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Linus Media Group CEO Terren Tong also responded via email, saying he was “shocked at the allegations and the company described” in Reeve’s posts. He went on to note that “as part of this process, beyond an internal review we will also be hiring an outside investigator to look into the allegations and will commit to publish the findings and implementing any corrective actions that may arise because of this.”
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Watched YT vid, not looking good for LTT.
Looks like a PR response politians make, with sponsors and store shoutout, just like any other video they post…
Hopefully the pressure keeps coming and LMG workers start a union, a the minimum.
no matter what happened…It’s definitely not the best idea to advertise how you shut down production for over 100 people over something that could have been done through the proper and existing channels…it screams narcissist.
Seems like every mistake Linus makes he gets called a narcissist. If he sneezes do we call him a narcissist?
Production needed to shut down for various valid reasons.
- with 15+ million subscribers across however many channels, not everyone might be in the loop. They have to be informed. This is evident with constant posts asking what’s going on.
- the current and existing channels are not working, and require a review. You need to shut down production to fully assess the problem.
- if production didn’t shut down, I bet he would be called a narcissist for continuing to release videos.
Linus fucked up. Bad. But I don’t envy his fame. Everything he does, whether right or wrong, if damn if he does, damn if he doesn’t. Let him and Terren have the time to try to fix it.
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There is nothing wrong with a “bros” company.
Issues appear when such company starts hiring other people.
Leaked photo of said anonymous channel:
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This is exactly the reason corporations that are serious have external anonymous reporting channels. Because now there’s a paper trail from your third party, that’s undeniable, so you have to investigate. The process has to be triggered, and if the good old boy network decides to do nothing, there is now an auditable external paper trail that this was reported.
The reason this is a good indicator for an organization is it forces them maybe not to be transparent but to be accountable
The key here is external. HR workers often have an incentive to quiet down such cases.
HR protects the company, not the employee. That’s just a fact. When company culture is great, that can be fine, but when it’s bad, it absolutely sucks. When there’s a culture of misogyny and sexual harassment, HR helps to cover it up to “protect” the company, and it’s awful to see.
All jokes aside, if these allegations are validated by an external source, heads have to roll. A slap on the wrist is disheartening to everyone who may have been belittled and goes further to discourage interest and diversity in tech.
I have worked in IT R&D for a decade, and this is something I have had to address multiple times with my team. Everything from sexually charged comments to just general patronizing. The key is that you can’t let something slip through or that’s the new standard. You have to address it quickly, in the moment, and be decisive about what is acceptable and what is not.
The process has to be triggered, and if the good old boy network decides to do nothing, there is now an auditable external paper trail that this was reported.
This is why I actually like the new CEO’s response, especially since he’s on the “good ol’ boy network”. Let’s rope in a third party that’s impartial. I’m glad he’s not just going the “we investigated ourselves and didn’t find ourselves at fault” route. Let’s hope the report does come out and does make sense for the situation. But there is always the risk of the third party not finding anything because LMG is paying them. I hope whoever they use has a good track record and the reports that come are clear (and most importantly that actual actions are taken to right the wrongs found/identified). That’s the problem with implementing stuff reactionarily, you never really know. But considering the CEO stepped in… what? 7 weeks ago? This is a really good step for him. There might be hope for LMG… but only if Linus stops with the petty shit and stops driving everything into the ground.
If it takes an extra 500$ to test something properly… he should do it. He should know this innately because he’s spend hundreds of thousands on “The Labs”, but this mentality still shows when he talks candidly on WAN show and other spots. Makes it hard to believe him and his responses contradicting Madison’s story when we see this type of mentality elsewhere.
I don’t think the external investigator will find anything that will satisfy the public. It’s just been too long.
Linus is suffering from the classic " what got you here won’t get you there " problem. And there’s going to be an adjustment as the new CEO puts in practices and standards that have been eschewed for a long time.
But this is just part of being human, that’s why in science things need to be reproducible, so that we can hopefully isolate the ego variable across multiple people.
I don’t think the external investigator will find anything that will satisfy the public. It’s just been too long.
