Linus Gabriel Sebastian & Linus Media Group / Linus Tech Tips - Narcissistic corporate shill YouTuber driving his media empire into the ground. KILL COUNT: 2

[Kuritan Deplorable]

I can't even say for sure from that one photo, but I'm gonna go out on a limb and be MATI. WHY THE FUCK WOULD YOU MAKE THE ANKLE TAPERED WHEN THEY'RE SUPPOSED TO FIT OVER WORK BOOTS? ARE THEY INTENTIONALLY MAKING THEM INTO SOME FAGGY SKINNY JEANS?

Because its made for larpers wanting to make their 3d printing hobby feel more 'serious industrial workshop' rather than plastic tattery. Or the kinds of men that genuinely think Cargo Pants are a nice daily look - I'm not fashion aware enough to make a definitive statement, but I strongly suspect the LTT crowd is not pulling off that look gracefully, at all.

I can't stop being amused by the one pair guy, because its clearly a tryhard larp too. If for nothing else, anyone working physical labor has probably learned the hard way to have backup pairs of shit because sometimes work environments just destroy clothes, and you can't just wait until LTT ships new ones. Might as well rotate them. Then when you end up hooking an overstuffed pocket on a protruding surface and ripping it open, you aren't just fucked over.

 

[gouffan]

To maybe go with the "Our Team" being yeeted, a segment from yesterday's WAN Show:

at 41:20, and for about 15 minutes, these information bits dropped:

-Yvonne made Linus sell his meme stock portfolio, apparently at a break even/wash (maybe less) in order to put the down payment on the Badminton Center
-they had an "all hands (on deck)" meeting earlier in the week, where Linus drew a picture of the office building on fire
-Linus mentions they need to be prepared for many "headwinds" coming their way
-he mentions they expanded rapidly, a "shrink" phase, then are "clawing back" to where they were around July of last year when Steve dropped a roundhouse on them
-they are within 15% of where LTT was before last July
-Floatplane has 40,000 subscribers to it
-he's proud of how it feels like LTT is being received by reddit and the comments, that they are firing on all cylinders because Short Circuit is apparently feeling authentic or something
-there is specific mention in a comment that everyone seems to be having more fun, are using memes, and it's all very thunk provoking as this has happened since Tranthony left...
-there is talk about still getting things screwed up like some names of new products not being corrected before video release, but the audience is more receptive to their corrections now
-he had a short talk with one of the head people at LTT about expectations and "it was constructive," I have a feeling this is James, doesn't seem like their new CEO Taran or that Nick guy


If these points seem scattershot and polar opposites, I know, it was how Linus said them though. I bet there's going to be more of a thinning of departments and positions soon.

The feedback is more positive now because they are heavily moderating everything into a hug box echo chamber everywhere.
After they got destroyed by GamersNexus (rightfully so, and LTT still hasn't fixed most the stuff they were criticized about), they started filtering Youtube and moderating their Reddit heavily.
I saw a complaint on Reddit that disappeared that said their moderation team actually was reporting people to reddit admins for site wide bans.

 

[Flaming Dumpster]

Fans are not happy:

Just a note on that, the dislike extension extrapolates data as YouTube no longer returns the dislike count in the API. Basically they track when you hit dislike and track how many unique users of the extension have viewed a video, then presume that non-extension users will also dislike in the same manner.

When YouTube nuked that API, they should've just stopped returning data for new videos in my opinion. The dislike counts swing wildly and people attribute this to YouTube chicanery when it's just a retarded third party algorithm that does not present upfront that their data is being divined from a crystal ball. You gotta go read it on their website, which absolutely nobody is going to do.

MKBHD's True and Honest audience is fucking retarded and are probably all phonefags who don't even know what a browser extension is. I bet you in reality the dislikes are nowhere near that high.

Also I hope MKBHD fucking dies. Sick of seeing him in my sidebar and 100 mph in a school zone is indefensible.

 

[Drama keen]

I saw a complaint on Reddit that disappeared that said their moderation team actually was reporting people to reddit admins for site wide bans.

I have been IP banned from Reddit, for comments in r/LinusTechTips. But I was calling Anthony by his name, so I cannot put the blame fully on LTT, it might just be the current culture in America.

 

[HootersMcBoobies]

Marques "MKBHD" Brownlee drove 96 MPH (155 KPH) in a school zone in an ad he made for a Chinese GoPro knockoff (PreserveTube):

Also I hope MKBHD fucking dies. Sick of seeing him in my sidebar and 100 mph in a school zone is indefensible.

