It was when the ffmpeg twitter author called out that his $5000 donation to show his support under such circumstances isn't 100% good optics compared to simpler bridges, that such looks like a pathetic and obnoxious flex from someone who's career and wealth has been so dependent on ffmpeg and is so wealthy that he can even immediately send $5000 around in a feud, that's when Theo went vindictive to the 20k for your head.
This is actually too compressed.
Back in 2024, Theo tweets that he lives for the ffmpeg drama, that he doesn't use ffmpeg directly anymore but uses it through GUI wrappers, and requests roasting from FFmpeg which doesn't happen:
There's also these non-Theo related tweets in 2024, where a user praises something that was actually FFmpeg, so FFmpeg corrects them, and they renege and apologise and praise FFmpeg, which FFmpeg then praises the change of heart, and calls upon others to do the same:
Throughout 2025, Theo brags about how his wealth, career, and expertise has been built upon FFmpeg which he praises, despite it seems not having contributed financially or codewise yet, fine whatever, and there's no engagement or contention here.
Then in August 2025, the $5000 donation drama happened over Theo shitting on VLC and using baited sarcasm and imprecise language lumping FFmpeg and VLC together, which Theo later acknowledges was misspeaking yet then will deny and insult others when recounted; FFmpeg actually responded to the donation with thanks, yet Theo trolls back to the thanks with another troll, which goes unreplied.
Between August 20225 and now (end of October 2025) FFmpeg continued to post tech insights to FFmpeg while continuing to shit on the attitudes of profiteers of open-source who aren't giving back. In which Theo takes issue saying one shouldn't shit on their users/supporters. Yet FFmpeg and FLOSS crowd come back with, well then contribute and actually support. Typical Capitalism vs Free Software contentions, which apparently is an undercurrent throughout Theo's content of which he is a bit tone-deaf, like many from the enterprise/VC world. Here's a writeup about such with Theo and Anthropic:
https://blog.baro.dev/p/theo-has-weird-vibes
Now in October 2025, the $20,000 vendetta flex drama which was announced in the video, was teased with:
Theo: "Just recorded my vid on the ffmpeg dramaThis one's gonna be spicy"
Replier: "Ad free & non-monetized?"
Theo: "Yeah let me just not pay my team after donating $5k to an important project. Genius idea!"
In the video, Theo's 20k escalation was cited as instigated by a year old thread where FFmpeg disagreed with one of Theo's former coworkers, in which that coworker in discussion with FFmpeg ends up reneging their opinion as it turns out their opinion was wrong and FFmpeg was right:
This then has bad optics for Theo, is picked up by Lunduke, and Theo then attacks Lunduke with the same baiting, sarcasm, and imprecise language.
The whole thing is duplicitous drama for attention revenue. It's sick.
Just a request from someone that refuses to use any twitter like platform. Can we at least get some screenshots from the people here talking about it? Probably best to document it, along with your commentary on the situation if you are seeing them. Especially if he is going to be deleting tweets.
All relevant twitter threads (I cannot find a service that archives them in a way that shows the author of each twitter post, and I don't have a setup for screenshotting entire threads at hand, as incognito mode seems to only show a single tweet at a time - I do have them all saved as PDF, however with all the other nonsense and banner content), so if someone can archive these threads, that would be great.
x 119 
