Linus Tech Tips is one of the channels I have the most followed out of my subscriptions over the years. I’ve been writing this post on and off since May 2017 and I have unsubscribed in April 2018.
I feel like this post is still relevant because it also shows what YouTube is becoming.
What I liked
I like the unboxing type videos that were going over hardware and benchmarks. The overclocking guides were nice and I always wished they would showcase some of the keyboard and mouse software that is actually part of the experience.
The content was genuine and didn’t seem all that forced (unlike pushing a Dyson sponsorship over a vlog).
There used to be something to get out of the content.
What I disliked
When doing review of keyboard and mice they always skipped the software that comes with it. It’s part of the experience too. They also don’t cover older hardware to see how it performs nowadays or make follow ups on gaming laptops…
Once the content is produced and uploaded they’re done, unless it’s a multi part video.
The silly faces do not make me feel like I’m a grown up too even though they were not as bad as the current ones.
Why I’m ending my subscription
It’s not what it was. It became pretty bad and that’s what happens when you expand. The clickbait is painful. The thumbnails are terrible. The video title could be randomly generated by and algorithm for all I care.
By looking at the thumbnails and the titles it’s really hard to know what it really is about:
- Gaming with your FEET: what the name/brand of the device?
- High School for GAMERS: where?
- Hotel Built for Gamers – WHAT???: what and where again?
- This Laptop Does EVERYTHING! Sorta.: which laptop?
- Why is EVERYONE Buying the $200 Phone??: what phone?
The videos only aim to generate clicks, not content.
Clickbaiting Intensifies
Some call it sensationalist, I call it clickbait.
Name catching videos are necessary, right, everyone need to earn a living because food doesn’t grow on tables. But there are video titles that too far.
- A GAMING PC AS THIN AS A COIN!
- Triple your Battery Life for FREE! THIS METHOD REALLY WORKS!
- AMD RYZEN 5 AND 3 PERFORMANCE PREVIEW!
- We Stole Tampons from the Cashier-less Amazon Go
- Double your RAM – This Method Actually Works!
It sounds like a lie that a PC could be as thin as a coin. When I think of the thinness (or thickness) of a coin I don’t think about the diameter of one but about the actual side, edge or slice. When comparing thinness you take the thinnest part to compare to the other thinness part. The flat side of a coin isn’t the thinnest.
Triple your battery life by crippling your performance and experience! We could also desolder all the LEDs just in case and replace the electic fans with hand fan.
In early 2021
This have not changed much…
The content doesn’t seem to be relevant to me.
Low Quality content
At first the quality was low. The idea was putting out new videos as quick as possible but we had informative content at least. That was during the NCIX time. Then LinusTechTips became a team and quality went up and the content was really good.
But now everything is going down the drain. Quality and informative content doesn’t seem to exist anymore.
- What Happens If You Delete System32?
- $30 MOTHERBOARD?! – Can it game?
- 5 BIZARRE Wearables;
- WTF?? A 3-Dimensional Keyboard??
- AMD LET ME BUILD THEIR NEW 80 VEGA SUPERCOMPUTER…
The 3D keyboard might be more damaging than anything else. The quality of the video is so bad that it doesn’t even feel serious anymore. We don’t need to have actors fake fainting/falling. The old B-roll was actually better.
Nitpicking
I don’t need to hear the sound of a data center, you can afford to do voiceovers now, not that it’s expensive or hard to integrate over moving pictures. I’d prefer high quality B-roll instead of bad and unnecessary acting.
Even an amateur would be able to stitch audio with Audacity and merge it with video by using ffmpeg.
The videos are also clearly aimed at the North American audience and the rest of world, in wich there’s Africa, Asia, Australia and Europe, won’t be able to relate to the pricing or the imperial system. There’s no world besides America on YouTube most of the time I guess.
For the pricing excluding tax makes price seems so much cheaper, it’s deceptive but it’s not like they sell the hardware they review so… Whatever I guess?
And again they target a North American audience.
High quality content
Let’s give credit to the guy where he deserves it. Some of his recent content can be pretty interesting.
- Turning SCRAP Electronics into GOLD BARS!
- Sennheiser Factory Tour – Hanover, Germany
- Starter Cameras for Under $1,000
- Mineral Oil Submerged PC Build Log Part 1 – Puget Systems Kit Case Assembly
These kind of videos are hard to come by today.
YouTube problem
Monetizing videos is harder than ever. The adpocalypse hit hard and pushed YouTubers to seek alternate ways of earning money such as sponsorships and Patreon. On the surface it’s not a big deal for us viewers and the idea isn’t bad at all if it really pays out in the end and doesn’t end up worse that the preroll ads.
Sponsors segments are no longer funny, they’re the unfunny joke that keeps getting told over and over until someone decides to change their slogan (Squarespace for example). Some other sponsors are irrelevant to the content been watched and I’m genuinely impressed that a shampoo brand hasn’t sponsored anyone I watch yet.
