person chosen for ROG reboot (Asus sponsored LMG to make PCs with people after they made a video explaining why they should get one) and her video was really popular (5th most viewed on LTT channel with 12mil views) and people enjoyed her personality/dynamic. Later, there was a job offering posted for social media manager/coordinator and she ended up getting the job, after that you can read what she says happened (not saying it did, not saying it didn’t, just saying what we do know). She also posted about some of this stuff before I’m pretty sure, but I don’t remember exactly what she said (it was in the same vein as this, but I’m pretty sure this is more in detail though).
I thought it was weird they gave her a behind camera job when she was so clearly good at being a presenter. To me it seems like Linus felt threatened or jealous of how much the audience liked her.
Proud of her for going public. I’ve faced a lot of the same bullcrap in the workplace as a guy, I can only imagine how miserable it is with gendered harassment on top of it.
Linus always gave me creep vibes, especially that horrible fake laugh he has. Add to that all of the times others in his videos jibe at him for being a horrible boss, in a “joking” kind of way that always seemed like they were more than jokes. I did wonder why Madison didn’t appear in more videos, and I’m glad she’s out of there now. I have unsubscribed from LTT on YouTube and I’m glad I never got around to buying any merch.
Holy fuck. I’ll never give LTT another view. Fuck Linus and his company. I hope the good people there get out and find success, but anyone that stays has no integrity in my opinion.
imo this is an extreme reaction when the story has barely matured and we dont know whats true. I feel like the reactions by people at lmg have been decent so far, but time will tell what becomes of it. hopefully for everyones sake they fix their problems like they seem to be on track to doing.
I don’t think the reactions by people at LMG have been decent, but I also think “never” is a bit of a strong word. I’m waiting to see details, and until then, I’m going to believe Madison, especially given the revelations by Gamer’s Nexus about focus on profit (i.e. video quantity) over quality. The culture there just seems to be wrong.
That said, I’d love LMG to prove with actual facts that things aren’t as bad as this article makes it out to be.
Out of curiosity, what do you think LMG should do differently? I think the sponsor jokes are not appropriate but I’m curious what else people have issues with.
That’s a pretty broad question, so I’ll refer you to the Gamer’s Nexus video. It’s kind of long @ 44 min, so here’s a rough summary:
- give employees more time to ensure videos are high quality
- take down inaccurate videos until the issue is resolved
- provide text summaries of highly technical videos, with strikeouts for any corrections so a history of changes is preserved; this helps with referencing them later on platforms like Reddit, Twitch, and Lemmy (i.e. I can quickly quote sections)
And specifically as it relates to Madison’s post, make a serious response that addresses each point, ideally pointing to some internal code of conduct and what processes they follow when similar things happen. If there are gaps, highlight those and explain what exactly is going to change, if anything. Just saying the equivalent of “she’s full of crap, but we’re hiring a third party just in case” isn’t the right approach. Even if the case ends up being nonsense, it at least shows a level of transparency to viewers and employees.
Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=FGW3TPytTjc&
Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
I’m open-source, check me out at GitHub.
What a shit place to work at. Linus sounds like a real “winner”.
The dude has always seemed so smarmy to me so hearing this really isn’t that surprising. I’m happy they’re getting their comeuppance but doubt it will be as much as they deserve.
A few years back I remarked that Linus always came off like a bit of a douchebag. I was at the time heavily downvoted, but holy fuck. This is worse than I expected.
I watched like five minutes of a video like 10+ years ago and found it obnoxious. Reddit has such a hard on for him. Maybe it’s because I’m old, but I cannot stand his style.
When you say you’re old, how old do you actually mean? I’m in my mid 30s and I feel exactly the same way.
…I’m in my mid-30s hahahaha
This is definitely stuff designed for kids.
I’m a similar age and have a similar experience w/ LTT. I’ll occasionally watch a video because an early-20s coworker really likes it (something to talk about I guess), but I’m not a fan in any way. I mostly look at it as “what the average person thinks” and I don’t expect any actual analysis.
