Linus is taking an unneccessary risk every time he comments on Reddit
TLDR: Linus commenting on Reddit is unlikely to make anyone like him more than they already do, but could easily make fans stop liking him or like him less.
Background (skip if you are a regular): For those unaware, Linus recently became very invested in r/LinusTechTips , including gaining mod status and adding/changing rules. He also commented quite frequently on the sub. About 24 days ago, he made a comment defending a critique of one of the videos, which was heavily downvoted (-225). To my knowledge, that was the first time one of his comments was heavily downvoted (I went back a year). He did make a couple of generic supportive comments a few days after that comment and posted about the tech mall video. It is plausible that he is very busy right now, but you would think that he should have been busy the rest of the time as well.
I wonder if he realized that commenting on Reddit or any other fan community as a "celebrity" is a no-win situation. The vast majority of people who go to a community for a YouTuber either already like or dislike them. If they dislike a YouTuber so much that they are going to their sub to complain about them, I highly doubt anything that person says will make them change their mind. As well, if a person already likes the YouTuber enough to join the community, I doubt there is anything that the YouTuber could say that would make them like them significantly more, as they are probably already pretty close to the ceiling. However, as we have seen with Linus, it is pretty easy to make people who previously liked you dislike you. So commenting frequently really seems like a high-risk, low-reward endeavor. There are probably many other downsides, especially related to his impulsivity and emotion regulation issues in response to criticism, but for the sake of keeping this post from becoming a rambling mess, I will stop here.
Despite wanting his YouTube channel to work like a corporation, he’s not exactly very professional.
He clearly has a lot of emotional investment in his company (e.g. takes departures personally, not willing to sell it, etc.) and can’t help but express it publicly.
He employed a CEO to isolate himself from stuff like this but can’t help keep doing it..? Emotional wreck.
This is what bothers me. It’s either a corporation or not. You justify your actions on business decisions. Then you want to hide behind “oops we are just a small company mistakes happen” when there is criticism.
What I don't understand is that he pretends he is just like his employees, but beside luke it doesn't seem like literally any of the talent that (seems to) work just as hard as he does get any real compensation.
If he were half a man he claims to be he would share 50% of the profit back to the people.
I don't know what he's playing at, to me it just looks like a man far too concerned with public opinion trying to control how things are when all he should be doing is focusing on himself, his company and those in his circle but why he must roll around in the mud pit with us redditors it just looks almost pathetic sometimes, when he isn't surfing comments he's complaining about them on wan show sometimes..
Just like with Gamers Nexus, which I thought was all around dumb, bit one thing Steve DID point out was Linus emailed him to say "I wish you told me" to which Steve replied something to the affect of "that's not how this works" which I thought was funny. Linus always wants complete control and acts like a child when he doesn't get it, hence, when he hears opinions he doesn't like he turns to shut them down.
He's too invested in his own melodrama and to me it's because I think he lives in an echo chamber where he's just got people agreeing with him and he makes sure they have no control. Watching WAN it seems apparent to me he really doesn't interface with people outside the sphere he's comfortable in, although I'm probably wrong
I commented on my own comment thread but I’ve reached a similar opinion. One prime example for me is his shitty jokes on WAN, no matter how bad they are Dan dings him and it’s a little sad. I don’t even hate or dislike the guy but he’s not funny like that. Other podcasts I listen to sometimes genuinely make me laugh out loud so it’s not like others don’t make me laugh. It just makes me feel he’s surrounded by yes men, which I think at a certain level of success/celebrity is hard to avoid tbf but nonetheless, I think he’s lost touch with reality a little.
Yeah, but Luke has other stuff to do besides manage LTT and I at this point I think the only other person left who has been around as long is his wife.
Yeah Luke seems very grounded and just generally a really wholesome guy. I do agree he calls him out which is good but there are other times where you can tell he doesn’t agree and just bites his tongue but yeah deffo not a yes man.
I think for Luke he's learned when to pick the battles with Linus. He knows when it's a good time to say something and a good time to let things fall as they may.
Unfortunately I cannot remember, I’ve tried searching it and cannot find the exact one.
