There won’t be a big WAN Show segment about this or anything. Most of what I have to say, I’ve already said, and I’ve done so privately.
To Steve, I expressed my disappointment that he didn’t go through proper journalistic practices in creating this piece. He has my email and number (along with numerous other members of our team) and could have asked me for context that may have proven to be valuable (like the fact that we didn’t ‘sell’ the monoblock, but rather auctioned it for charity due to a miscommunication… AND the fact that while we haven’t sent payment yet, we have already agreed to compensate Billet Labs for the cost of their prototype). There are other issues, but I’ve told him that I won’t be drawn into a public sniping match over this and that I’ll be continuing to move forward in good faith as part of ‘Team Media’. When/if he’s ready to do so again I’ll be ready.
To my team (and my CEO’s team, but realistically I was at the helm for all of these errors, so I need to own it), I stressed the importance of diligence in our work because there are so many eyes on us. We are going through some growing pains - we’ve been very public about them in the interest of transparency - and it’s clear we have some work to do on internal processes and communication. We have already been doing a lot of work internally to clean up our processes, but these things take time. Rome wasn’t built in a day, but that’s no excuse for sloppiness.
Now, for my community, all I can say is the same things I always say. We know that we’re not perfect. We wear our imperfection on our sleeves in the interest of ensuring that we stay accountable to you. But it’s sad and unfortunate when this transparency gets warped into a bad thing. The Labs team is hard at work hard creating processes and tools to generate data that will benefit all consumers - a work in progress that is very much not done and that we’ve communicated needs to be treated as such. Do we have notes under some videos? Yes. Is it because we are striving for transparency/improvement? Yeah… What we’re doing hasn’t been in many years, if ever… and we would make a much larger correction if the circumstances merited it. Listing the wrong amount of cache on a table for a CPU review is sloppy, but given that our conclusions are drawn based on our testing, not the spec sheet, it doesn’t materially change the recommendation. That doesn’t mean these things don’t matter. We’ve set KPIs for our writing/labs team around accuracy, and we are continually installing new checks and balances to ensure that things continue to get better. If you haven’t seen the improvement, frankly I wonder if you’re really looking for it… The thoroughness that we managed on our last handful of GPU videos is getting really incredible given the limited time we have for these embargoes. I’m REALLY excited about what the future will hold.
With all of that said, I still disagree that the Billet Labs video (not the situation with the return, which I’ve already addressed above) is an ‘accuracy’ issue. It’s more like I just read the room wrong. We COULD have re-tested it with perfect accuracy, but to do so PROPERLY - accounting for which cases it could be installed in (none) and which radiators it would be plumbed with (again… mystery) would have been impossible… and also didn’t affect the conclusion of the video… OR SO I THOUGHT…
I wanted to evaluate it as a product, and as a product, IF it could manage to compete with the temperatures of the highest end blocks on the planet, it still wouldn’t make sense to buy… so from my point of view, re-testing it and finding out that yes, it did in fact run cooler made no difference to the conclusion, so it didn’t really make a difference.
Adam and I were talking about this today. He advocated for re-testing it regardless of how non-viable it was as a product at the time and I think he expressed really well today why it mattered. It was like making a video about a supercar. It doesn’t mater if no one watching will buy it. They just wanna see it rip. I missed that, but it wasn’t because I didn’t care about the consumer… it was because I was so focused on how this product impacted a potential buyer. Either way, clearly my bad, but my intention was never to harm Billet Labs. I specifically called out their incredible machining skills because I wanted to see them create something with a viable market for it and was hoping others would appreciate the fineness of the craftsmanship even if the product was impractical. I still hope they move forward building something else because they obviously have talent and I’ve watched countless niche water cooling vendors come and go. It’s an astonishingly unforgiving market.
Either way, I’m sorry I got the community’s priorities mixed-up on this one, and that we didn’t show the Billet in the best light. Our intention wasn’t to hurt anyone. We wanted no one to buy it (because it’s an egregious waste of money no matter what temps it runs at) and we wanted Billet to make something marketable (so they can, y’know, eat).
