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Linus’ fan base allegedly drove a little boy to suicide, and the mother subsequently took her own life as well.
Not surprised. Toxic people have toxic followers.
Can someone explain to me followers and the seemingly weird cult that forms. LTT, Sony, Microsoft, Apple etc. Why are people weirdly defensive of these companies and ignore evidence, death threats etc?
We like to think we’re evolved, but ultimately we’re still tribal creatures. It’s just that the tribes are a bit wider these days.
Same as with politics.
People make something stupid (and usually toxic) the center of their identity, and develop a parasocial obsession with it due to having nothing going on in their own lives and want to latch onto someone elses success… especially if that someone else displays the same unhealthy/bad traits that they personally have and identify with, to the point that any threat to, or criticism against, their idol, is seen as the most egregious of personal attacks on them as a person. So they strike out as if they’ve been personally done the worst wrong imaginable.
I forget the name of the bias/fallacy, but it’s something like “I love and support X. If X is bad, then I support something bad, then I’m bad. Since I’m a good person, and I support X, then X must be good or I wouldn’t support them”
It’s probably a quirk of how we make decisions - we don’t consciously make decisions. Instead, we might weigh out the options and that affects our choice, but in the moment we choose subconsciously. It might feel like we made a decision consciously, but sometimes at the last second we deviate from the course we chose (or upon choosing, realize that despite our thoughts we actually have already made up our mind otherwise)… Then we have to rationalize that choice, or start down a long and challenging road of constant introspection
Holy shit. It just keeps getting worse.
Is there more to this than just a reddit screenshot posted on what’s clearly a clickbait shithole of a website?
I remember seeing the video of the play button, and kind of expected the guy to get a lot of hate. It resulting in harassment and suicide wouldn’t surprise me considering how Youtube people are. However, I’m not going to accept such a wild story without some credible evidence, especially since this is also the type of hoax internet losers would make up for clout.
The kid bought a silver YT button from the NCIX channel at auction. Linus tried to buy it back from him, but after some discussion, realized he should just let him keep it .
Some people supposedly harassed that guy online and eventually he killed himself.
People blame Linus for this because… 🤷 Ragebait, I guess.
Dude, WHAT? I knew about the first part, but the rest is horrific!
Linus responded to it. I doubt he’d respond if it was fake.
https://old.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/t1e1if/you_destroyed_my_life/
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you want more evidence?
More than 0? Yes. All you’ve provided is a link to an article with more ads than words.
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While I don’t doubt for a moment that LTT fan base is likely filled to the brim with fanatics… I don’t want to completely go all in on that story as much as the Madison story. That kid’s youtube channel has a dubious history on it’s own. It appears that the channel was purchased with all the subs that it had, not actually grown. I don’t necessarily believe that they “deserved” the play button if they bought subs. Not to say they deserved to be harassed, but you can’t expect not to be if you do things in a really shady way.
I could be wrong… I dunno. But I’d encourage a little more research before accepting this story.
I completely agree.
Yes, it’s sad tans messed up that LTT fans drove the kid to suicide. But if it is true that the YouTube channel wasn’t one that legitimately got subscribers then too bad. The self entitlement to feel you should have gotten a silver plaque for not being talented is insane. If you do something shady you deserve to face consequences…getting harrassed? No. Getting called out? Absolutely
There’s absolutely no excuse for hounding a child to suicide.
Correct, but I can’t blame LTT for that. That’s the raving zealot LTT fanbase.
No, but you did suggest you should expect this level of abuse for the “shady” act of buying subs and buying a YouTube button someone else feels they’re entitled to.
Ultimately if a group of people whose unifying property is you and they’re hounding a child in your name you are absolutely responsible for doing everything in your power to stop them abusing that child.
Not to say they deserved to be harassed, but you can’t expect not to be if you do things in a really shady way.
Is what I said. As in I don’t believe that they should have been harassed, but the internet being the internet… we know that’s what happens when people do shady shit like that.