He and his/team’s content always came off to me as basement dwelling PC gamers trying to be real IT professionals. Garbage content and apparently a garbage company.
I’m neither close to this (I’ve seen a few LTT vids here and there) nor that interested in dogpiling or anything … but this is exactly what LTT/LMG and Linus himself always felt like to me and it always kinda creeped me out. Like I’d watch something and get that feeling of, am I the only one seeing that or is it me?
No. I’m just a “level 1” tech that have been doing this for many years, and I’ve always seen him and most of his channels as unprofessional, with the exception of the person now named Emily.
Linus himself didn’t seem like a great tech to me, mostly because he seem to struggle with anything else than Windows. I don’t care that much about hardware because I have been gravitating around hosting, mainframes (IBM i) and corporate so his channels and benchmarks are not of great interest to me. But that experience helped me see in his other tech videos that he was not serious.
And the way he “used” his employees to do anything unrelated to their job definition was weird. Like, I’m a tech and can install cable, but there’s people that you should hire for that. It’s not my job to move desks around or paint the walls while also having to do my regular tasks. Should have been the same with his employees.
He gave the impression of being someone that will use the “we’re just one big family” excuse to get his employees to do anything, while talking superficially about Windows computers and pushing merch.
I ended up asking YouTube not to recommend any of his channels.
I don’t think it’s fair to criticize his usage of employees… He’s operating a media company and all of his upgrades are essentially glorified media operations. Everyone on camera is a media personality playing a role.
The point isn’t to get cable installed, it’s to have an engaging personality on camera doing something interesting. Getting cable installed is a happy coincidence.
Even then, he shouldn’t have asked his employees to work on his home renovation.
Wasn’t all the “work” explicitly recorded for use as content? (And they hired a painter anyway)
Jesus Christ on a motorbike. They have no idea what they had with her, does she still create content?
She is on twitch and youtube https://linktr.ee/suop
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Jesus Christ on a motorbike.
Here you go!
Good bot
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Wonderful.
I’m disappointed. Jesus of all people should know how dangerous it is to ride without proper gear. Where’s the helmet? Where’s the armor? And, Christ… are those Sandals?? ATGATT!
He’s fine. If he gets into an accident he’ll just get back up in a little bit.
A little bit? It’d probably take a few days.
At least 3 if I’m not mistaken.
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What is dead may never die.
remember when linus spoke out against unionizing :)
Wow, that would be the last straw. You have a link to his comments?
It was a wan show a while back if I remember right (not op), but basically trashed unions and said businesses should do better and vaguely acted like all the employees of the world could just quit and find something better on a whim if things were actually bad where they worked.
Which is all fine. His position was literally “I can’t and won’t do anything to stop it except for treating everyone to enough money that they won’t bother to do it”
That’s about as inoffensive as you can get. You’re twisting it into being some anti union thing.
Unions are not just for getting higher wages. They’re not even just for when conditions start to get worse. Unions should be there for the best as well as the worst working conditions. Unions serve to maintain good and improve bad conditions, it’s not about going against the “boss”, it’s about actively or passively defending the workers’ conditions.
Would you trust your boss’ lawyer saying “the trial will be fair, you won’t need a lawyer”?
And none of what Linus said goes against that. The employees are fine to form a union if they ever feel the need.
They always say that.
And some of them mean it. It’s just incredibly hard to tell one from the other, so always protect yourself first.
That and the “We don’t discuss wages.” remark. Screw that mentality. And from what Madison wrote, If promissory estoppel is a thing in Canada, then it sounds like she had a strong case. Especially if there was any paperwork.
There’s tons of shit they could get LMG for. But it seems that they intentionally hired people that don’t know any better, and it’s no real fault of their own since they just are appearing to use predatory hiring processes. It’s ridiculous to think everyone young should know employment law.
promissory estoppel
Surely verbal contracts are still enforceable in Canada like they are in the US, assuming Madison can prove they happened.
Pepperige farm remembers.