With all of this in mind, it saddens me how quickly the pitchforks were raised over this. It also comes across a touch hypocritical when some basic due diligence could have helped clarify much of it. I have a LONG history of meeting issues head on and I’ve never been afraid to answer questions, which lands me in hot water regularly, but helps keep me in tune with my peers and with the community. The only reason I can think of not to ask me is because my honest response might be inconvenient.
We can test that… with this post. Will the “It was a mistake (a bad one, but a mistake) and they’re taking care of it” reality manage to have the same reach? Let’s see if anyone actually wants to know what happened. I hope so, but it’s been disheartening seeing how many people were willing to jump on us here. Believe it or not, I’m a real person and so is the rest of my team. We are trying our best, and if what we were doing was easy, everyone would do it. Today sucks.
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When organizations mess up, why is their first response to the critique to say “Why didn’t you come to us first?” when they really mean “Why did you make this public so we actually have to do something?”
I get really frustrated with the response because it doesn’t come across as a company actually interested in improving, but just throwing accusations back and trying to beg off the responsibility of actually holding themselves accountable.
we didn’t ‘sell’ the monoblock, but rather auctioned it for charity
Jesus. It doesn’t matter whether you sold it or auctioned it. It doesn’t matter if it was for charity. What matters is that IT WAS A ONE-OF-A-KIND PROTOTYPE THAT DIDN’T BELONG TO YOU AND YOU AGREED TO RETURN IT (and the RTX3090 they sent with it), and you didn’t do what you promised.
Everything wrong with LTT is summed up in this response. Instead of going to the company’s CEO and composing a response on behalf of the company, we get a bunch of over-personalized complaints about hurt feelings and imperfection, fired off only 3 hours after the GN video, that make it 100% clear this is all about Linus’ personality rather than a dispassionate review of the facts.
We need “Linus Responds to GN Responding to Linus Responding to The Problem with LMG” 🍿
Did he respond to the response to his response to the controversy?? His forum account at least hasn’t posted in 23 hours.
Nope
Linus has always struck me as someone who thinks he knows what he’s talking about, acts like he does, and can sell it. When, in fact, he’s nothing but veneer on top of a moron. This, to me, proves it. I’m so glad I never got caught up in his cult of personality.
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Same, I never liked his content. He’s so “hype guy” cringy to me. I have friends that are somewhat techie that love him and think I’m just hating on him but he’s always been very annoying and came off as fake, like the fake persona that a cars salesman has. I’ve never watched a whole one of his videos, just can’t stand them.
Not a great look here overall. Was definitely hoping they would take a little bit more accountability. The solution seems simple. Spend less money on egregiously expensive equipment and spend more money on making sure things are accurate before they go out the door.
I think that is the most frustrating part, is the main criticism is take time, get it right, and that seems to be something that Linus totally ignored in his response.
He is laser focused on the criticism of a single video and missing the greater concern being raised.
This read more like a “We did nothing wrong. And what we did do wrong we already discovered ourselves and have been working to improve. And those self improvements are not showing an effect because we just need more time. But I promise we try to be better. Please just ignore that the quality hasn’t improved recently and believe me.” than a “We done fucked up, gonna have to see how to fix this. Will report back with an action plan to make sure this doesn’t happen again once we have it laid out”
Very disappointed in Linus here, haven’t been watching them recently but it’s sad to see him fall to what seems to be greed.
“my intention was never to harm Billet Labs”
Kid, you said “nobody should buy it”
I think the end conclusion wasn’t great. He said
It wouldn’t matter if it dropped 20 degrees
It absolutely would matter. Just like how a 4090 costs an absurdly high amount but people will still buy it. For the right person getting 20 degrees knocked off might be worthwhile regardless of how expensive it is.
It’s his job to say who should buy it. That doesn’t mean he wants to take food off the tables of manufacturers. A review is useless if the reviewer cares more about not hurting the manufacturer than being straight about the product. That said, the review should obviously be done with a responsible level of thoroughness and competence, but that’s a separate issue.
I mean it is a $800/900+ waterblock. No reasonable consumer should buy it. Its a cool project to show Billet Lab’s ability to fabricate and mill custom parts but this is such a niche thing.
