this post was submitted on 15 Aug 2023
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That's really missing the point. They were trying to sell the water block to rich people with more money than sense that, importantly, wanted the best of the best. By not reviewing it correctly, LTT screwed a small company over pretty hard. Linus then went on to say that he made this decision to save $100 to $500. He was unwilling to spend that kind of money to preserve the journalistic integrity of the channel.
The fact that he tried to make it look like LMG was going to compensate them for the block (replying only after the GN video was released) only makes it worse.
That's also missing the point. That video was not a review. There wasn't journalistic integrity because it wasn't a journalistic piece. If you go into a for-fun video expecting a proper review process of course you are going to be disappointed.
If the argument is that it should have been a full review, then sure maybe it should have. But it wasn't one, so it doesn't make any sense to hold it to that standard when that was never the intention behind it.
The video is clearly about the water block. They describe their experience while building a computer with it and then give purchasing advice. Sure seems close enough to a review that they should be fair to the manufacturer. And their ethics should not go out of the window just because the didn't put "review" in the title (when was the last time they did that anyway...).
It can be about the water block without being a review of the water block. The premise of the video is somebody with no experience doing water cooling (Adam) trying to build it. If the intent was for it to be a review they would have someone more knowledgeable do it. I completely disagree it is unethical to make a for-fun video messing around with it, unless they agreed to do something else in their emails with Billet Labs which we have not seen.
I also don't believe they give any purchasing advice either but feel free to post a timestamp if you have one.
You sure are going to unusual lengths to (poorly) defend this behavior. Maybe there's something you should be disclosing about who you really are.
Literally just a dude. I don't even have any skin in this game, I am just trying to understand why people are so angry and they have explained it (poorly) to me. I guess I will never understand. I genuinely don't see much of an issue with what happened. Feels like to me the internet hate mob is unwilling to forgive an honest mistake.
I'm willing to bet most of the people who are angry already didn't like LTT and are just bandwagoning rather than actually caring about the details. People just want to be angry and I find that annoying.
... That's definitely not what is happening regarding the internet hate mob theory you have. A very large chunk of people who are outraged actually like or liked Linus and I've been seeing them express dissapointment over this behavior.
Can you explain exactly what you are confused on or having trouble understanding after watching the GN video and reading all of the comments that have replied to you so far? If so I might be able to help break down a timeline and highlight the issues in a simplified manner.
If you actually want to try I would genuinely appreciate it. But I don't really want to waste your time. I have thought about it for some time and I honestly doubt there is any way I see the other side of this. I tried, I really did. Which is why I responded to so many comments but I guess my way of thinking about it is somehow so wildly different from other people. But if you do happen to have some time to kill I will try to write everything out. I apologize in advance for how long it is but I wanted to be thorough.
The main point of Steve's video is to call into question LTT's journalistic/reviewer integrity. The funny thing is I agree with literally like 95% of what he said. LTT has had a massive quantity-over-quality problem and things have been declining for years. But that said, the water block video was not a review. Objectively not a review. It's not an opinion of mine it is a fact. So when all these comments say he "reviewed it poorly" or whatever that doesn't make any sense. And Steve's criticisms about their reviews do not apply either. Linus has frequently said different video types have different processes. They have reviews, unboxings, "showcases" (sponsored products), etc. which are all distinct categories of videos. To treat it like a review and try to hold it to the same standard as a formal review is arguing in bad faith.
Imagine you draw a picture of a cat, and then a bunch of people come along and say your picture of a dog sucks because it's too cat-like. You never set out to draw a dog, so why would that criticism make any sense? Just because both have four legs and a tail does not mean they should be judged in the same way. Intent is really important here and people are just conveniently ignoring it. LTT makes these types of videos all the time. Is them using an air conditioner to cool a PC a review of the air conditioner? Or are they just messing around for entertainment? Another comment compared it to a super car because it is an expensive niche product, but I don't buy that either. If someone shows off driving in a super car and then at the end says, "yeah that's fast but the fact this exists is stupid, nobody should ever buy this," I don't think anyone would care, assuming of course it's not a formal review of the car.
And on top of that, let's say they did do a full, formal review. Every single number is correct and there are no errors. And then let's also assume they give it back instead of auctioning it off just for the sake of this hypothetical. Now Steve doesn't feature it in the video because the information is correct. LTT says the exact same thing-- $800 is too expensive for a water block and this product has no real buyers. Billet Labs has no customers and goes out of business quietly in the background. Nobody would care. People only care now because of the way it was done, but if the outcome is literally exactly the same, why does it matter at all? If it's a bad product that deserves to be shit on it shouldn't matter that they shit on it. And before you say something like "but what if they test it correctly and it's actually good," that will never happen because an $800 water block is always going to be a bad value. Other water blocks are in the $200-300 range. There is no world where this water block magically performs over twice as good as the others. It's a genuinely bad product, and there's no reason the company should be getting a pass just because it's "two guys" or whatever. A bad product is a bad product regardless of who makes it. I just cannot understand why people care so much about this company. It's like people prefer rooting for the "little guy" over actually examining the situation.