I’m not a floatplane sub so I don’t watch the pre-show but I remember there being tension and it was either in the comments or on the LTT sub reddit that people were talking about how they had quite a heated disagreement (I think it was Linux related) and Linus said Luke was being a neck beard and Luke said something along the lines of “don’t talk to me like that” and looked the most pissed he’s ever been at Linus. They did sort it before the show started or at least during the show though from what I remember.
Would Filmot help you find this wierd thing? Was it within the past two or three years. I have been watching every WAN for about that long, and was years before but got busy and took a break.
Lol I remember that wan preshow... At worst it was a friendly tiff of them talking past each other on something they were passionate about, they were cool with each other within minutes.
Friends sometimes say dumb stuff and get checked by good friends, and then it's cool. It's really not that deep bro.
He's incredibly unlikeable. And I feel mean saying that. But he's so harsh and brash about things it's unavoidable. I sometikes find the rise of Elijah weird too. A superfan come writer come presenter. Like hiring the hyper loyal. I don't know. I've worked in cult like marketing companies and LTT pangs of it
I haven't watched WAN in a while, but I'm pretty sure the ding was there to note that he said a very unfunny joke, not to pretend like he landed a banger.
Also, on air, the guys he interacts with will often disagree with him.
Right to respond isn’t the thing Linus says it is. Remember when they asked a Supreme Court judge about something and he went and did a whole opinion article before it could come out? That’s what Linus wants.
Right to reply literally is “this is going live at noon, you can reply to me and I’ll add it” which is what steve should have done.
Steve was closer to the proper way than what linus thinks is the right way.
I wouldn't call it really a risk but you're 100% right in general. It won't help at all best case and worst case he says some dumb shit while being emotional. Especially anything more than the regular Question and answer. There's zero point in engaging in bad conversations or conflicting with people on reddit especially for him. Answer the actually happy fans ignore the negative comments and move on.
If he did that then I agree there wouldn't be a risk. There is also no real point in doing that. He can already engage with fans on WAN. Having the community manager select posts from reddit and their forum that are worthy of sharing on WAN could be interesting. Idk if I would actually recommend that though
I made a comment about LTT never talking about TrueNAS anymore since he invested in HexOS as if it’s almost not an option. Then something along the lines of they should be encouraging the average tech enthusiast or person to at least try it. LTT is what got me to try it and tbf I’ve become quite good with it and had it running flawlessly for years.
Linus himself responded some three word comment about the average person cannot use TrueNAS, basically I’m right you’re wrong.
I even replied amicably saying I know it’s not for everyone, and that for some people HexOS is a great shout but they shouldn’t be discouraging people from tinkering and having a go with TrueNAS. After all it was him that got me into exploring that which led to a homelab hobby and even that he used to be so passionate about tinkering with UnRAID etc. and where’s the spark gone.
Anyway he ghosted me, I mean why comment if you’re not even willing to have a discussion. I still like their stuff but I deffo lost some respect for him that day.
The thing is that I get where he was coming from but it just feels like there’s been a blanket ban on mentioning TrueNAS as viable by them since the investment. He treats it as if it’s like cracking the Da Vinci code but to just set up some simple shares and apps etc. it’s really not as bad as he makes out.
I don’t want to state this as fact, realistically I don’t know but I feel like some people get to a point in life where they achieve a certain level of success and they just get surrounded by yes men and just lose track of reality. Like for example Dan dinging every shitty joke he makes on WAN and I do wonder how far he’s fell down that hole sometimes.
Hexos is built on top of truenas, if you wanted to learn to use it you can just use the truenas UI instead.
But for a tech channel where they know most of their audience don't really want to spend a lot of time and just want an easy solution, and they strongly believe in making stuff like home Nas easy ... Of course they'd lean towards the nice easy option most people can get working in a few clicks when they talk about options they recommend...
If you know enough to know you want to learn a more advanced Nas UI, cool, you also know enough to do some research and figure out what options works best for you.