I heard sponsor skip once had the entire video skipped, but I guess that's been reverted since I don't see that in FreeTube now. From a "sponsored by" angle, the video is ultra/super cringe. The camera quality looks pretty dogshit too compared to most other mini cameras.

I've heard the revenue streams for a lot of Tubers has utterly tanked. Many of these "channels" ended up growing into full studios of 8~12 or more. I wonder if Google was actually earning enough money to pay out these ads and run their servers for the past few years, or if they've always been operating at a loss and it's finally catching up with them. In any case, the really big shops like MKBHD and LTT are probably hitting insane struggles internally. Have any of these channels had staff layoffs? MKBHD might be trying to do more sponsored content to keep things operating as they've always been, but in the past year a lot of people have gotten off of the Tube. Tom Scott, Matt Pat (Game/Film theory) and others have quit or given/sold their channel to others.

Dave2D just has one studio with a bunch of equipment. He hits the YouTube wall and nothing really changes. He just buys less stuff. Gamers Nexus spent insane money on a fucking sound chamber. They have alternative reoccurring revenue from Patreon, so hopefully they've been smart enough to use that stream as their budget for the high cost testing equipment. The Cyanide and Happiness video a few months back talked about how they were scaling back as well, and they actually displayed real revenue numbers. The ad return looks like shit now.

I have a feeling a bubble is waiting to burst. The big shops might be able to get away with some massive reduction in force layoffs (I'm going to guess at least 33%), but that's going to kill content, overwork who is left (it already looks like LTT pays his staff jack shit) and they've gotten so use to this high income/high burn that everything will suffer content-wise when that bubble pops. I kinda hope they all burn, implode and declare bankruptcy.

 

[batigol]

Ad revenue declining during a period of belt tightening at companies due to what could, charitably, be called a sluggish economy isn't that shocking. To the extent that channels will be affected will be how diversified their revenue streams are.

 

[Nabeshin]

LTT are probably hitting insane struggles internally

According to the latest wan show, it looks like they're hitting it, what grinds me is that LTT revenue is actually good but because Linus has a grandeur complex that he needs to be better than everyone, he ended up overspending on stuff that he doesn't use. Like how the labs has equipment and engineers(aparently) but they don't do a lot with it because of stupid reasons, like having to finish everything first.

 

[John Ligma]

It doesn't look like this has been discussed here yet but following up on the removal of the staffing section of the LTT website, LTT has had significant layoffs today of a few important staff members. Three of their least performant channels are going on an indefinite hiatus to rework their approaches to content, it was posted about on their respective community feeds; Mac Address, GameLinked and TechQuickie. Here's the message that was posted to each:




Accompanying these messages, multiple team members have been confirmed to have been laid off. Jonathan Horst changed LTT on his LinkedIn to a job with an end date, he also removed "Writer:LTT" from his Twitter account bio.



Jon Martin as well, same thing. Removed from bio and updated on LinkedIn.



I'm sure there's more layoffs but it's harder to track down now given that there's no visible staff page; you have to consciously think about what LTT members to look for and dox their LinkedIn/Twitter basically. This also comes after Linus discussed having a really difficult "all hands on deck" meeting where he had to talk financials with the team and the longevity of the company. I know his new lap pet, Elijah, has been talking about how hard everything has been at work recently on his Twitter and in his streams as well.

I think this is a massive L and a huge surprise given that Jonathan Horst has proven to be an extremely competent video writer, producer and host. I'm not sure why Linus would expel talent like him from the company instead of moving him elsewhere when he kept the tumor that was Anthony Young on for half a decade. He was also popular with a lot of viewers. I don't remember much about Martin, however.

 

[Nabeshin]

I'm sure there's more layoffs but it's harder to track down now given that there's no visible staff page

I did a small search based on this archive of the our-team page but couldn't find a lot besides the ones everyone knew about, I know a lot of employees aren't on this page and it's very outdated but it may help someone who's willing to put the time.

When I was searching the archive I remember that last year an LTT employees handbook leaked, I wouldn't be surprised if with this layoff now, more bad stuff from them would surface, they're probably in high alert rn

edit: Not gonna create other post for this.