The average consumer wouldn’t buy a block to begin with. I know quite a few guys that have spent thousands on their hardline setups, adding another $1000 CAD is a drop in the bucket to them. There is a market for it, just not a large one
I do wish they would have tested it properly, because it was like watching a Top Gear episode where they drive a lambo around a gridlocked city and then say, “not worth the money, sucks”. You’re right, there is a market for it, just not a large one. But also as the other guy said, no reasonable consumer should buy it. All of this is irrelevant to the larger discussion at hand, of course.
And they wouldn’t watch Linus video on it going on the wrong gpu. Those insane people can do what they want but its clear Linus is typically catering to tech “normies” they will do the occasional commercial tech but those are typically using them in ways they weren’t meant to in a rather silly/pointless deployment. I’m not here to say what Linus did to the prototype was great since really auctioning it off is pretty abhorrent but I think people are over exaggerating about him going to be the “death of a startup” when local youtuber “funny” man makes a stupid video on it installing it on the wrong gpu, which has been clearly pointed out to death in the comments even before this controversy popped up.
From Billet lab’s own website, it seems custom parts may be their bag and even though the video was negative on the monoblock (as we already established the reasons why) LTT seemed rather positive about the company, just not the product.
If you’ve got an idea for your next PC, let us know. If anyone can make it happen, we can.
Think this is a case of damned if you do and damned if you don’t. Where I can see where Linus is coming from since he is quite frequently told he is out of touch as shown with his recent “house” videos. I think this could have easily swung the other way of “Wow Linus, of course the techtuber who gets free shit would advertise a 900$ waterblock, we can barely afford the gpus to put these on but he wants us to buy something that cost half the price of the already overpriced gpu its being put on”. Like custom water cooling loop are fucking cool but you get to a huge point of diminishing return. Like if we believe Billet Lab’s own results, the difference between Monoblock and EK quantum magnitude & EK-Quantum Vector is only about 3-5 degrees. People can burn their money how they want but I am pretty certain LTT has made a video saying they actually don’t encourage consumers to watercool their PCs since while its better its typically just a worse user experience (This is me paraphrasing).
And they wouldn’t watch Linus video on it going on the wrong gpu.
They absolutely would, it’s literally the only video on it in huge part because Linus managed to give away the only prototype without permission, accidentally ensuring exclusivity.
And sure, they’d know he fucked up but it might still sway their opinion, maybe even unconsciously.
Oh and when you ask what Linus is going to do to prevent crap like this in the future (after already tripling down on their stupidity with the testing) is “nothing, it’s a one in ten years occurrence”.
The guy absolutely can’t stop jamming his foot in his mouth.
Still kinda bummed on his response. I don’t think they can afford to slow down on video released owing to their large teams now. It just doesn’t feel sustainable anymore. I stopped watching when their quality started declining
Fuck you Linus. Your actions and your company’s actions might have resulted in the death of startup because you didn’t like the product and think people shouldn’t buy it. You don’t get to just apologize and give some money out and think that makes it okay. You should be horrified that something like this could happened. You should be bending your self over backwards, doing everything you can do to ensure that this doesn’t happen again. Instead you put out this dumb shit
He just uses the same excuses that GN talks about being issues in the video. It would not be “impossible” to test the water block properly, he just doesn’t want to spend money to make proper journalism.
Didn’t he hire a whole bunch of testing experts and built a “lab”? Hard to see he has all that talent and equipment behind him with results like these.
But they couldn’t find a 3090 to test it with! Not even the 3090 that the company sent with the cooling block. Cough.
we didn’t ‘sell’ the monoblock, but rather auctioned it for charity due to a miscommunication
I don’t think you’re making the point you think you’re making
Also, Linus is technically wrong on several counts. GN said where it was sold (at an event auction).
also auction == sell: webster definition of Auction: “a sale of property to the highest bidder”
Absolutely no excuse that this happened, but I believe the point he is trying to make is that they didn’t make any money on it. Still a shitty thing to let happen, and it should simply never have happened at all, but it’s still better than if they had sold it and made a profit, I guess.