Linus can’t control idiots that just watch his videos. He was on record as “don’t bother this person” in several places. And I’ve not seen any case where Linus “sent” people to harass this kid. So yes… even if the group is ultimately unified by Linus… I can’t necessarily blame him.
None of which contradicts anything I said.
Makes sense. All these toxic people unsubbing before hearing both sides. Very toxic community indeed.
You are the worst fanboy
I never noticed you until today and every single one of your comments is just fanboy defends his idol against anything and everything.
You are an excellent example of the problem.
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Theres nothing to indicate those people were “his fanbase”, and he actively condemned anyone who did that. What is it exactly that you expected him to do about that?
Be more careful when putting things like that in videos. He’s said many times not to go attacking people he talks about, but he should know the minority of his fan base won’t listen, and he should just not mention it instead.
Things like what? It was a completely innocuous (and boring) exchange that people blew out of proportion.
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.
He gave bad sex tips
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.
He’s a narcissist so I don’t think his subs have high expectations.
I unsubbed a couple of weeks ago because they released that always live video thing and it gave me the shits seeing the icon
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)
Should have spent $500 on employee time!
I’ve said this on another thread, but how had video of several employees confessing to feeling rushed and not putting out product that will be open to critique slip by him. Did he chalk it up to just bros being bitches **(bro speak)
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.
Bullied
lol wtf
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.
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.
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.
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 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
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.
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.
Lemmy (just like Reddit) loves a good dog-pile. It was pretty predictable to see coming tbh
the quality has been going down for years.
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 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 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 :-(
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 :-(
I know, right? But then again you have the likes of Tiff Needell who is a great racecar driver with a really nice personality and is a perfect TV presenter.
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 know it wasn’t really a car show, but it mimicked one.
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.
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 clocked him as a tosser
UK?
Haha yeah :-)
He’s literally the male version of the Kardashians. Tech bros are super obsessed with him
Good.
happy to contribute to the unsub count
Oof. Losing 5% of your paid subscribers in a day is nothing to scoff at. I understand they weren’t exactly trending upwards prior to this either.
Now 7%.
OOTL, what’s going on here?
Additionally, here’s a video from an all-hands meeting the day after she quit. (Reddit, sorry.)
The following is a transcript if you’d rather avoid Reddit:
(speaker 1, Linus) So we called this meeting because it’s come to our attention that we need to have a quick chat about the best way to handle HR related feedback and rumors. We won’t be giving any names for what I hope are extraordinarily obvious reasons, but what we can do is give you the following guidelines for problem solving and conflict resolution.
Sorry that this is all boring and corporate, but here we are. Number one, always stand up for what’s right. We’re only a team as long as we’re all working together and working for each other. That’s the most important one. Number two, always reflect on your own personal experiences and use your common sense. Few things in life are truly black and white. Number three, always wait to hear both sides of a story before passing your own judgment. Be cautious when you know that one side is bound by legal and ethical disclosure guidelines, when the other is not. Carefully consider what it says about the character of someone who would engage in that type of gossip against someone who has no power to defend themselves.
Number four, always encourage openness and transparency. If you have a problem, you need to speak up. We want to fix it. If you receive feedback about somebody else at this company, the first response is, have you spoken with this person? Followed closely by, you need to speak with this person. We don’t solve interpersonal issues here, or really anywhere in your life, if you wish to live in a drama free zone, by engaging in water cooler politicking. So, if for any reason that individual is not comfortable approaching the person they’re having a conflict with, we have a chain that they’re supposed to follow.
So first, you advise them to take the problem to their manager. Followed by me or Yvonne, followed by our third party HR firm. I hope that you all trust that we’re here to make this a safe, fun, and productive workplace, and we won’t tolerate mistreatment of any of our team members.
If you have any reason to believe otherwise, then I refer you again to point number four, which is to address the issue with the individual directly, or bring it to me or Yvonne, or bring it to our third party HR firm. Since I’m not at liberty to share any details about what occurred, uh, all I can do is ask that you trust me and Yvonne.
Um, some of you know us very well, I’ve been here a very long time, um, some of you have not been here for as long, but I like to think that whether you’ve been here for nine years or nine days, you’re here for a reason and you believe that we are utmost to run this company with integrity and compassion.