The funny part is LTT doing what they did actually gave Billet Labs more positive publicity than they would have gotten any other way, which I also said in one of my other comments and got downvoted to Hell for, even though now someone else has posted the same thing and it's upvoted. In the end Billet Labs actually completely won here. This is the best thing that could have ever happened to their company.
As for the auction thing, my main issue with people's response to it is that it's just a single isolated mistake that happens to be tacked on to the rest of the stuff. How do you go from sending an email saying you will return it to auctioning it off? It's insane that that happened but it could have been any number of things. I imagine the people responsible were wearing too many hats and were mainly focused on LTX planning. They probably already deal with dozens of companies on a daily basis and now they were also dealing with vendors/sponsors/etc. for LTX on top of that. It's not unthinkable that things just got too hectic and miscommunication happened. People make mistakes. Should LTT own up to the mistake and work to make sure this type of thing never happens again? Absolutely. There should be proper chain of command for items like this. I imagine that's what they're implementing now. But what is so bad about this? It's not evil, it's not malicious, it's a mistake that as far as I can tell happened one time. This isn't a pattern of behavior like the errors in reviews are.
From what I've seen it's the auction that broke the camel's back, when in isolation it's not really that big of an issue. It's only because it's surrounded by the other issues brought up that makes it another mistake on the pile and therefore the pile bigger. The thing is, it's a mistake that affects 2-3 people. Billet Labs. The errors being made in reviews affect millions of people. It is way more important, but the Billet Labs thing is what I see the most comments about. That's what my main confusion is about. Why is there so much focus on Billet Labs at all? Billet Labs is like 10% of Steve's video, the other 90% is dedicated to the reporting/review errors. It doesn't make any sense to me. At the end of the day it's a small company making a dumb overpriced product vs. the largest tech review channel constantly misleading millions of consumers with bad numbers/data/processes. But here we are on a thread where people are almost exclusively talking about Billet Labs.
So I'll try to break it down best I can as it seems more like you understand the time line but not the reasons people are upset. I hope you don't take offense to this but are you on the spectrum? Asking as I have a friend who's sister is and usually have to break down explinations like this for her (though that's much eadier in person rather than online where it won't translate as well), and they way you talk reminds me a lot of how her perspective works.
So to start, could you give me your reasoning as to why you don't think this is a review, like more pointed reasoning besides being informal, as formality is not a maker or breaker of what makes a review now a days. Many definitions of what constitutes a review have excluded the formal aspect in the definition due to our changing world.
To most people a review is generally made up of the following points by doesn't necessarily need all of them to qualify:
I cannot tell you if Linus set out to make a review video or not, but Billet labs did send them the prototype with the intent to either show off their concept design or review the product and garner some publicly to a market audience they are targeting.
However what I can say is that Linus has not if it was a reviewer or not, and from what we can gather has no disclaimer saying it is not a review, and it's final presentation results in providing and setting up the audience to experience what they think will be a review. It does not help that Linus also does do reviews on the channel in the same format of this video.
This primes the audience into believing this is a review. If it was not a review it should had been explicitly stated to avoid confusion. As of now though, the video meets the expectations of the audience both from past experience and the general idea of what a review is in the public consciousness.
As to the value of the product itself, while I can tell that you do not think it is good value for the price (I agree). Their are many enthusiast in the PC modding scene that out of pleasure for the hobby will drop 1k+ on components that do less than this water block purely because they like it it's look.
This water block is not really meant for the average consumer, it is meant for the enthusiast, that will drop lots of money for a custom water cooling system where they invest absurd amounts of money for a cool looking cooling system. And when compared in that lense to other enthusiast and custom water blocks and cooling systems on the market it is actually reasonably priced as some can go for upwards of 1k to 2k with lower end water blocks being ~600 ish, and many in the enthusiast community find that a good value because that's what is expected in that niche. That niche enthusiast consumer is the target market audience for this product, not us regular consumers.
I think the super car analogy is quite fair as, for a daily driver, a super car is not something a normal person would want or need for that price for daily communiting... But for someone who has a hobby of either collecting or working on cars. A super car for them would be a good investment.
For the auctioning thing I'll try to keep it brief. Whilst it was a mistake, likely due to mismanagment or overworked individuals. That is not a good excuse that only raises further concerns, questions, and outrage.
As someone myself who works in a similar vein of IT where components get sent to and fro to various individuals. Not being able to keep track of a prototype collaboration piece and the associated GPU that was sent with it for specific testing purposes is a level of mismanagement that I have yet to see.
At some point they honestly would have either had to go out of their way to let this happen, or their internal systems are so terribly setup and mismanaged that it slipped through. For a claimed professional business, I honestly can't tell you which looks worse to the public in a PR sense as both are egregiously bad options. And even in isolation they alone would indeed caused massive backlash, what they did is near completely unheard of except in some of the worst businessing blunders cases told as horror stories in businesses classes as what not to do.
To give context, if Billet labs was not just two guys doing a start up. Or if this had happened to say AMD or Nvidia who can afford lawyers, this would have been a massive lawsuit that could have bankrupted LMG.