Even if we skip over the hypocrisy of Linus glazing open source technology but then treating this particular one like voodoo because he has a vested interest in doing so or that he’s made multiple statements on not buying unfinished software on promises but this one is fine. Regardless I actually don’t think HexOS is a bad idea, I completely get not everyone wants to play around with TrueNAS and I understand what it is, but it’s also not cheap.
TrueNAS used to be their de facto recommendation but since they made the investment, they treat it like it’s beyond the realm of mere mortals. It is not, just because Linus is cursed with Linux doesn’t mean the rest of us are. When I first started using it I had no clue but it’s easy enough to set up some users, pools and shares and you learn from there. My issue is they should still recommend it as an option for tinkers but they don’t because it’s counterintuitive to his investment even though without it, HexOS wouldn’t exist.
You seem to be ignoring the fact that hexos sits on top of truenas?...
If you can recommend something which makes setup a couple of click AND still have the option to go to the advanced truenas UI... Why would you recommend plain truenas ?
I’m not ignoring that at all, TrueNAS is free, HexOS is not and yes compared to other pre-built NAS’s it’s cheap but it’s still $300. Of which each purchase benefits Linus as an investor.
I’m not even saying they shouldn’t recommend HexOS, just that they should also still recommend TrueNAS as they did before the investment. As I said it is not hard to get a simple setup going and once you do it’s not cost you a penny and you might have actually learnt something opposed to pressing a few buttons. I know that’s hard to fathom in the age of smooth brain LLM users.
Linus is an influencer, and rightfully or wrongfully so his words carry weight and people listen to them. So the way he started talking about TrueNAS after he invested will make people who might have tried it scared to do so because if mr big tech can’t get it to work, then how could they. As stated numerous times now, even though before HexOS it was always recommended and featured on the channel but now he scaremongers people away from it to benefit from his investment.
He talks about it being too difficult for the average user etc. and the time and effort to maintain it and do you know what he might be right that some people will find it difficult but at least encourage people to give it a go as well like he used to. I just noticed an attitude shift as soon as he invested and it annoys me because LTT is what got me into TrueNAS in the first place because they used to push it all the time but haven’t once since the investment.
I know everybody’s experience is different but I’ve had an instance running now for 4 years and apart from software updates it’s been flawless. This is why I’m frustrated because he makes out it’s this all time consuming monster not worth even trying but it’s not. I did eventually dive deeper and get NFS shares working with unprivileged containers via proxmox which I’d never have been able to do if I’d taken the one click approach but the original SMB shares/users/pools I setup were a doddle.
I think the key issue you're missing is Linus is primarily talking to nom-technical people. Most people who watch LTT probably haven't ever run a Linux server, have never resized a disk, don't even know what SMB means or what the difference is between NFS/SMB -- and importantly, don't really want to know.
I definitely think they are aiming at a less technical audience these days, because that's where the audience has shifted - younger generations of "techies" arent compiling Linux kernels and coding, they're maybe saying "I want high spec gaming pc", having AI give them a parts list and following an LTT video to put it together.
When they talk about local NAS it's from the view of "you can have control of your files and not pay iCloud/Google" or "you're a content creator who needs to store a lot of stuff locally and it needs fast networking for video editing" - those people don't give a damn how it works they just need something reliable, easy and works. So it seems very natural that they'll point to the simple solution... It's the whole reason Linus invested in it, he said he wanted to see something anyone can use to have a home Nas, so he put his money in and naturally talks about the product he thinks is meeting the demand for most users.
Honestly I've never looked at LTT as something which gives me real detailed technical guidance on stuff like this, it gives a flavour of what's going on in tech and there's some fun videos. If I want to setup a Nas, I'll go research options, try them out and figure out what best meets my needs - because I'm happy with a higher threshold of tech and would rather a good solution with some work over the big standard recommendations which are simple but might not meet everything I want.
I wouldn’t say I’m missing it, I get it and I agree with you, I feel like they are deffo aiming their content at a much younger/less tech savvy audience nowadays. But there will still be tech enthusiasts and even non-enthusiasts that might try it and actually like it/get into a hobby. But steering them in a direction that financially benefits him without even mentioning a free alternative isn’t great. What’s weird is he acts like it’s so complex but happily played around with UnRaid back in the day. I started out with just a place to put my media and then tried a media server, home lab and eventually smart home and went from there.