For sponsors to appeal to their viewer they need to be relevant and unlike TV they must not be the same copy/pasted speech that everyone knows and that doesn’t actually differ much from one channel to the other.
Pushing Patreon or some other pay wall is not as bad but it can still be tiring to end a video and have 2 or 3 minutes where the names of the Patreon subscribers are being shown or read… This is a waste of bandwidth and artificially increases the length of videos (to trick the algorithm maybe).
This also feels a bit like shaming the non paying viewer.
Sadly I have no viable solution to this issue. Revenue is never secured in this kind of business.
Recommendation
There are a couple of channels that are genuinely good, don’t clickbait and produce content with substance, I will highlight more in details these in a later post. In the meantime I’ll just list them here:
- Gamers Nexus: Current tech, benchmarks, news and actual research with so much integrity put into their videos that it feels weirdly honest (in a good way);
- Techmoan: Old tech with a British accent;
- LGR: Retro hardware.
Honorable mention to Level 1 Techs (Level 1 Linux) for Wendell’s Linux coverage and hardware (but I still don’t like their news coverage).
At the time of publishing, these YouTuber are light on sponsors and put forward their content before anything else. There’s much more passion coming out of what they do.
Conclusion
LinusTechTips is becoming really irrelevant outside of the benchmarking of new hardware and new hardware isn’t released that often.
The videos are boring, clickbaity, irrelevant to my interest and full of sponsors that are irrelevant.
Just to be clear I’m not attacking anyone. I just don’t enjoy them anymore. I couldn’t care less if the channel were to shutdown, their success doesn’t affect me and I don’t want to be frustrated with the new “content” they produce.
They do not need me nor my subscription.
Update 26/01/2021
I decided to review this post recently. I replaced a channel I recommend because my views have changed and didn’t appreciate much some of the content that came out a couple months ago.
To this day I have not resubbed nor watch any of their videos, I still don’t feel the need and I’m not really sad about it anymore. I don’t miss it.
I’d like to add to the recommendations that MKBHD started doing sponsored content for VPNs… Let’s not give in to the lies of VPN companies about security and needing it, instead have Tom Scott tell you more about it and what it really means using these kind of VPN services.
Tech YouTube is kind of boring to be honest and it’s fine that way, we need more facts than entertainment.
I’ve also added a new section about early 2021 just to show what the uploads look like. I still don’t like it.
Update 13/03/2022
I removed MKBHD from the sponsor list because I can’t really get behind his reviews anymore and the sponsor situation went from bad to worse because he is now promoting Cash App (easy way to send, receive and invest money apparently).
I strongly believe that no one should be recommending financial apps and companies as part of sponsors. What’s next ? Getting sponsored by hygiene products to get my balls shaved and fix my male pattern baldness ?
I find these sponsors highly inappropriate.
Also Linus tweeted out a pretty bad hot take about ad blocking and basically calling it piracy (the thread is wild):
LTT allegedly has a video about making a Pi-Hole (reddit comment), which is pretty ironic coming from someone with such opinion on ad blocking.
While I do understand that content is more often than not paid by some sort of ad revenue (sponsors included), ad blocking is not piracy and not copyright infringement.
To not stay on a bad note I’d like to congratulate Gamers Nexus on being great and always going above and beyond no matter what they do. This is what tech channels should be about.
I hope I didn’t jinx it until the next update?
Update 25/08/2022
LTT messed up with claiming they’ll not support warranties, then going back on that before and saying they’ll take care of that without being specific, and then caving in and having a written warranty for their new backpack.
They have been called out by Gamers Nexus, who then published a follow-up video and showing basically how out of touch of reality Linus is (in my words).
It has been shown on LTT’s WAN Show that even Luke, a long time partner of Linus, is tired of this drama and doesn’t exactly agree with the events.
LTT released a shirt, making Linus giggle like a child while Luke looks like he was dying inside and I find this kind of reaction really saddening coming from Linus (who I looked up to at some point).
Luke then somewhat called out Linus by telling him this isn’t why people are mad but the child that Linus is doesn’t seem to get the point and thinks that everyone out there is out to attack him.
While I do understand that being a huge influencer with over 14.8M subscribers might change one’s mindset and bring out their worst, especially when they are not trying to hide their personal life all that much, I feel deep regret in following that channel years ago.
I’m congratulating Gamers Nexus on their stance where they said they’ll treat LTT the same as any manufacturer and this is how a honest business should operate and how reviewer should call out whatever is wrong.
Gamers Nexus is to me the most trustful reviewing outlet for computer hardware.
Please be the exception to dying a hero or living long enough to become the villain.
Update 14/08/2023
Gamers Nexus have just posted a video highlighting some of the problems related to ethics, accuracy and responsibility with LinusTechTips.
Gamers Nexus is a very reputable channel that does some very good investigations and will not hesitate to make corrections when they make mistakes. They explain all of their processes and rerun benchmarks to update the charts and their data points to make sure they will not misrepresent anything.