That point didn’t need to be made in the first place because Steve already specifically noted that it was auctioned for charity in his video.
To me, this is just evidence that Linus didn’t even watch the video.
Why would he? You can get most of a videos information by just reading the comments. And those probably all said he sold it.
Wow. I felt so stupid just writing this. I still cant believe he unironically says shit like this
Well, not watching the video would mean not doing due diligence, which would be on-brand for him.
It’s a really shitty defense, as they still profited off of it, just not monetarily. And he should realize that and not make excuses.
The point isn’t the profit, the point is that a new, maybe secret prototype could have fallen into competitors hands. LMG made a thousand on it? The small, indepedent company that made the water block just lost their main product
Man, I’ve had a feeling that LTT and LMG’s content more generally has been less and less about consumers and more about selling things to people. I guess it’s called “advertainment” - but it’s just so intolerable now. I don’t feel connected to, or like any of the content is relevant anymore to a regular person.
When your employees are complaining that they can’t create the content to the standard they want to because of time, it really sounds like a management problem. One they Linus seems determined to ignore so that they can keep raking in big sponsorships and sales of their overpriced over hyped merch so they can buy ever bigger mansions.
The whole tone of the enterprise is off and the vibes are bad.
One they Linus seems determined to ignore so that they can keep raking in big sponsorships and sales of their overpriced over hyped merch so they can buy ever bigger mansions.
I don’t think it’s that bad; Linus’ heart seems to be in the right place but his ego and occasional lack of self-awareness does definitely hurt at least the image. But that’s something the new CEO can actually fix, potentially.
As for the need to make money and churn out content, I kinda get the need; he probably feels immense pressure because in order to sustain 100+ people they do actually need to put out a shittin of content and can’t really take a break.
With that being said issues like these should be a very strong signal that change needs to happen, and dismissing people’s concerns and not being able to put his ego aside will hurt them a lot if this continues.
I think you nailed the response here. They need the new CEO to be there full time too.
How am I not surprised this is how he would respond. This is the same guy who said “AdBlock is piracy,” he doubles down on every shitty take he has.
This is the same guy who said “AdBlock is piracy,”
Spot the difference:
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You download a video from a pirate site.
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You download that video from Youtube and skip the ads.
In number 2) Youtube had to pay for the bandwidth and got nothing, so it’s literally worse for them than just pirating it from an unofficial source. You might not like “AdBlock is piracy”, but that doesn’t make it wrong.
You’re right, there’s no difference. Downloading a video “from a pirate site” that is freely available is also not piracy in the colloquial sense. Otherwise it’s also piracy for me to download a tiktok and sent it the mp4 to a friend directly. Your argument’s great but doesn’t make the point you want it to.
It is wrong, actually. Piracy is illegal, adblocking is not.
That’s what they want you to believe, but piracy is not illegal in itself. Making copies is the illegal part. But that’s something you only do when you upload, not when you just download or stream.
PS: Some exception do apply, but that depends a lot of the content and the country you are in. Interestingly, Youtube does not explicitly disallow adblockers in their ToS, they do however disallow the access “using any automated means”, which would fit for
yt-dlp.Creating adblockers, hosting those adblockers, using adblockers, or providing a service that removes ads is not illegal (in countries I know of). Piracy, like you said, can vary. For many places, downloading pirated content is not illegal (although in some places, I believe intent is also a part of this story), hosting content you don’t own is illegal (even if it has ads, and of course there is nuance here when it comes to user-submitted content and where you are), etc. Generally, adblockers never involve any kind of “is it legal” consideration, while piracy does.
Looking at it from a different point of view, piracy is the act of acquiring content that requires payment without paying for it, while blocking ads is basically the opposite - you’re denying content you don’t want while accepting the rest. Taking something without permission generally raises ethical questions for the receiver, while forcing someone to take something they don’t want generally raises ethical questions for the sender. (Of course, this also comes down to whether the receiver agreed ahead of time to receive both the content they wanted and the content they didn’t want, but that’s not the case here.)