Linus “spoke out” against unionizing by saying that he couldn’t legally do anything to stand in the way of his employees unionizing and wouldn’t want to stand in their way if they ever decided to. But he wants to make a workplace where people don’t feel the need to and if they did then he would see it as a personal failure.
There’s plenty to criticize Linus for right now, but I don’t think that his “anti-union” stance is one of them
Edit: in the context of these allegations, then yes, his employees certainly should unionize if the actual criminal crimes in this thread are even partially true. And if that happens then I will be singing Solidarity Forever for the LMG employees, but until that happens and we see how Linus responds to that this is just not a good read on Linus’ stance towards unions.
Edit2: it feels weird to have posted what could be seen as a defense of Linus under this particular post. I’m not a Linus Stan, Just a union advocate that wants criticism to be levied where it’s actually called for and this doesn’t seem like it is
An genuine employer who isn’t against unions and has their employees wellbeing as a top priority should encourage the employees to unionize.
I’m not convinced.
I have two uncles who worked for the same company, in different departments but in similar roles. Both were engineers, one was a CAE, and the other an ME. The CAE was not part of a union, and the ME was. They had a comparable lifestyle, so I assume they made a comparable salary (they live about a mile from each other, in a similarly sized house, drive similar cars, take similar amounts of vacations, etc).
Here’s the work history of my unionized uncle:
- multiple unpaid strikes, where the main output was a marginal benefit to employees (from tertiary sources, it wasn’t worth the strike)
- layoff (maybe 2? I don’t recall), and later rehire in a separate department (was laid off for months); this resulted in complications with the company pension (I think the pension got rolled into the 401k because the new group hadn’t negotiated a pension)
- consistent work location - always worked at the same plant, except for a handful of visits to others
And here’s the work history of my non-unionized uncle:
- no layoffs, and optional participation in strikes
- inconsistent work location, but had some WFH flexibility in the last 15-ish years of employment (i.e. could work 9/80s, WFH one day/week, etc)
- maintained control over retirement benefits, so retired with a pension and a 401k
This is obviously a very small sample, so it’s hardly enough evidence to say whether unions are a net positive or net negative. So whether a union is better for you depends on a lot of factors, such as:
- role - white collar jobs benefit less from unions vs blue collar jobs
- unions can suck, and non-unionized employers can rock; the latter can change overnight, whereas the former likely won’t
- your best tool is your own personal skillset; regardless of whether you’re in a union, ensure your skills are up-to-date so you have a good chance of getting a new job should you lose yours
But one thing that should be universally true is that openly anti-union employers should be avoided.
That wasn’t quite the point. What would be a good reason for a well meaning, rocking employer to not encourage unionization?
Lots of reasons:
- union dues
- bureaucracy - need to go through the union
- unwanted strikes - if your union goes on strike, you are not allowed to work
- special treatment - unions try to equalize, so higher performers may not be fairly compensated
An awesome employer shouldn’t discourage unionization, and ideally they’d encourage attempts to unionize, but they wouldn’t recommend unionization, assuming the employer intended to maintain control and monitor managers throughout the chain. If the employer can provide all of the benefits employees would get through unionization, unionizing merely adds extra BS that employees and employers need to deal with.
Alright, so let’s take a look.
- union dues
No escaping this one.
- bureaucracy - need to go through the union
What does the employer have to go through the union for?
- unwanted strikes - if your union goes on strike, you are not allowed to work
If the employer is rocking, why would union members vote to strike?
- special treatment - unions try to equalize, so higher performers may not be fairly compensated
This doesn’t feel right but I can’t quite put my finger on why so I’ll reserve judgement for now. 😄
I can see the extra layer of overhead in the case when everything is perfect, but given the incentives in traditional for-profit corporations I can’t see that case ever being realistic. In addition, even if a company is perfect today, the way corporations are structured makes it incredibly easy for that to change especially if there’s no worker-controlled counterbalance to such change. So just on the basis of that, if I’m an awesome, perfect employer, and I presumably want this to go on, because that really is part of being awesome, I should want to create this counterbalance against change for the worse. Assuming a for-profit, not-a-co-op corporation that is. It looks to me like this overhead is the price of preserving this perfect environment over the long term. Doesn’t that make sense?