I agree, but it’s the best, most transparent answer we’ve gotten so far out of all of this. And I think it’s worth validating the choice that the new guy made. It’s the one glimmer of hope that the company will move forward positively…
Out of the loop, can someone give me a tl;dr on who this guy is why I keep seeing this everywhere?
Large tech reviewer. Runs his own company called Linus Media Group (LMG). Called out another review channel called Gamer Nexus(GN). GN hit back with a video detailing gross inaccuracies in LMG published test results. For example outliers of 300%. This has opened the flood gates for people to remind the Internet what a horrific company LMG has been for many years. Basically LMG glorifies the grind mindset and promote the typical hostile work environment that is the epitome of startups
This is my best summary, it is long so sorry about that but there’s a lot to it.
Linus is probably the largest tech youtuber there is.
He’s been rapidly expanding his company, building out a full lab that is trying to rigorously test products (mostly in an automated way) so that consumers can have confidence that a $50 power supply isn’t going to shit the bed, or that this GPU will get you the same performance in these games at this resolution so save your money, etc.
The initial controversy is that they have issue with the automated testing where results were often super wrong and that slipped it’s way to multiple videos and instead of taking the videos down and correcting them, they left them up and just had a little text graphic over the video with the correction. Many youtubers do that kind of post video correction, but LTT does it a lot. Additionally they tested an $800 prototype watercooler on a 4090 when it was built only for a 3090ti which pretty much invalidates the entire test, but they still gave a conclusion that the watercooler sucked and was a bad product. That could tank that company. They did not bother re-testing with the proper GPU because Linus felt no one should buy an $800 watercooler block anyway. Additionally(x2) they reviewed a mouse and said it was terrible because the glide was really bad. Turns out there were protective stickers on the mouse feet that needed to be removed. They took multiple days to correct the video and by that point the damage was done.
The second controversy is around a Madison (former employee) where she received tons of verbal abuse, degradation, from various LMG employees/management and some even sexual harassment. There was a lot of hand-waving of her raising those complaints as “causing drama” and to “calm your tits” and other various things. She suffered a lot mentally from it and even “cut her own leg” just to go to the ER to have a day off. Her write up is pretty long and fairly brutal.
I think a large part of the issue is everyone is incredibly overworked at that company and crunching every day to release as much content as possible which leads to a fuck ton of errors, very heated and emotionally charged employees and lack of oversight over serious issues. Couple that with rapid expansion of employees without a functional HR (I think someone was hired recently) and the vast majority of people effectively “learning on the job” how to be a manager, director, leader, etc. and it’s just an explosion waiting to happen. And it has exploded quite spectacularly.
I’ll be curious to see if they turn it around and also what comes from the outside investigation.
Linus Sebastian is a YouTube tech guru that rose to prominence in the last few years with his channel, Linus Tech Tips, and has created something of an enterprise around his content called Linus Media Group
More recently his work has become somewhat…sloppy, with errors here and there, recommended practices ignored on the odd occasion, but nothing so big as to cause anyone major damage. Linus has a default PR mode for when these issues come about, and it usually worked…
Until last month.
Last month, Linus reviewed a prototype of an all new type of water-cooling block (basically a replacement for a fan that can be way more efficient) for GPUs. This block was expensive, and expensive to make, but by all reasonable measures, has a very good cooling impact to show for it. It was made by a startup firm of two people, and they sent Linus a prototype with a supported GPU.
The GPU ended up disappearing into the aether, and Linus opted to use an unsupported GPU to test the cooling block, which resulted in inferior cooling performance. Linus ended up trashing the block in his review.
He then went and auctioned off the prototype without the knowledge of the manufacturer, only offering to make them whole once it had already been auctioned off.
Linus tried to deal with it in his usual PR way, once Gamers Nexus started reporting on the goings on. But these weren’t small errors, these were the mother of all PC tech journalistic fuckups, and he refused to acknowledge them as such. That is not only enough to get someone immediately fired, it’s enough to get them industry-blacklisted.
It’s gotten so bad that the CEO and CFO of Linus Media Group have come out directly and thrown Linus under the bus for his fuckery.
And that’s before we come on to the topic of this post, the SA allegations…
Edit: minor name corrections.
He then went and auctioned off the prototype without the knowledge of the manufacturer, only offering to make them whole once it had already been auctioned off.
