I stopped watching most things done by Linus Media Group years ago. Go back half-a-decade or so and it was my goto channel for tech videos, but somewhere along the lines I just moved into other things. Imagine my surprise when I see them blowing up this week.
I wish I could point out to a single reason as to why I stopped watching their content. Maybe it was the transformation of their thumbnails from “descriptive” to “absolute cringe”, or maybe it was that Linus started to get grating as he evolved his presentation style into something more in-line to YouTube entertainer standards. Looking at it now, there’s been even more things that would’ve made me leave steady viewership if I hadn’t already. Like the endless videos of Linus flexing his new mansion (Making money for it by making content about it), or LMG’s transition from YouTube company that does merch to apparel company with a very strong media arm to sell the merch. All of this, we were apparently told, was in the service of great causes. There’s the lab, for instance, an excellent idea to create a haven of useful information for enthusiasts looking to purchase quality items. It would be a nice change of pace in a sea of Computer-generated articles that just vomit out the top Amazon sellers and the requisite affiliate links for their owner.
Of course, for the labs to be successful they would need to be cemented on absolute integrity, and it’s here that LMG’s issues have come to a head this week. Starting with an annoyingly common habit of creating videos with mistakes and then issuing corrections as comments, and now ending with harassment accusations, halted production, and the company’s position as any sort of authority, moral, process, or ethics related under suspicion. Linus, having (begrudgingly?) accepted that his management style was the biggest weakness of his company earlier this year, is now once again in the spotlight. He may no longer be the leader of the company (ostensibly, more on that in a bit), but he’s still the owner, face, and lead spokesperson. As such, the burden of acknowledging the controversy is on him. Especially after he publicly said that he thought that it was done.
And acknowledging it revealed just exactly how prevalent some of the company’s issues are. What with the video itself having production errors in it. That’s before Linus decided that he was going to torch whatever goodwill he has left by shoehorning humor into it. And then, for the cherry on top of the sundae. The apology video was monetized. That should be a firable offense on this particular one, as even the most brainrotted youtuber can manage to get that one right.
At any rate, it’s quite amusing that the company that just a couple of months ago was making a post laughing at shoddy game developers and their bullshit apologies has just come up with the most half-baked response to their controversy. There is a silver lining though. For the longest time, somewhere when they went past 50 employees or so, LMG has been a corporate content farm and apparel firm posing as a small, scrappy youtube company. Now that they have done the entire playbook of how an out-of-touch soulless mill responds to any issue lobbied at them, maybe viewers can start seeing them for what they really are.
