I love it when tech tuber shills throw one another under the bus in the name of authenticity and the façade of impartiality, it always brings joy to an otherwise miserable industry.
And the wonderful joy we’re blessed to witness today is the largest name in tech tuber scum fuckery, Linus Tech Tips coming under fire from Gamers Nexus regarding accuracy of performance benchmarking and ethicality.
My stance remains pretty clear on this, all tech tubers are the same verity of scum, but Linus Sebastian is probably at the very pinnacle of tech performance, reviews, evaluations and benchmarks.
Given how Linus had managed to grow LTT into a legitimate business dubbed LMG (Linus Media Group), while the man of the hour Linus himself has been known to savagely underpay their employees, working them to the bone. The business practices employed by Linus within LMG are illegal in most US states and the country of Australia, but fortunately for Linus, he is based in the communist cuck state of Canada.
Anyways, when it comes to Steve / Gamers Nexus, I generally dislike him and his content as a general rule of thumb, especially when considering how he actually conducts performance benchmarks in games, often enough times he does actually churn out informative content but if I actually wanted to be entertained by an intellectual I’d just watch Wendell.
Gamers Nexus comes off in my mind as the physical embodiment of a caveman, who decides to use fancy buzzwords and terminologies in the hopes of sounding smart, like the constant notion of delta T over ambient, but in reality he’s just like most other tech channels, these are people who make a substantial living from receiving product samples to evaluate and review, the one thing these people fear the most is being called out on their bullshit.
So when these sorts of scum of the tech world start having beef with one another it’s truly a sight to behold.
This all originated quite some time ago LTT had subtly called out review outlets such as Gamers Nexus and Hardware Unboxed for being “Lazy” and “Unreliable” in regards to their performance evaluations and reviews only for Gamers Nexus to seemingly drop a brick of fact and hypocrisy over the head of Linus.
As previously stated the one thing these types of individuals hate the most is being called out on their ethics / practices or being “slandered” as lazy, unreliable or for being paid corporate shills.
LTT attempted to name and shame the lines of Gamers Nexus and Hardware Unboxed for reutilizing pre-recorded performance data values for benchmarking evaluations, essentially reutilizing old performance metrics of a given CPU or GPU on a specific title when conducting an evaluation for other products later onwards.
It saves time obviously, time that these people obviously don’t have to spare which is why none of them are truly impartial, LTT had claimed that they conduct new performance benchmarks each and every time X product is brought up alongside others in game performance figures.
Over fifteen minutes alone are spent glossing over the hilarity and frequency of incorrect specifications and performance figures within LTT’s own videos regarding CPU, GPU, CPU Coolers and even Power Supplies.
For example, the newly released Ryzen 5 5600X3D comes equipped with 3MB of L2 cache and a total of 96MB of L3 cache, whereas Linus Tech Tips has mistakenly featured in their video that the 5600X3D had 4MB of L2 cache, like the 5800X3D does and a weird 99MB of L3 cache, both of which are wrong and the sorts of errors that a large scale production team like LMG should not be producing as often as they are.
The 44 minute video covers many things, such as Gamers Nexus pointing out countless instances where LTT has pushed out inaccurate performance figures, Steve pins this down to the tight deadlines that Linus Media Group employs for its content creation, because rather than rerecording or editing video segments, LTT instead tries and buries their incorrect data figures with disclaimers on the specific video or even down in the comment section below.
Especially when considering the sheer scale of Linus Media Group as an entity, with over 100 people actually employed to the company, such mistaken errors of incorrect data figures shouldn’t remain present as a video is uploaded, Linus Tech Tips is a monumental channel with just shy of 16 million subscribers, each video they release seemingly garners over a million views easily.
A self conducted interview of LTT employees uploaded by Linus Tech Tips themselves feature several employees wishing for more time towards individual projects, less overall strain of workloads and more time allocated for individualized videos themselves.
Because of course an entity as large as LMG cannot afford to reshoot video segments or correct an endless stream of mistakes, how could LTT manage to afford that given how many videos they churn out on a monthly basis, many of which feature some meaningless drivel about hardware upgrades for the entire LMG editing team with hardware from a sponsor.
Fluffed, botched numbers and performance tests will affect the purchasing decisions of countless tech illiterates who depend upon the likes of Linus Tech Tips for hardware reviews and performance analysis.
Steve also criticized Linus Tech Tips for auctioning off Billet Labs’ prototype monoblock during LTX 2023, which is Linus Tech Tips’ yearly tech convention. Prior to the event, Gamers Nexus alleges that Linus not only tested the item on a GPU that was not compatible, but also provided misleading information about the product, which he criticized as being “irresponsible.”
This all of course is irrelevant to the fact that Billet Labs themselves wanted the prototype sample back and had not condoned any such auction taking place.
The video from Gamers Nexus quickly gained attention and infamy on social media, resulting in Linus having to undergo damage control with an extensive post on the LTT forums.
At the beginning of his statement, Linus stated that the team would not be releasing a comprehensive video response regarding the issue. He explained that he has already addressed most of his thoughts on the matter privately.
Being the pathetic little weasel that he is, Linus wasn’t none too happy with being called out by Gamers Nexus and addressing the criticism by doubling down. These types of people always try and have it both ways, shedding crocodile tears and wanting to play the victim as they lash out and strike you.
“We know we’re not perfect. We wear our imperfection on our sleeves in the interest of ensuring we stay accountable to you. But it’s sad and unfortunate when this transparency gets warped into a bad thing.
“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. The only reason I can think of not to ask me is because my honest response might be inconvenient.”
Linus isn’t much different, acknowledging “some” instances of slopishness in their videos, citing how they’re not always perfect but apparently wear it as a badge of honor to release videos to their fans as quickly as possible. But in all honesty the real take away from this non-apology is Linus going on the offensive towards Steve from Gamers Nexus and their “hypocrisy” for releasing such matters publicly without first discussing things privately.
Because apparently squabbles between journalists should be kept confidential behind closed doors, because we all know these sorts of scum wear their emotions on their sleeves.
Following Linus’ response, Steve from Gamers Nexus quickly and swiftly shared his thoughts on LTT’s non-apology in his latest video, citing Linus’ response to be that of an unhinged, unapologetic rant where he shoves the blame elsewhere before proceeding to put LTT on blast for a second time regarding the Billet Labs controversy.