There’s a few bits more around this that have come to light that makes it even worse…
The manufacturer emailed asking for the cooling block to be returned as it was their only prototype and LMG said they would return it, with the manufacturer chasing several times before LMG admitted that they had auctioned it off for charity.
They only offered compensation once the situation had been revealed in that expose video the other day.
The way I see it, this could well be a career ender for Linus. He gets his hands on novel, unreleased hardware, and then he botches the review and gives it to the highest bidder. Potentially a competing company.
No one is going to trust him with their pre-release hardware ever again after this.
Heck, if this was any reasonably sized company, I suspect we’d already be hearing about lawsuit settlements of significant sums of cash.
Its definitely going to wipe out any standing he has with others in the industry: he gave a scathing review about a prototype that they had failed to correctly install, despite clear instructions with a compatible GPU card sent to them. Add that to the constant incorrect and misinformation that is often caught in post production with on-screen corrections
It seems that allure of increasing revenue streams with a ridiculous production turnaround had a direct impact on their quality and integrity and now with the allegations that Madison has come forward with, it would appear the rot had set in long before it was noticeable to external parties.
Its going to play out over the next week or so whether LMG is in a death spiral.
Yeah…any one of these issues would be bad enough…the whole trifecta does not bode well at all for Linus.
The more I read about LMG, the more the structure of the company looks like a mob.
There is one guy with his wife at the top of the pyramid. The CEO and others are below. If the top of the pyramid has what it ask for, nobody will care about what’s happening.
That’s how companies are structured. What you want staff to be higher up the chain of command and CEOs I’m not quite sure what you’re asking for
I mean… Yeah? CEOs suck if you’ve been paying attention. Most “chains of command” are just privileged people with connections. Then you have the lower management (let’s be real fuck middle management they’re almost always useless) and workers doing the actual labor and making the least. That always feels stupid to me 🤷♀️
That’s how a lot of small businesses operate, unfortunately.
Is it safe to say if the dude in the video wasn’t passively crapping on HUB and GN this would never have happened?
Probably not. All the issues were there, someone would have pointed it out for some reason at some point.
GN probably would’ve done it anyway. He is not completely in the right because as unbiased as he wants to be, at the end of the day, he is still criticizing a competitor. I doubt those comments actually prompted his response. They had a lot of examples in their video and have probably been compiling it for a while.
Edit: I mean to say that criticizing a competitor can damage your reputation. I think GN was entirely justified in creating the video. The point I was trying to make is that, after the backpack warranties scandal, Steve basically came out saying that they would be paying closer attention to LMG’s credibility. So I think this video would’ve come out eventually regardless of whether or not staff at LMG made those remarks about GN.
So it’s basically wrong to criticize a competitor?
I worded that poorly. In general it is not in your best interest to criticize a competitor. GN was absolutely right to make that video, I’m just saying that due to them being competitors, it has more potential to backfire.
Yes, how dare he criticize a competitor in the hopes of making them a better competitor
What unassailable logic.
I worded my original comment poorly. It can be bad for your reputation to criticize a competitor, but GN was completely right to make this video. It just has a lot of potential to backfire.
He is not completely in the right because as unbiased as he wants to be, at the end of the day, he is still criticizing a competitor.
You can use this to question whether his motives are pure, but suggesting he is “not completely in the right” is just weird. He is well within his rights to criticise a competitor. Absolutely nothing wrong with that.
I agree. I worded my initial comment poorly. I just meant that it can be damaging to your own reputation to criticize competitors. GN is completely in the right.
Steve pointed out that most of the errors were caught by himself and not addressed previously. I’d imagine with their previously close ties that the GN crew planned on reaching out privately, but after being thrown under the bus they decided to go full on ass blast.
My point was that Steve has probably been keeping these examples on hand for a while, because he seemed pretty skeptical of the ethics at LMG after the backpack scandal. At most, I think the comments from LMG might have pushed GN to release that video sooner than they had originally planned.
GN gave LMG a rope to pull them up with so they could be better, LMG tied it into a noose and hung themselves. GN did pretty much exactly the right thing to allow LMG to improve themselves.
True, Linus is absolutely terrible at handling criticism. Dude needs to just lets himself cool off for 24 hours and have some people read things before he posts and it wouldn’t have become such a mess.