Um, We can’t solve problems we don’t know about though, so on that note, I’d like to invite anyone who has concerns about a fellow team member or about a manager to submit their feedback either by speaking with their manager, me or Yvonne directly, or if you would prefer to provide your feedback anonymously, we have an option for that as well.
It’s the manager and co-worker feedback form. Uh, Yvonne, if you’re not aware of it - show of hands who is not aware of it? Hey, a lot of people aren’t aware of it. Good, so now we all know. There’s an anonymous form, if for whatever reason you’re not comfortable either talking to me me or Yvonne directly about it - and that’s okay, that’s fine, we understand, that’s why we have these options - Yvonne’s gonna post it in the general chat.
It’s a safe space to provide us ideas for improvement, or if you’re consumed by the holiday spirit and you want to say nice things, you can do that too. Does anybody else have any questions?
Not a single question? Wow, that must have been a really good speech.
(speaker 2, James) You gonna dance on that table, or just stand on it?
(speaker 1, Linus) That’s it! So, um, Yvonne, did you have anything you wanted to add?
(speaker 3, Yvonne) (inaudible) Somebody said (inaudible) if you guys want to sanitize your hands, help yourself with free (inaudible)?
(speaker 1, Linus) Yeah, that was actually just totally random timing. It came up the stairs a moment ago. Dennis is on it. Alright. Thank you everyone. Have a wonderful and, uh, productive rest of your day. And weekend.
It’s worth going to Reddit to see the comments the last time this was posted. So many people defending Linus and victim blaming.
The account that initially posted the video has been suspended by Reddit as well.
Of course It has…
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.
It’s hardly shocking though.
He’s outspokenly anti-worker and anti-union. Who is surprised that someone who is against workers rights would mistreat their workers?
He’s outspokenly anti-worker and anti-union.
Jesus this bullshit lie needs to stop. The only thing he said is that if his employees started a union that there is nothing he could do about it and he would consider it a personal failure.
But by all means, if there’s something I’m missing, please share.
I get your point, but it’s more of a bigger picture for me.
Remember that WAN segment about quiet quitting? The vibe was off on that one. Especially keeping the previous remark about unions in mind. Why would he think that he can be owner and main manager of such a big company with gigantic daily content output AND keep his workers best interests in mind at all times? If he is not anti-union he is at the very least wrong on why they are necessary. In the worst case he actually realizes that he could do much better for his workforce.
Especially keeping the previous remark about unions in mind.
I have legitimately no idea what remark you’re referring to, other than the one I specifically outlined where he categorically did not condemn unions.
Sexual assault, a toxic frat-bro culture, and open misogyny isn’t a personal failure?
Assuming any of that is true, then yes. That wasn’t the topic of discussion.
He’s outspokenly anti-worker and anti-union.
Where did you hear that? From what I have heard he was in full support of the unions, all he said he wanted to create a company that doesn’t require/need a union.
Yeah the Union is a big one for me, my current employer is also like that. “Hey guys you can share your voice here and speak open about it…” Yes, that’s the problem, it’s open and not really anonymous so what can we talk about. If you can open talk about everything, you don’t have to fear unions.
Not to be that guy, but in relation to being anti union, he specifically has said that if his employees feel like they needed a Union, then he has failed as a boss. In the sense that it should never get to the point where wanting a Union should come up as LMG should be a good enough work place to where it would be unnecessary to have.
There is a difference. I would want my employees to be happy and compesated enough to where needing a Union is just completely unneeded.
Yeah I get why he thinks that and it’s a great goal to have as a boss. But who says that a union is always and entirely set up against him as a boss? If he is such a great boss there could very well be a union that doesn’t have to do much. It’s a defensive measure for worker’s rights and working conditions, not an instituition for offense.
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
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?
It seems she didn’t speak out both because she thought she had an NDA and also because she was getting lots of harassment anyways and didn’t want to add to it while in a bad place.
Yes of course but my point was: what’s to say that nothing has changed since then?