What does the employer have to go through the union for?
Benefits, and depending on the union’s rules, salary adjustments. Some unions also require informing them of schedule changes.
The reverse is also true, employees may need to go through the union depending on the union’s rules.
If the employer is rocking, why would union members vote to strike?
Idk, perhaps communication issues w/ management? Over-zealous union leadership?
The point is, the employee isn’t empowered here, they’re subject to whatever the union agrees to do.
My uncle went through multiple strikes, few (if any) he actually agreed with, but had to deal with being out of work. He wished he wasn’t union so he could just continue working.
the way corporations are structured makes it incredibly easy for that to change
Sure, which is why it absolutely depends on the type of organization. Something owner-operated has a much lower risk of unexpected awful changes than something publicly traded.
A lot of owner-operated businesses don’t intend to sell to someone else, the owner will just shut it down when they’re done operating it. So “long term” in this sense is until the owner retires. And if they do intend to sell, they could at that point encourage the employees to make any employment adjustments needed.
Fair point, well made. I would love to live in a world like this one day
If I ever start a corporation and if for some reason it isn’t a workers co-op, I will make the employees unionize. I see little reason other than absolute profit maximization to not treat your employees as a great asset, assuming they’re doing reasonably well. But I’m a dirty socialist so…
Dirty? Nah, you’re fresh as hell, comrade. Workers co-ops are great
I guess I have my own special version of pessimism where if I see an employer not actively hiring Pinkertons I think if it add a little w for workers these days
I’m not saying he meant anti-union by that line, but that’s classic anti-union line saying my employees don’t need unions.
Very much in line of “unions means less money for you” statement.
Yeah the whole “I love unions, but we at this company are a family so we don’t need that”, is peak anti-union talk. Throughout history it’s been used by people who are horrible to their employees.
Exactly. If I was really concerned about my employees etc. I would want them to have a union with power that could match mine to argue their needs and concerns. If he had a union a lot of these problems and mistakes that he’s having likely wouldn’t have occurred.
It’s not unusual for several people to have the same rational thought process. That’s why it’s “classic”.
True. If he said that line in response to a statement about wages. I can’t say that I exactly remember the context in which he made that statement, but I believe that it (ironically, given this post) had more to do with workplace culture than wages.
Lol, sounds like what someone with a reputation to uphold would say if he hated the idea of his workers unionizing.
It’s manipulative doublespeak meant to discourage unionization.
The employer is by nature profit-seeking and all communication must be viewed through this lens.
And here I thought they were just sometimes a little inaccurate on the information they presented. Holy shit it’s so much worse.
Basically a twitch streamer not being able to adapt to a working envoirenment. Streaming games all day long to working at least 8h a day is a big difference tbh
Ah yes, being groped by a man and being called a retarded faggot is totally her inability to conform to working a desk job
You’re a brain dead twat
Please don’t use personal attacks.
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Personal attacks are the best one. Calling a cretin a cretin is great. You should try it sometime.
Working 8 hours a day gets a lot harder when everyone above you in the company is actively working against you.
Not to mention, if you read a little further down they mention multiple instances of sexual harassment with basically no response from HR. That is absolutely unforgivable.
Yeah, these people just can’t adjust to the real world of (checks notes) being inappropriately touched by coworkers and being silenced and threatened when speaking up about it.
How dare they expect human decency? Goddamn GenZ are SO entitled.
How do you know thats true? We only heared ONE PERSON for now. She could very well be lying or overexaggerating for sure.
I cant think bad of a person who I watch since years and who has helped me get into this tech space without hearing his argument first. I don’t know why all you guys are hating on him for no reason 😣
Of all the takes you could have taken from this you chose this steaming pile of shit.
After I came forward about being assaulted, Someone accused Linus of inappropriate conduct on twitter.