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I think the problem was the lab idea. When they started going along the lab idea I did feel like it was not really there area of expertise and I thought it was odd that other companies were so interested. In order for the lab results to be trustworthy the company has to be far more open and professional than LTT really is. They probably have to allow external auditors to come in and have a look from time to time which wasn’t something they really seem to account for.
Like don’t get me wrong, it’s a great idea and it’s probably something the world needs, but I wouldn’t have thought that they were the people to carry it out. I’ve always seen LTT as Top Gear but with computers.
imo it’s the natural outcome of the kind of growth they’ve experienced while not putting significant effort into using outside consultants or hires to get their corporate structure right.
What are you talking about; is your brain broken!? Them throwing shade at established testing sources has nothing to do with allegations of sexual harassment! That’s not how causation works…
Or are you one of those “she’s lying!” people that never believes women, despite the fact that 81% of US women experience sexual assault/harassment in their lifetime? Glad their new CEO is taking this more seriously than people like you…
No, but the comments by their staff that op was referring to stoked the fire that created all the exposure and I imagine prompted her to come forward too.
Exactly. Thanks for getting it
Jesus Christ you’ve got a problem. You’re picking fights which aren’t there.
You have to admit the timing is interesting. Why come forward now, perhaps, if it is true, she never would have felt comfortable coming forward unless she felt that there was public support. I literally think that is the only point the comment was making, and here you are, going off the rails accusing somebody of not caring. That is absolutely not what I read from the comment.
Thank you
I care a lot about this shit. I make damn sure I’m not toxic at work. Especially around women. I’ve worked as a minority as a man on teams and they are absolutely always just bracing for some dude to be a shithead to them. It’s just constantly in the back of their heads, if not the front
I’ve been a part of a sexual harassment investigation as a witness to someone’s terrible treatment and I hope my testimony helped get the guy ultimately fired.
It’s something we all have to be good about and speak up about
What in the god damned milky way are you going on about?
Linus’s dude shitting on GN about testing -> GN responding with a very thorough takedown of how bad they are with their mistakes, largely because they focus on content quantity even though the employees all say they’re too fast and kinda burned out on it -> People chat around how LTT is probably a bad place to work and Linus doesn’t care about employees -> Madison sees that the narrative of a bad LTT workplace being accepted and it is a good time to bring up her terrible experience with a very good chance she’ll be listened to this time
That’s it. The original comment in LTT’s video set it in motion. And if Steve never responded I seriously doubt we’d be at a place where people would be talking about how employees there are treated.
But please, continue on with the insults, I’m sure in your not-broken brain it all makes sense.
I mean they were already starting the process of changing things, though not as much as they should have. In reality LTT should have started restructuring years ago to account for their bigger size. If they had started around 2021 the allegations probably could have been avoided. Unfortunately hindsight is 20/20 so they are stuck with the consequences of past mistakes and being reactive, an almost always worst position to be in, instead of proactive. I really do hope that everyone emerges on the other side of this okay, and by everyone I do mean the victims as well, provided the allegations are true.
I don’t watch his videos, or frankly any YouTube or Twitch or whatever… it seems like he is just a regular guy with faults, and people are projecting sainthood on him. Maybe he’s a bit of an ahole, just like you and me.
Wow, that’s a huge assertion coming from someone who does not watch YouTube or knows nothing about the guy in question.
Edit: Also, YouTube is a place where many go to look up information from trusted sources. Many content creators on YouTube rely on putting out good quality content to make a living. What used to be a great source of information back in 2012 (speaking about Linus Tech Tips), has turned into a money grab, which puts quantity over quality to make money, thus feeding end users erroneous data and steering said users to bad decisions.
Linus’ fan base allegedly drove a little boy to suicide, and the mother subsequently took her own life as well.
This doesn’t feel right. The post seems very lacking in proof, and sounds incredibly farfetched. I remember seeing the NCIX auction video and thought I recall it being a young man buying the play button, not a child, but I could certainly be remembering wrong. The source is pretty bad too, I’ve never heard of that site, were there not more reputable sites with this story? I’m not saying it couldn’t have happened, and I’m certainly not a Linus Stan, but it seems really fake.