While looking at reddit, people there noticed that David Gauthier Linkedin is with the flag open to work. This may be a nothing burger but it's not a good look for a company

 

[Flaming Dumpster]

I'm sure there's more layoffs but it's harder to track down now given that there's no visible staff page;

Here's the last snapshot I had before the page went down

{
  "LINUS SEBASTIAN": "CVO",
  "YVONNE HO": "CFO",
  "NICK LIGHT": "COO",
  "COLTON POTTER": "Head of Business Development",
  "EDZEL YAGO": "Head of Production",
  "JAMES STRIEB": "Head of Writing",
  "BRIDGET BERGMAN": "Design Manager",
  "ADAM SONDERGARD": "Writer",
  "RILEY MURDOCK": "Writer",
  "JAMIE PILKEY": "Logistics - Inventory Coordinator",
  "EMILY SEDDON": "Editor",
  "SARAH BUTT": "Senior Graphic Designer",
  "ALEX CLARK": "Writer",
  "DAVID GAUTHIER": "Junior Writer",
  "NICOLE YUEN": "Production Supervisor",
  "JAKE TIVY": "Writing Supervisor",
  "JON MARTIN": "Writer",
  "MARK RATHGEBER": "Senior Editor",
  "ANDY ZHANG": "Production Supervisor",
  "NATALIE FOX": "Product & Shipping Coordinator",
  "HOFFMANN WONG": "Senior Editor",
  "JON DOIRON": "Senior Test Technician",
  "SHAWN CALDERA": "Business Development Lead",
  "KYLE THARRATT": "Engineering Manager",
  "CHASE DOUGLAS": "Event Coordinator",
  "NOLAN JONES": "Product Coordinator",
  "JAKE BELLAVANCE": "ShortCircuit Producer",
  "TYNAN STACK": "Senior Mechanical Engineer & Shop Supervisor",
  "ALEX DICK": "Logistics Manager",
  "ADAM PILOLLA": "Customer Service Supervisor",
  "SVEN PETERS-ROETERDINK": "Account Lead",
  "NICHOLAS PLOUFFE": "Writer",
  "JONATHAN HORST": "Writer & Host",
  "DENNIS LIAO": "Creative Sponsor Lead",
  "MATTHEW LUU": "Designer",
  "DAN BESSER": "Technical Architect",
  "ROBERT OAKES": "Editor / Camera Operator",
  "ARTHUR RAFAEL": "Brand Marketing Manager",
  "ANTOINE LAFORGE": "Developer Analyst",
  "ANDREW MOORE": "Editor / Camera Operator",
  "SAM VAFAEI": "Developer Analyst",
  "OLIVER CAO": "Editor / Camera Operator",
  "JOSHUA CHAN": "Accountant",
  "OLAMIDE AJILA-ABITOGUN": "Fit Technician",
  "NIKOLAS HARRIS": "Software Development & Testing Supervisor",
  "MARIA SANABRIA": "Graphic Designer",
  "BRADLEY WICKS": "Logistics Administrator",
  "SHAHRAD TAHERINEJAD": "Senior Account Lead",
  "ARIANA FARKHONDEH": "Talent & Culture Supervisor",
  "THOMAS SROGA": "Electrical Engineering Designer",
  "JAMES SCOTT": "Account Lead",
  "VANCE NG": "Executive Assistant",
  "JAKOB RUSH": "Writer",
  "MITCHELL THERIAULT": "Customer Service",
  "SAMMY YOO": "Social Media Coordinator",
  "JESSIE CEN": "ML / Computer Vision Engineer",
  "STEVE CHAN": "Sales Operations Lead",
  "SAM BHATIA": "Junior Editor",
  "GLENN SOMERA": "Editor / Camera Operator",
  "JESSICA PIGEAU": "Writer",
  "SEBASTIEN SAUVE-HOOVER": "Product Designer",
  "ROBERT LAU": "Product Designer",
  "CONOR REMPEL": "Editor / Camera Operator",
  "JOSH BELEGRIS": "Procurement Manager",
  "CURTIS LI": "Talent & Culture Coordinator",
  "STEVEN CHEW": "Community Coordinator",
  "ELIJAH HORNER": "Junior Writer",
  "DYLAN HURLEY": "Product Coordinator",
  "JORDAN BLOCK": "Writer",
  "NATE MARTIN": "Electrical Engineering Designer",
  "KONRAD BARTLETT": "Developer",
  "BRANDON POMKOSKI": "Bookkeeper",
  "SHAWN HARTFORD": "Infrastructure Administrator",
  "LUCAS NIEUWENHOUT": "Jr. Electrical Engineering Designer",
  "LISA HAWTHORNE": "Senior Designer",
  "TATJANA DEVIC": "Product Developer - Raw Materials",
  "TERREN TONG": "CEO",
  "REECE MURRAY": "Logistics Coordinator",
  "ONIE TAM": "Senior Content Writer"
}

 

[Kuritan Deplorable]

GameLinked

I legitimately forgot this channel existed, entirely, in any form. Not just "thought it died long ago" but straight up voided from my awareness.