He came over to my corner and started BERATING HER. Calling her insane, mentally ill, an attention seeker, and just digging into this poor woman who had felt wronged by him.
Is this “adapting to a working environment” to you?
I see employee abuse.
This might sound like im a fan boy but i just can’t imagine Linus doing that. She already was in such bad from all the stuff. She might have made it up to be something really big without it being that as well
Well, I guess we will have to wait and see what the external investigation results will be.
At this point it’s word against word so all we can do is wait, you trust him and I don’t.
I hope you’re right, better one liar than a whole company with an abusive work environment.
Poor girl. I remember the ASUS ROG video where lots of fans (me included) were screaming to Linus “hire her!” thinking about the fame and the dream job… Never chase your idols!
I remember getting told off for taking my sick days, as in the days you’re entitled to. This no days off, “grindset” culminated in the real moment I realized I had to leave. I purposefully cut my leg open so badly I would have to go to the ER to get it stapled back together. It was genuinely the only way in my mind to take a day off without being harassed for a reason why.
Holy shit that’s insane
I’m going to copy and paste my comment from another post here:
If this is true this is bad. Like, really bad
I say “if” just because I don’t really know what the facts are, I just know what some people are claiming
To be clear, I’m not saying it didn’t happen, I’m just saying that, at the moment, it’s just Madison saying these things did happen and Linus essentially saying they didn’t
My question is if she had such a bad experience, why hasn’t anyone else said anything, or at least put an anonymous negative review on Glassdoor or something? Did she just have a awful experience that was unusual, or is everyone/a large number of people treated like this? I don’t think it’s the second or it would’ve come out already and from more than one source (and the turnover is pretty low for LMG if I’m not mistaken, so that also doesn’t make sense), but I don’t really know. That’s really the crux of the situation, is I just don’t know. I’m glad they got an outside investigator though; hopefully that’ll clear everything up
It’s possible their turnover is low enough that a Glassdoor review would be easy to figure out the author, even if anonymous
This reads like every rape apologist asking why the person didn’t react like your idea of an “ideal victim”.
To be clear I’m NOT saying that you would ever help create a permissive environment that passively encourages the type of behaviors described in her post, my question is just why you’d feel compelled to write 750 words of “I’m just asking” around your structural dismissal?
Wouldn’t you realize that you’re parroting a rhetorical style that has been used to justify and paper over mistreatment of women in business and personal settings? If this were a good faith statement why would it repeat every trope trotted out by Joe Tacopina?
I just don’t know, I’m not saying I do or do not think that OP’s statement is an example of unwitting enrollment in institutional sexism, or whether I do or do not think it’s trolling.
I just don’t know.
at least put an anonymous negative review on Glassdoor
the review on glassdoor is hers.
This dropped a few hours ago, so let’s wait a bit and see. Often times rot gets exposed in waves. One skeleton falls out of the closet and then a bunch of other skeletons follow.
Even if Madison is the only employee that ever experienced this (doubtful) that is already horrific. She isn’t claiming that it was a single small incident that might have been a bad joke or a misinterpretation of some comment. It’s a bunch of incidents, so not like one thing got blown way out of proportion.
Why has nobody else said anything before? There’s tons of reasons why that might be the case. First, maybe people have and it has remained internal/supressed. Maybe other instances were more “mild” and the victims didn’t feel the need to quit. Maybe the other victims were too frightened, felt they had too much to lose, were pressured more harshly.
I’m standing with Madison until proven otherwise. There have been plenty of hints of this sort of thing for a while, and like I said, scandals tend to come in waves. Nobody says anything for a long time until something bad enough happens that triggers the cascade of testimonies.
Best case scenario, LTT is a toxic workplace that overworks its employees, places profit and marketability over quality data/reviews, and is more and more in bed with corporate powers vs consumers.
Sad, I grew up with LTT through my tech journey, now bye-bye to yet another company/project that fell to the effects of capitalism and enshitification.