Citing an article that cites a Reddit post isn’t great. Let’s link to the original https://old.reddit.com/r/LinusTechTips/comments/t1e1if/you_destroyed_my_life/
While the story is tragic, somebody running a million plus sub YouTube channel is going to get the full Internet experience. It’s pure muckracking to say Linus was responsible for this. It’s just sensationalism.
The reason for the harassment was that the kids channel was purchased from someone else and also had paid subscriptions/views, hence why he never got a silver play button.
Oh wow I never heard about this. That is awful.
god that’s heartbreaking. i had never heard of any of this before today. what a massive implosion.
maybe i’m too dumb or old, but i cannot wrap my head around why “fans” are loyal to some sponsored content/native marketing organization like this enough to follow some kid around youtube and crap on their content. or harass someone doing their job. having to do tons of social media content professionally seems soul destroying… especially because “the bosses” only think about The Algorithm and maybe saw some SEO snakeoil pub telling them it’s better to generate 8 weak outputs than 2 strong outputs worth watching, because the “goal” is to harvest all those passive clicks and views of people who are bored out of their skull barely playing on their phone… instead of maybe targeting someone actively engaged and searching for something well made and relevant to their interests.
so you get overpaid bozos who don’t know fuck about shit leaning heavy on underpaid young people to make more internet garbage for the sake of making more internet garbage, and then later complaining that views per output are down or reactions are lukewarm or engagement is off. imagine that job and then a handful of fuckups following you around and shitting on your online presence because you’re doing what you’re told in order to have a roof over your head and food to eat and dreams of a mildly secure future.
as someone who was once idealistic and full of energy and stamina that was taken advantage of by ego-driven and deceptive exploiters: beware assholes, the rest of us can come together and build a world without a place for you in it.
The fanbase is insane considering it’s a slightly snarky tech review channel. Like how do you get rabid fans doing that??
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Cultish tribalism like this exist for any sort of wannabe celeb.
I remember the video that this stems from. He wasn’t exactly a “little boy”, and I don’t mean by size. I mean that he was near or at adulthood.
Linus gave up the plaque to him realizing that he had won the auction fair and square and even plugged his channel on the video.
We don’t know how much Linus knew about his community doing this. Scouring the comments of Mindchop’s channel shows no harassment that I can see so far. However, I do admit the harassment could have taken place through DMs and other private communication.
Mindchop’s channel shows no harassment that I can see so far.
Even now his most recent video is 10:1 dislike to like ratio:
I meant verbal harassment. Votes can be from anywhere.
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Omg that’s awful
give me the unsubstantiated allegations
“we hired”: there’s going to be the findings they tell management, the report with the findings management allows them to add, and the findings that management tells us about.
This means nothing until you hear independently from the employees themselves about substantive changes.
The reactions are so… reddit-ey:
I always knew it
I fee so gratified
It’s what I’ve been saying all along
and all that stuff.
Feels like the pitchforks are out. People want blood and don’t care if the allegations are true or not.
I think an important thing people forget is even if they hate Linus, there are a lot of other people who work there that will be negatively impacted if LTT is “burnt to the ground”. I am hoping they step up, take the criticism professionaly and improve. Anything else is a major disappointment.
No one today plans on staying with their company for 20+ years. Every working adult should have an exit strategy for any job from day one.
If the allegations are true, even more so if you’re working at LTT. If they’re competent, they’ll find another job.
If they’re competent, they’ll find another job.
Ironically, one of the things Madison claims is that it was said to her that her coworkers could afford that, while she could not.
I don’t believe you ever suddenly lost your job.
And that’s a huge red flag. If they thought so low of her work, they would have fired her.
Did I claim to? I’m looking at the pattern followed by people who jumped ship from Channel Awesome and Rooster Teeth.
I am the one claiming that if it happened to you once, you’d have a different opinion.
Are we obligated to support a company they we dont like just because they’re “job creators”?
LTT is down, the community has made clear what they expected and they’ve acknowledged it. It’s time to let them grow and recover from the situation.
People who are just looking at a reason to hate on them and fuel their anger are just gonna be left behind once everyone moves forward without them.