I think this is a massive L and a huge surprise given that Jonathan Horst has proven to be an extremely competent video writer, producer and host. I'm not sure why Linus would expel talent like him from the company instead of moving him elsewhere when he kept the tumor that was Anthony Young on for half a decade.

I suspect its because the talent knows its valuable. Its end of year, quite probably starting negotiations for next years goals and benefits, and with ad revenue continuing to crater, I wouldn't be surprised if Linus was asking for basically impossible goals to be reached just to qualify for next years performance bonuses, or if he was holding the adpocalypse against their relevant media channels now as excuse to withhold those altogether.

The problem is that with talent that knows and understands the space, they are both able to recognize this fuckery, and can find offers elsewhere. Especially with years of running a fairly large, reasonably successful child brand channel inside a larger group, they can pretty easily find work in media and production now that they've "broken in".

Still, this doesn't bode well for Linus, a whole new raft of issue at basically the worst possible time for them to try and deal with it. LTT's approach has been to try and overcome declining ad rates with more sponsors and a sheer volume of content, but they're running into the fundamental problem that their content is about other stuff. They don't make anything, they just make stuff based on shit other people have actually made in a space, and you can only ramp that up so hard for so long until you're basically out of options and start recycling, and viewcount will suffer. Sponsors are also likely to not be as interested as they used to be - declining ad rates means they're probably being asked to pay more to make up the difference, to reach the same audience, but with diminished effectiveness as audience engagement continues to drop.

And then add in the wider internet cultural shift as the US political space discovers that conservatives are not a minority, and backend shit shuffles. LTT won't give two shits as an org or change, but we're already seeing major trend shifts in content engagement and consumption. Whether its from organic interest or the big corps throwing the algo levers to try and serve this new sudden market awareness is yet unknown, but things are changing again, and that's the relevant part. Radical shifts in consumption habits and content algorithms is the LAST thing a company that relies on optimizing their content delivery needs right about now. The problem is its completely impossible to predict what the end state of the new content 'meta' will be, and until its figured out, that's another source of probable major misses. Dealing with that at the same time your trying to reorg new teams for three verticals in your company is going to fucking suck and be expensive as measured in probable lost revenue. The rest of the verticals are gonna hurt too.

Its not a full blown death spiral, but they feel like they're edging awfully close to a corporate flatspin. They're pushing it too hard, too off course, at the wrong time in the wrong way, up until where it just stalls out and starts dropping like a rock. Takes a bit of a radical move to pull it outta its own ass once that's started, but its doable.

 

[Kheapathic]

Goes back to what I said in the Egoraptor and Completionist threads; you don't need so many bodies to make some basic fucking YouTube videos. You need a few face/on camera talent, and the rest is support; somehow this turned into Linus funding what is probably a lot of passion projects, like all the heavy machinery and other hardware he has in his buildings. The problem being, if they're not being used often enough, and maybe they are we just don't see it, but we don't see them justify them being bought. I'm even willing to say Linus fucking shoots himself in the feet by doing something cool and then saying "Stop emailing us, we don't do this for you;" one of those custom pc desk things he did for some streamer was one such things. Makes a bad ass desk with integrated LED and water-cooling, then mentions a previous project they kept getting emails about and telling people this was a one off. You have people willing to spend a lot of fucking money for your work Linus, use the fucking machines you have and make money with them. You have a lot of cool shit and do very little with it; to include buying a new piece of real estate in one of the largest fucking market bubbles and your lab or whatever still isn't turning a profit, and that goes double for your Badminton-slash-LAN Center.
Okay, your wife told you to sell all your junk stocks to do it, but something tells me you didn't have so many junks laying around to finance that entire purchase.

That aside, your camera men, editors, and engineers are all trained and competent enough; they'll be fine, pretty sure Dan will be fine too. Not sure about your writers, as that title seems nebulous, and unless you have something white hot in your portfolio or a Masters Degree to teach at the college level, no one's gonna be looking for writers.

I'm sure the adpocalypse and a number of other exterior variables are part of the process; but at the end of the day, I still see Linus burning money with little effort to refresh the money printer, and now the money printer isn't turning as well as it should.

And I've said it more than one time in this thread; he had... ... ... I forget the dude's name now, he was an editor, the guy who stole toilet paper from the office. Dude had his own YT channel, and he did like a multi-part 11 hour video tutorial on how to be a better video editor. Linus should've put long-term projects together and done a "Everything to know about X." With X being configuring a domain in whatever OS, in depth on why Windows 11 is AIDS, and a number of other things. He could've played his gay little weekly stuff, but also done actual in depth competent shit; which, yes, I know, it's Linus, competency isn't a thing... but he had the resources to do it, and being in Vancouver, he's not that far from Microsoft. Reach out and try to make a connection. You built that lab, apparently with the dream of going professional or something, but all you ever did was GAYMER shit. You had the resources, people, and possible connections to make actual good shit, and you squandered it.