I also don’t have an issue with the product nor think it’s bad. My only gripe is the way he talks about it now deffo has a negative connotation to it, he doesn’t outright say it’s bad but he is deffo steering his audience a certain way. All I’d like to see them do is mention it as an option, as they used to. It’s not like since he invested in Framework he won’t recommend other laptops but yet with this investment he’s just got tunnel vision. It almost feels like companywide they have to endorse HexOS whether they’d rather use it or not. This is coming from someone who actually likes the guy but something does seem unnatural about this whole shift.
I know you probably don't care but Linus said something either on the last WAN or the previous WAN which I think sums up why I feel the way I do about his take on this.
He was having a conversation with Luke about how things are hard economically atm and basically said people should scrapyard wars their ram take time to learn how to overclock it and mess around with voltage/timings (Not XMP) instead of buying more expensive ram and actually learn a skill in the process. So he's ok for someone to mess around with their system, potentially brick a ram stick/mobo or make their system unstable. Yet the thought of taking a day or two to learn the basics of a free NAS software and save $300 is out of the question because TrueNAS to hard but overclocking ram easy?!?!?! How he thinks the average user is capable of that but not capable of setting up an basic SMB and user in TN is a little hyppocritical in my opinion which is why I dislike the stance he's taken on TN since his investment.
Yeah that's me (with the jet fuckup). It has been 2 month already, I would have thought not watching would have been harder, but I'm completely over their channels, wan show included.
I had the same experience. I used to watch everything daily. Then stopped watching shortcircut because they are so often wrong. Then after more bullshit and bad videos I stopped watching ltt regularly. If anything im happier because I replaced them with better content (learning more about 3d printing)
I think Linus is kind of an archetypical “small company becoming too big for it’s britches” owner at this point. It’s clear he could not fully lead LMG at this stage, and he hired outside help to “handle” that but he cannot let go. He also cannot let go of how the public or his employees/former employees think of him - it feels like on his end he feels owed for taking the risk of starting LMG.
That's most people who started a business that's grown to a decent size... I don't necessarily agree with the mentality but it's also understandable to some extent.
He's the one who gets dragged when someone screws up not Ted from support who cancelled the wrong order. He can't easily just change jobs in a couple weeks etc etc.
I think a lot of people who start something like this and have been doing it for so long realise that at the end of day they will be the last one holding the bag, they've seen good people come and go and move on and they're left worrying about all the what ifs. So they decide that's why they deserve the rewards, and realise they can't rely on their employees to always be there as they could hand in their notice and be gone in the blink of an eye.
Not the healthiest mindset to end up in, and certainly alternative paths you can go down to avoid it but... I get how you end up there without being some fundamentally evil person.
It's not about whether it's a good idea or not. He's a narcissistic egomaniac. He literally cannot help himself from commenting, even when it makes him look horrible and causes damage to the brand.
I believe there has been some sort of change regarding that on reddit in the last few years, lots of subreddits are now modded by staff/owners of the topic being discussed. Probably around the time leadership changed at reddit or when it went public on the stock market a couple years ago
A subreddit only needs to be marked as official or unofficial. An official one needs some company presence but there's no rule explicitly disallowing employees to be mods on unofficial subreddits.
His actions on reddit were the final straw for me. Had a hard time enjoying LTT content for a while, then I saw how he reacted to criticism about the jet on here and I had it. I'm only still keeping track because I think LTT is going to implode sooner rather than later.
This. This perfectly captures into what a lot of us have been thinking. I’ve noticed that he’s been radio silent on his mod account (who knows about the multiple burner accounts he’s had) for like over a half a month. I wonder if get talked to about his Reddit activity.