It's a violation of so many industry practices and professionalism standards and frankily even a breach of some laws given the right arguments. It is really hard to overstate just how bad this was given how laid back everyone has been about it. LMG got very lucky, that Billet labs does not have the resources to bring LMG to court for a protracted period of time.
Finally just wanted to say, whether Billet Labs gains from this incident is not really relevant. Billet Labs while being compensated now, is still tangibly set back in their RnD time and would have most likely preferably not been involved in any drama at all. As most companies would prefer.
I hope this helps even somewhat as I tried to be as detailed and thorough as possible in my explinations. But I am on mobile doing this through the day and conveying ideas through text is more difficult for me than in person. So there might be errors and other such stuff. If it still is not helpful, then I'm sorry I couldn't have been of better assistance
No offense taken, I am indeed.
I can actually see what you mean about the review now that you put it that way. I have watched LTT for years (over a decade even) so I know their for-fun format vs. their review format but I can see how someone without that kind of familiarity wouldn't. I do think there should be better distinction between them so cases like this don't happen.
Since you asked the most obvious signs it's not a review are the lack of any kind of conclusion, there's no comparisons, no graphs/charts-- nothing that actually tests the product which you would see in their reviews. If you look at the last video they posted which is about the Fifine A6T microphone. You don't even have to watch it, just look at the sections which are things like "Microphone Tests," "Measurements," and "Pickup Pattern." The water block video sections are all things to do with building. Nothing related to testing.
As for the super car analogy, I have a 7950X. It is literally the most powerful consumer-grade CPU you can buy right now. I encode video so all 32 threads are running 100% for hours at a time. And I cool it with a Noctua NH-D15, an air cooler that cost me $90. It runs perfectly. Even if you have infinite money to throw around I just can't see a reason to use an $800 water block when the best CPU you can get is fine with air cooling. At least with a super car it actually goes much faster than a normal car but spending 8x more on cooling is going to get you at most like a few percent more performance. I looked up some numbers and it's even less than that. You lose 0.5% performance running a NH-U14S at 40% fan speed compared to an AIO, and that isn't even as strong as the NH-D15 is. I couldn't easily find any comparisons for a custom loop but I can't imagine the difference is more than 2-3%. Which means its main purpose is to look cool I guess? But I'm sorry that still makes it a dumb product IMO even if there is a small market for it. I think I'd go as far as to say the market itself shouldn't exist.
As for the auction, your explanation has helped me figure out why I didn't feel as strongly about it. "For a claimed professional business" it is really bad but I wasn't truly looking at LTT as a business. I know objectively it is one, but from an emotional standpoint it doesn't really feel like one. Like I said before I've been watching them for over a decade, back when it was still NCIX Tech Tips. So in my head I am still imagining a guy and his friends messing around with tech and a camera. But it is hitting me now that they really have grown well beyond that. Linus has always done janky things. He's even known as the guy who drops things. It's also well known that people take things from the office all the time so items are constantly going missing. To me there is zero surprise that they would misplace something but as you said if they want to be a professional business then that is unacceptable. Maybe with the new CEO there will be more professionalism but honestly I'm not even sure I want that. Personally I love the jank. I enjoy Linus doing dumb things. I would hate to see it become a soulless corporation but I suppose that is what it is supposed to be.
But anyways, I have rambled on long enough. What you said was genuinely helpful. I really appreciate it and thank you for taking the time to make your response. Your friend's sister is lucky to have you, not many people are willing things like this. Honestly you might even be the only one I've met. I feel like I can't even remember a time where someone has done this for me. Usually people think I am "trolling" and someone in this thread even called me a sociopath, which I'm not going to lie was really disheartening but it's not the first time. Thank you for treating me like a person.
It's all good man. Mean people always like to pile on when someone is getting heavily downvoted and they keep responding. Mob mentality.
I think you are slightly biased towards Linus, but I also think you made some valid points that contributed much more to the discussion than people regurgitating some variation of "Linus sucks". I enjoyed reading your perspective 😊
What? They put it on the wrong card when the correct card was provided by the manufacturer. The manufacturer confirmed to them the incompatability. If the premise of the video is "idiots do something wrong and act like it's the part's fault because they felt personally slighted and have an ego driven response".
It wasn't, if they had the correct and compatible part, it may have been an entirely different experience to them, and that part was provided to them by the manufacturer.
We don't even know if a lay person with instructions and the right part would have issues, because the original unforced error by LMG was so egregious. No matter what you have to see how this isn't fair to anyone, especially not the target consumer of this device. It might even paint it in a very negative light through the fault of the people making the video, entirely. The manufacturer did everything they could.
Then when called out they double down on the ego hurt response, twice. Saying nothing would change when they never even tried to use it device appropriately. Then they add insult to injury by never even giving the part back.
FYI - selling the prototype (LMG were aware this was a one of a kind proto) ensures that no other reviewer can have an easier time installing on the right hardware, no one can ever prove Linus wrong because the part is gone and they won't say to who...
That's weird right?
Considering that it was also auctioned at an event where competitor companies were present, they could have well auctioned off the company's prototype to a competitor of theirs, which would have been the worst case scenario for Billet. (I don't think it ultimately happened that way, but that was a real risk in the auction).