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I still don’t get his fame and how deeply embedded ge is in the pc/gaming community.
Haha he’s so funny because he drops expensive things and pushes expensive products.He’s the CEO of Linux, it’s even named after him.
TIL
Satan’s making a joke. Linux was developed in 1991 by Linus Torvalds of Finland. LTT is Linus Sebastian of Canada.
Reddit always had such a boner for him. Maybe it’s because I’m old, but I clicked on one of his videos a decade ago, when people were posting gifs of him dropping things. I found the grating and annoying, and never went back. It also really looked like all of the drops were for quick popularity via Reddit gifs. It worked well.
Yeah I mean it’s kind of wish fulfillment innit? Like Scrapyard Wars, or Whole Room Watercooling, or building 5-figure rigs, or his tech’ed out data collection mansion, that’s all stuff most people won’t be able to do themselves, but they want to watch someone do it.
His fame, like most fame, is the duality of a carefully curated persona as cool and hip, and an arrogant micromanaging back half. Most people are only going to see Wish Fulfillment Linus, and Egomaniac Linus only comes up rarely (and mostly on his podcast).
I mean it’s kind of wish fulfillment innit?
Not really, most of the crap they build is completely impractical and gets disassembled after they are done with the videos anyway, including this water cooling block. No reasonable person would spend $800 on that thing, but it might still be fun to see what it can or can’t do. It’s just messing around with tech and having some fun, just sometimes they overstretch the fun part and the review side of things suffers.
Wish fulfillment is what I’d call something like MKBHD, as that’s has all the latest hottest tech gadget nicely presented, just like an ad.
Yes, the impracticality is one of the major points of wish fulfillment. It’s fantasy and most reasonable people don’t actually want the crap Linus builds. They just want to see it, it’s make-believe.
And I wouldn’t call destroying a startup’s intellectual property, ignoring their requests to return it, and then selling the detritus as “merch” at an auction “just having some fun.” That’s what I would call negligent and unprofessional.
And I wouldn’t call destroying a startup’s intellectual property
Intellectual property doesn’t get stored in copper blocks. They can load up their CAD files and machine a new one. That thing might have sentimental value, but that’s about it.
With respect, whether it can properly be called “intellectual property” or not, is not the point.
It was a one-of-a-kind engineering sample that LTT agreed to send back when they were done with it. LTT did not fulfill their obligation, and when Billet Labs asked about it, they got stonewalled.
Billet has those blocks on preorder, shipping in Sep-Nov, yet somehow has only a single prototype one of them in existence? Sound rather sketchy to me. Also next time maybe put a label on the thing “Prototype Not for Sale. Property of Billet”, like every other prototype.
The thing worth criticizing is that LTT “reviewed” a water block that didn’t even exist as a pre-production run.
they got stonewalled.
They mailed at the end of the week, got a reply on monday.
“IP” or not, this is costing them money to manufacture a new prototype.
Which meaningless drama did I miss here?
In a video on a different channel (not from Linus media group) a LTT employee criticized other YouTubers like gamers Nexus saying they’re not as thorough as them, so gamers Nexus made a 40 minutes video (not monetized, Linus wouldn’t have done that) with a compilation of some of the biggest errors LTT made in the last year.