My question is if she had such a bad experience, why hasn’t anyone else said anything, or at least put an anonymous negative review on Glassdoor or something? […] (and the turnover is pretty low for LMG if I’m not mistaken, so that also doesn’t make sense)
Indeed, why is that? Why would she have such an abnormaly bad experience at this particular company? I can’t seem to think of any particular traits that she might have which would have caused her to be treated differently. If sexist comments and sexual harassment are such a problem, then why do people like Gary, James, Ed, Nick, Colton, or Luke apparently seem blind to it? I have no idea what disparity in the distribution of power could possibly account for this phenomenon!
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Why am i seeing gossip on technology? Mods should not allow these sorts of posts
It’s the biggest tech outlet with major accusations, sure just ignore it.
But why post?
So many of these fuckin YouTube content farms are like this. Reminds me of the rooster teeth fiasco
Always record your conversations. And use phones with two party call recording and/or screenshot everything. It is how I have exposed multiple scumbags over the years, and continue to.
If you live in one of those “one party consent” places, buy a phone with which you can call record both ends, because if the abuser does not care about law, why should you? The state will not help you until you present evidence.
I am beginning to feel that LMG, MrBeast, Pewdiepie, all these “big” creators are big pieces of shit that just sanitise everything before presenting us the mister nice videos on YouTube. And just about everyone with a large social presence is like that. I remember the death of that kid years ago, due to Linus, and how that reddit post sometimes surfaces up.
Was there evidence linking the suicide to them apart from the Reddit post ? I never did have the stomach to research it in details.
Its about as much for the kid, in the form of his father’s testimony, as Madison says for herself. We do have to trust these testimonies by trying to decipher facts, and using a combination of facts, good conjectures and sniffing the moral intent of the claimant and the accused in the situation on a case-by-case basis.
LMG fans back then squashed the testimony about the kid in the same way they are trying to hate on Madison and are trying to call GamersNexus irrelevant drama poster. I myself have been called “drama poster” dozens of times for being the sole person to document and bring up issues and bad actors in privacy community for years, and can always sniff out what is behind the flesh of a person.
I’d argue the two things are different in the fact that in this case Madison is talking about direct actions by LMG employees, not the channel’s fanbase.
GamersNexus irrelevant drama poster
Yeah, I really don’t get that viewpoint. Look at GN’s track history, they call out a company and then leave it at that. That’s it. Sometimes they include clips as a meme (e.g. the Gigabyte “exploding” PSUs), but they don’t make multiple videos covering the same topic. If a company improves, they will make a video recapping the issue, the company’s response, and an updated analysis of if they think that was an appropriate move or not.
So I really don’t see GN as a drama channel, they tend to have well-researched content, give companies a chance to explain themselves, etc. I don’t know if GN did that this time (it was a long video), but they did provide many examples of the types of issues they found.
GN is by far one of the highest journalistic integrity channels out there on the entirety of YouTube. When liars and trolls want to defend something, the first thing they attempt is to discredit the critic as whiny/drama/tattletale or similar words. Source: I have been in that position in privacy community for years, and despise these kind of fanboy cult trolls. They are by far one of the worst kinds of people on the internet, alongside harassers and criminals.
One step worse imo is the “we’re more successful than you,” as if that’s a real argument, which Linus seems to also be pulling. And he’s not the only one, xQc did the same thing when he was challenged on his conception of Fair Use as it relates to “reaction” videos.
Wtf has Mr beast done again?
He is just speculating, but Mr Beast is known to push his people as well to work a lot
I’ve also heard it’s not as great for contestants/guests as well. I don’t think I’ve ever watched more than 10s or so of a Mr. Beast video, it’s just never been appealing to me.
To be honest, I think ‘founders syndrome’ vibes have been radiating from their content for years. Owner-operators are often some of the most toxic employers.
I’ve noticed Linus be visibly mean to his employees on camera multiple times and I don’t even watch that much. I figure if that’s what he’s willing to do on camera it’s probably a lot worse off camera.