 

[Doctor John B. Zyklon]

Tanner was either let go, fired, or left in August, apparently.

Brandon Dickerson was all of the above in May of this year.

It do be interesting times we live in.

 

[Flaming Dumpster]

Tanner was either let go, fired, or left in August, apparently.

He followed Tranthony out the door.

https://kiwifarms.st/threads/linus-gabriel-sebastian-linus-media-group-linus-tech-tips.118806/post-19209342

 

[Spiral Architect]

Now that weird segment on the last wanshow makes perfect sense. I wouldn’t necessarily announce the end of LTT, but they may have big problems, even bigger than that Gamers Nexus video.

 

[John Ligma]

Why couldn't any of these layoffs be for David? That guy is extremely ugly and annoying, not to mention a colossal faggot who paints his fingernails, lets it get old and chipped up then hosts videos unboxing gamer mice. I can't stand him.

 

[cans.wav]

While them needing to downsize eventually was obvious, it's gonna be hilarious to watch Linus get shit for choosing his retarded badminton center as a cost priority over keeping YouTube channels running

 

[TheRaptorJesus]

It doesn't look like this has been discussed here yet but following up on the removal of the staffing section of the LTT website, LTT has had significant layoffs today of a few important staff members. Three of their least performant channels are going on an indefinite hiatus to rework their approaches to content, it was posted about on their respective community feeds; Mac Address, GameLinked and TechQuickie. Here's the message that was posted to each:
View attachment 6642386
View attachment 6642389
View attachment 6642393

Accompanying these messages, multiple team members have been confirmed to have been laid off. Jonathan Horst changed LTT on his LinkedIn to a job with an end date, he also removed "Writer:LTT" from his Twitter account bio.
View attachment 6642401
View attachment 6642403

Jon Martin as well, same thing. Removed from bio and updated on LinkedIn.

View attachment 6642410

I'm sure there's more layoffs but it's harder to track down now given that there's no visible staff page; you have to consciously think about what LTT members to look for and dox their LinkedIn/Twitter basically. This also comes after Linus discussed having a really difficult "all hands on deck" meeting where he had to talk financials with the team and the longevity of the company. I know his new lap pet, Elijah, has been talking about how hard everything has been at work recently on his Twitter and in his streams as well.

I think this is a massive L and a huge surprise given that Jonathan Horst has proven to be an extremely competent video writer, producer and host. I'm not sure why Linus would expel talent like him from the company instead of moving him elsewhere when he kept the tumor that was Anthony Young on for half a decade. He was also popular with a lot of viewers. I don't remember much about Martin, however.

Well, at least linus has a bigger house to film in now when the channel dies.

While them needing to downsize eventually was obvious, it's gonna be hilarious to watch Linus get shit for choosing his retarded badminton center as a cost priority over keeping YouTube channels running

Maybe they can be janitors over at his lan/badminton place.

Two more?

https://www.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/1gr2m1c/no_cowriters_on_techlinked_today_jessica_and/

 

[John Ligma]

Two more?

I think there's credence to Jessica being fired given that she doesn't have LTT in her Twitter bio. I am unclear on if she ever had it, but she lists her other professional ventures.

Jessica was the short, fat, autistic Jewish woman with the FtM Jewish autistic tranny girlfriend. She was hired as a writer and activity coordinator for the WAN Show, coordinated one little game for them over a year ago that went astonishingly bad, then was relegated to the TechLinked mines instead to write about current events. I think she was still writing topic questions for the WAN Show doc but those are often terrible and called out by Linus himself.

 

[mandatorylurk]

The newest tech upgrade, to a cameraman who is irish who has a swedish girlfriend (oops sorry, "S.O." to be leaf fag compliant). One thing that these upgrade videos have slowly done is make me just want no immigration to any country. Canadians stay canadian, Japanese are in japan, everyone go back to where you came. LTT is just the epitome of modern Leaf "Canada is a brand, not a country"

The upgrade itself is fine, half of it went to bike gadgets and the rest for general computer upgrades. The living space looks to be a horizontal duplex where the landlord lives on top, in another sad state of canadian housing. I don't know if anyone else gets this way watching it but I now get anxiety about seeing people lie to themselves thinking the way they live is ok, as if they've gone above what they expected in life and that's it. It creates this sad pang in my soul.