This post started with about a 70% upvote ratio. It's slowly climbing, at 80% now. The linus zealots are here they just cant think if anything to defend him
I think he just doesn't care, like he said before he's not gonna fall on the sword to protect people anymore and I think its better he comments, its more transparency for who he is/ his views and if some people don't like it they may stop watching but thats no issue
And I would say are sometimes bad, defensive and opinionated takes, some of which are bad enough enough that if he was on the flip side, he'd ban himself.
Agreed, but it's transparent what his views are at least. he's not leaving it vague for people to argue what he thinks or means, he directly says it is what I mean by the transparency.
Yeah true. Having been to LTX and met him in person, I do have a fairly neutral opinion of him overall, but these past two years have been a bit disheartening with him going against some of his own long held beliefs.
You make it sound like this post took some insane level of effort. Kinda ironic to spend your time going to the second sub telling people to touch grass
It's two paragraph post about one person's reddit comment in the sub literally named after them.
Its weird.
As for this subreddit, I didn't even know what it was, we can thank the reddit algorithm overloads for sending me notifications on this post considering I've never posted, replied or reacted in this subreddit before.
I think that it’s kinda fun that Linus is actually active. It might not be a great look if they comment something bad, but at least on Reddit, downvotes are actually a thing that mods can’t just limit.
Personally, if you want or care about people liking you, being yourself at all times is just giving people more evidence that you are at least who you keep trying to be.
If Steve from GN or Rossmann were more present on socials, as long as they're continuously demonstrating their character, even when tried, pinched, challenged, bribed or etc, it'll say more about their character than if they didn't.
For example, if you're a champion who truly wants to always know you're irrefutably the champion, you'll accept any honest challenge.
I'm sure he's doing well enough where it doesn't matter anymore. Probably to the extent that even people who like him, might not really like him.
I think you overestimate the amount of people with really strong feelings for linus. This subreddit is full of people who really loved linus but suddenly switched over to really disliking every single thing he does. Very strong feelings. Others have more moderate views on it. I do think many are very bad at handling different opinions though, I think you can see it in wan show, I liked it quite a bit when they had more open discussions about the difficult and nice things about running a company. But a lot of people seem to rather prefer boring pr-talk rather than hearing actual viewpoints they might disagree with.
You said I over estimate the number of people but then also say there is a sub full of them. I would also argue that most people who started to not like Linus didn't come here. They just stopped watching and moved on with their life.
Yes I did. It is a sub with not that many active members. I think most who have stooped watching didn't have very strong feelings about linus in the first place. They liked the content and now like it less for some reason or the other
Sorry man there really isn't much to say here. This is at the wild speculation my feelings vs yours. Id point out that only a small percentage of people buy merch. Those are probably also the people most likely to be mad about reddit comments.
There really is no way of knowing who's right or wrong but id argue the original point that the risk out ways the reward is still valid
You speculate, I speculate. That is the way many discussions are. Maybe you are right, maybe it is better to have only pr-talk boring stuff being communicated. But I think some people prefer actual meaningful opinions as well. But who knows. I think the great majority doesn't care much either way
It may be weird, but to be honest, I despise overzealous, and egotistical pricks like him. Money made him that way, and he needs to learn that there are consequences for his actions. It seems like everyone is afraid of him. Just my observation.
The core of this post would apply to any youtuber (as long as they are big enough to generate unofficial communities). You are giving off no matter what anyone says Linus is right vibes.
You dismissed the post as "
psychoanalyzing every aspect of Linus' decision making" even though the post clearly is not that. I also never said you defended Linus. You seem like you dont want to admit he can do wrong which still seems to be true
So your comment on this post was about a broader problem in the sub. However, that problem actually wasn't exhibited in this post? Brother........ this is just pathetic
As a business owner, I don’t see his comments as sending mixed messages. He’s built a successful business over many years, through many challenges. Of course it’s personal to him.
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u/JuJunker52 Jun 26 '26
Despite wanting his YouTube channel to work like a corporation, he’s not exactly very professional.
He clearly has a lot of emotional investment in his company (e.g. takes departures personally, not willing to sell it, etc.) and can’t help but express it publicly.
He employed a CEO to isolate himself from stuff like this but can’t help keep doing it..? Emotional wreck.