Mostly the issues that were pointed out is that
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After being sent a prototype of a water-cooling block that will be on sale in November 2023, he didn’t follow the instructions and attempted to install it on a wrong GPU, and that meant there would be a 1 mm gap between the die and the block and wouldn’t work at all. The conclusion of that video was that it was a shitty product and nobody should buy it. For a start-up with 2 people is a death sentence. Later in his hours long wan show (that I never see because too long) he doubles down saying “why I should spend $500 in salaries to test it with the right equipment, it’s a shitty product and nobody should buy it”. The sample was not returned even if it was requested back and instead they sold it at an auction
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For a mouse review they said it had terrible gliding and it was awful, but they didn’t RTFM and didn’t remove a protective film on the bottom (but IMHO it should arrive to the customer without protective films)
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Various instances of the hosts that says something but then it’s corrected by just an asterisk on the screen
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Various instances of clearly wrong tests (coolers that suddenly in a single test perform significantly worse than the average, newer GPU models that run much faster than the average)
And he didn’t point another problem with a video published a few hours earlier: LTT reviewed a virus removal Stick and the conclusion was that even if the ads are misleading and the website is scammy, the product itself isn’t that bad. But he tested on a diy computer. Any prebuilt computer released in the last two years has secureboot and automatic bitlocker encryption with keys in the Microsoft account, meaning that this antivirus removal USB drive wouldn’t even boot, and if it could, it couldn’t access any file on the computer
Any prebuilt computer released in the last two years has secureboot and automatic bitlocker encryption with keys in the Microsoft account, meaning that this antivirus removal USB drive wouldn’t even boot, and if it could, it couldn’t access any file on the computer
I was disappointed this issue was not addressed at all during its review. The type of person this product is aimed at wouldn’t have a clue this was potentially the case.
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Linus being a punk ass removed, again. 😅
The Billet situation appears to be a genuine fuckup that LMG has to make right with them, but outside of that I don’t care tbh.
The data integrity situation is the one that needs to be properly addressed for the sake of their channel.
Sorry Linus, I’m not buying the “you should have told us” line. The fact that you and your staff were well aware of the problems of rushing to release content (to the point of releasing public video on it), means it’s not that people weren’t telling you.
You have two basic options to fix it.
Option A: You need more staff to vet the accuracy and more hosts to have time to cut/re-shoot parts that were incorrect. Clearly you and your staff each have too much on your plate.
Option B: You need to slow the rate of your content releasing right down, to ensure you can double and triple check benchmarks, staff that bring up concerns aren’t brushed off or put in a footnote/comment.
GN or anyone could tell LMG this, but especially option B isn’t something a company with a “growth-mindset” would want to hear.
The communication re: the auction of the billet product appears to be a genuine fuck up, and LMG needs to do as much as it can to own that.
The review, and subsequent doubling down on WAN of [sic] “do not buy this product” , however, is down right negligent. Billet are a start up and every review or demo of their product is absolutely critical to their success. To say “we want you to eat” is borderline offensive. LMG must recognise the majority who watch LTT are often casual and will forever just remember “Linus said no” and not question it further.
While I commend the attitude of not being drawn into an online pissing contest with GN, I think the least they could do is remove the video, retest and evaluate, and offer a sincere apology for the previous efforts.
Everything else is a QC issue. Do less with more, and you won’t have to spend so much time putting out very public fires such as this.
LMG must recognise the majority who watch LTT are often casual and will forever just remember “Linus said no” and not question it further.
So they are casuals primarily but you expect some subset of them to be willing to buy a $900+ waterblock? I feel I’m going through brainrot right now with this shit. Any enthusiast is probably not going to take the youtuber “funny” man, who thought it would be a good idea to watercool his PC rack with his pool with no heat exchanger in between said rack and the pool installation or really any other dumb watercooling project they have done (that typically end in failure), as a person you should go to for your boutique custom water cooling needs. Like even in the video they were pretty blatant on how its going on the wrong gpu.
As Linus said, think of it like watching a Top Gear/VIN Wiki video about a super car. I just want to see it at its best, and going fast.
Yeah, talk about some downsides but recognise this isn’t a product for everyone. His attitude of “don’t buy it at all” was really bad faith.
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Because I don’t think you or any of the people in this thread would spout the vitriol they have to his face if they recognized him as a human. Consider a friend you have that you’re close to. Now imagine they fucked up in the way linus did. How do you approach them about it? Do you say, “hey man, I think you were in the wrong there, let’s talk, I want to understand where your head was at”? Or do you jump straight to, “you never learn from your mistakes, that’s why you keep acting like a fool. I can’t be bothered with your superficial attitude”?
There’s a disconnect between people communicating on the internet. Most humans aren’t evolved to have sympathy for hypothetical people, much less intangible celebrities, much less communicating asynchronously. We’re evolved to look each other in the face, read each others’ emotions, and adjust the conversation accordingly to be most effective. None of that can happen here.