Yeah, but she hadn’t talked about it publicly because of fear of harassment, death threats, etc from the community
Sounds like a great community if true…
Yes, she expands on why she didn’t feel safe speaking out
What was that reason?
This timing is not a good look either way tho
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NDA does protect misconduct unless you got paid specially not to talk about it.
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“Not a good look” should be the least of her concerns if she was indeed sexually harassed.
If she was sexually harassed she should have gone to the police when it happened
She is took this the court of public opinion at an opportune time…
While I generally agree with the fundamental idea behind your statement that you should generally let the justice system do its job, you’ve still got to put your statement into context. Said context is that a very tiny fraction of depositions of sexual nature even reaches actual charges, and even fewer actually end up in convictions. The justice system is, objectively speaking, utterly failing at protecting people against these crimes.
Are you a professional sexually harassed person? Do you understand what is the right course of action to take here?
This looks a lot like victim blaming.
If the alleged facts are indeed true, it is incredibly difficult to even manage to get the police to care, let alone act. Not to mention the social stigma and the trauma.
Given the number of people involved, other people might be compelled to come forward. Then we will know for sure.
Drama
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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
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You must have an elite life too then, because the links to what happened are posted everywhere.
Nah, nothing big outside of it being LTT and Gamer’s Nexus calling them out.
In a nutshell, LTT was given a prototype of a product that they basically said was shit due to testing the product outside of the specified parameters that company told them to test in and, instead of sending the prototype and other stuff that the company sent to LTT for testing back to said company, LTT auctioned the prototype off. Gamer’s Nexus made a video calling out stuff like this happening as well as the inconsistency of LTT’s testing lab data to point out that LTT is basically doing rush job videos for money and is starting to do more harm than good. Linus himself gets involved and shifts blame to everybody else except himself and his staff. On top of all this going on, a former LTT employee started going off about workplace harassment with some pretty serious accusations (but no hard evidence).
There’s a lot more stuff going on with the nitty-gritty, but that’s more or less the gist of things.
Thanks for the info, I appreciate it.
Shitty of him to sell the device but that’s the biz if you don’t put every little thing in fine print.
Them’s the breaks.
What needs to be in the fine print of LTT confirming they’re going to return it… to then turn around and sell it after confirming they’re going to return it?
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They admitted it in their own video… GN also showed emails that came direct from the company.
https://youtu.be/0cTpTMl8kFY?t=800
From LTT’s own video. They show an email from “Felix”
I’ll transcribe so you’re not wasting time trying to pause the video if you’re on mobile or something. Bold is my edit.
Right. We Originally said you could keep it because we thought it would be good for you to have it for future builds - it wasn’t so you could sell it (whether for charity or not). Then when Linus clearly didn’t like it, we asked for it back and you agreed. That was a [redacted] prototype and we’re a very small company. Do you plan to reimburse us for the money it cost? You agreed to send it back and we planned our finances accordingly. This is not okay at all."
Edit: For completeness. The redacted portion was the cost of the prototype itself.
It gets worse, the company actually sent the correct graphics card to test the device on, but they still used the wrong model which doesn’t fit properly.
I did a little googling and found this
https://www.dexerto.com/tech/ex-linus-tech-tips-employee-alleges-mistreatment-and-poor-conditions-2251613/In order:
https://youtu.be/FGW3TPytTjc - Gamers Nexus posts video pointing out accuracy and responsibility issues with LinusTechTips
https://youtu.be/X3byz3txpso - Gamers Nexus discusses Linus’s responses to the first video
https://youtu.be/0cTpTMl8kFY - LinusTechTips addresses the entire situation and their future plans after everything that happened
I haven’t watched them myself yet, but I think watching those three will sum it up, am about to watch through them myself
And former employee Madison’s experience working there: https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1691693740254228741
I was also the one tasked with managing the Only Fans account. Something I said I didn’t want to do.
Why the hell does a technology review channel need an OnlyFans account? wtf
It was an April fools thing, they didn’t post anything explicit for the short time it was up
Because it was part of an april fools joke a year or two back.
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