People are leaning into the hate circlejerk way too hard, apart from the forum rant they have handled this situation pretty well. They addressed GN’s concerns in their apology video by improving their workflows and communication, and are now hiring an investigator for Madison’s claims. I can’t really think of anything more that they could do, but I guess some people just want to be mad.
They already did the damage. If someone steals something from me and slanders my name, I’m still going to be mad after they say sorry.
Yeah, what are the chances that a company mismanaged by a bunch of incompetent unrepentant techbros also fostered a culture of sexual harassment?
Are we even living in the same reality? Tech bros? They’re a bunch of goofy nerds.
Are these labels mutually exclusive?
I thought people loved LTT. Theres only hatred now in the internet.
I really like LTT. All the stuff about mistakes and inaccuracies dont feel that bad to me personally and I feel like LTT would be in a better place regarding accuracy and testing after this.
Regarding the sell of the cooling system, yeah its bad. But I do believe it was a miscommunication and mismanagement within LTT. And int that case at least money can solve it.
Regarding the sexual harassments or “sexually bad environment” yeah this is really bad. I do attribute this to their male dominant eviornent. All those little sexual jokes are so fucking lame and really belong to the distant past of history. They behave like they are 16. The fact that they dont have women in the front of as presenters really shows they are all so sexist. Or at least the one at the top. I do hope justice will be done and everyone accountable gets the proper punishment. And I hope that after this the company will finally grow up and realize they can be still funny and with high quality without the need to oppress women.
I want to keep having fun and getting informed from LTT and i hope they can solve all that.
No pitchforks and no hatred.
I thought most people stopped liking LTT years ago after they started going full corpo.
Why so many people watch them then? And put a lot of time into watching them…. Literally 4 hours of a podcast
I have made very few posts to Lemmy but a recent one was a neutral-ish post saying that I liked the Madison videos etc. but I’m also not jumping to boycott LTT based on the testimony of one person and also a YouTube expose. The responses I got were negative and I was also told not to “deadname” another creator… who I wager nobody would know who I am talking about if I used that name.
Long story short, the comparisons to reddit seem downright charitable so far. Pitchfork brigade bullshit. How about having a nuanced opinion on literally any topic? Or is the average Lemmy user a sanctimonious 19 year old basement socialist?
Arent the most refugees from reddit? M That would explain why so many being the culture with them.
Yes and no. Only a fraction of Redditors migrated, and that fraction is overrepresented by people who care about privacy, ethical business models, community projects and stewardship. And we’ve seen that the Lemmy discussions have been a lot more humane and productive.
I myself have remained pretty silent through this entire LMG saga. Maybe I represent a silent majority? Or maybe just a few? It’s time to put down the pitchforks. The company has responded, let’s wait and see what comes of it. At the end of the day, vote with your wallets. The LMG fanbase is starting to move out of “concerned citizenry” territory and into “self perpetuating angry mob” territory.
I think you’re right about the silent majority. This whole amplifying rage over thing is wild to see in real time. It’s scary how many people have Internet brain rot, check these ratios on most any push back to the rabid behaviour.
Agreed. I will stay subbed (for now) and see what comes from it.
Its human nature not exclusive to reddit. You guys sure love talking about that place.
That sounds exactly like what a Redditor would say
It’s almost as if we’re on a platform that imitates it.
I knew it all along.
I feel so gratified
It’s what I’ve been saying all along
And my axe!
Hopefully Madison isn’t making shit up, or she’s in for a world of hurt. Serious allegations like that won’t be taken lightly.
That’s one of the reasons why she is probably not making things up. And also all the hate she’s getting for speaking out.
Yeah she was already getting death threats, not much of a reason to lie given the rabbid fanbase
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You either die a hero or you live to sexually harass your subordinates.
what
YOU EITHER DIE A HERO OR YOU LIVE TO SEXUALLY HARASS YOUR SUBORDINATES.
It’s a play on the Dark Knight quote.
“You either die a hero or you live long enough to become a villain”
Ah I see. For my taste, still a bit out of place though…
okay
It’s a reference to Steve Jobs
Worst sex tip ever Linus
These YouTube companies almost always end up like this. Reminds me of the rooster teeth shit
Which time? lmao
Hope we can get some more memes out of Linus now that he’s more useless.
That escalated quickly