I have not watched this video, nor do I really watch any of the LTT/LMG’s videos so I’m just a third party observer here. However, this goes both ways - are the others correct when they said that their video directly said “No one should ever buy this”?
If so, using the same example I’m sure you’d expect that your friend wouldn’t say “No one should ever buy this” when you ask them for a review on something you made. Yes, Linus and his team are human - but so are the people who made the original product. I get the feeling this isn’t the first review that LMG hasn’t exactly given… glowing reviews to, either.
Plenty of people go on tirades about those that they don’t actually have a personal connection to, it’s unfortunate but as you said, is all too very common especially when you’re a person who’s in a higher position than those complaining about you. As the (previous now, as far as I understand?) CEO of a company though you don’t double down on your mistakes because that only makes the situation worse.
And of course, if you go and do something silly say, on the road - you very much are likely to get someone to speak how they truly feel about you.
My boss is the CEO of a smaller company (we are a team of about 10 people at a time, max), we were talking about the situation today - and he said “When we make a mistake, my job is to address the issue but at the same time, not add fuel to the fire. Because we probably were wrong, and when you have a ton of customers complaining on that scale then you probably were in the wrong.”- I do not know how much total profit either of them make, but my boss isn’t the CEO of a massive company like Google and started off as a one-man-shop too.
Before I send you this novel, just want to preface with, thank you for your respectful response.
So to address your first point, not sure if you were intentionally pivoting the metaphor or not, but I just want to be clear that my “you and a friend” metaphor was intended to be analogous to the Linus/audience relationship, not Linus/Billet. Linus isn’t directing the “we’re human” line at Billet Labs, he’s directing it at us onlookers responding to the situation. I assume that LMG and Billet Labs have a completely different relationship regarding this situation with completely different motives and emotions and dialogues involved, versus the relationship between LMG and their audience. The audience is currently giving a ragebait response, I’m sure LMG is getting their fair share of death threats right now, but also generally seeing a lot of the more typical toxic responses that often accompany a cancelling, and THAT is the vitriolic reaction I’m referring to when I talk about “you and a friend”. People say things over the internet to faceless celebrities that they would never in a million years say to another human no matter how wrong they were; they know not to because it’s not constructive and only burns bridges. But random strangers don’t have a bridge they’re caring for with Linus, because they don’t have any tangible relationship with him. That’s all I’m saying.
Second, I don’t think “no one should ever buy this” is the insult people are hearing it as. As a reviewer, LMG’s job is (typically) to measure the portion of their audience that a product is the best option for, quantify that portion, and notify them of the product. But when a product is the best option for virtually no one, it’s simply a statement of fact to say “no one should buy this”. I don’t know what line of business you’re in, but I’m sure you’d agree that you should be able to have a meeting with your CEO, and say in no uncertain terms exactly who your target demographic is, and how large that group is at any given time. I have to assume Billet Labs is fully aware that the current product at the current price point is only commercially viable for less than 20 people’s usecase. But being commercially viable is not their current goal, which leads me to the problem I have with Linus focusing on that point in the video: It’s literally a limited batch prototype. It’s not relevant to say whether anyone should buy it, because they aren’t even manufacturing them to be sold yet. The supercar analogy is apt, because people don’t watch Top Gear to be told that no one should buy a Lamborghini (even though it’s true), they watch it to see the car “rip” as it were.
I think that’s the safe (arguably “right”) statement for your CEO to make, and this is why you usually get the generic, no stance, “we’ll do better” statements we often see in these situations. I do think Linus could have done a better job not coming off as defensive, because he does seem to understand that he had the wrong mindset about the product from the start. But the “we’re human” statement I think is a normal human response to a situation where you’re being flooded with hatemail, from people you’ve never met, over a situation that there is still confusion around, and you’re just doing your best to correct your mistakes.
Linus has said he’s stepping down from the company multiple times before. I wonder if this will be his “that’s it, I’m done” moment, or if he doesn’t want this to be how he goes out. Hoping the latter, but we’ll see…
Edit: just saw that they put out a video addressing the situation. Glad his wife and the new CEO know how to do damage control better than him.
