He is one of the scummiest tech influencers around. He was great at the start, but as time went on, he became increasingly worse. As his channel grew, he started focusing far more on 'entertainment' while neglecting actual, useful information.
I'm sure everyone knows the controversies about him and his channel, but I'll still talk about them.
He and other massive YouTube channels sponsored Honey, a malicious extension. He knew that the extension was suspicious but said nothing for so many years; he just stopped sponsoring it. Massive thanks to MegaLag for talking about this extension, here's the link.
There are a lot of errors in their benchmarks. Gamers Nexus made an amazing video about this and other issues. They have so many errors because the testing is rushed. This is mainly Linus's fault, as he forces his team to produce a massive amount of content just to make more money.
The reviews are biased. It's clearly biased because the company that sent the product also sponsored them. Not only do they have to sign NDAs in order to review products before they hit the market, but they also have an incentive to speak positively so the company doesn't blacklist them in the future. I know that almost every big YouTuber does this, but I don't think they should, and it doesn't result in a fair review.
He didn't want to increase his old friends/employees pay or solve their complains, saying that's how capitalism works.
He bought a private jet. A lot of his employees are poorly paid, and some of them barely get by. On top of that, he tries to justify it by saying that he got the plane for '$0' and that it's actually cheaper using his 'girl math.' In reality, that plane costs an average of $6.6M to purchase, plus $1.5 million to $2.5 million annually in operating costs.
He has many more problems and controversies. I don't know how he has so many 'fans' and why people still watch and support him. He's a scummy, narcissistic, and greedy person, creating videos where he forces his underpaid employees to work on his home.
LINKS:
MegaLag - Exposing the Honey Influencer Scam
Gamers Nexus - The Problem with Linus Tech Tips: Accuracy, Ethics, & Responsibility
Head Pluck - A perfectly balanced mouse review. (Pwnage x Shortcircuit / LTT Edit)
Vex - Linus has a WEIRD Problem
Linnus Tech Tips - The Gamer Jet is Real! and it Cost $0*, The Highest PC Build EVER - World Record
I went off him a long long time ago. When he was building "servers" in the bathroom, balancing machines and generally being a useless hack. He is a home user, humping stuff together and never took the time back then to learn how to do it right. The excuse was always "you can't know everything at first" while never actually taking any time to learn, any time to explain what he was learning or any time to teach. So in the end, you get a poor uninformed opinion. It's interesting to see nothing has changed.
As I've developed my opinion on social media, it is a regular pattern. People want to glamorise having a rack server, they don't want to glamorise the time it takes to learn how to rack machines, wiring management, power management, heat dispersal, network interfaces, resource balancing and management. Planning skills, for power, storage, etc.
Hikers want to show amazing pictures of the top of mountains. Not the thousands of hours map reading, training, being exposed to weather.
Gym goers want to show the competition and the physique. Not the hours of sweat, eat, sweat, injury, recover, sweat.
Linus wants to show "wow LEDs dood" but not the time it actually takes to learn to build and use a computer to its best.
He was the NCIX computer guy who started making videos for them, and it went from there. It's not like he was a genius or worked in the industry in operations or ran a netops department. He just sold computer parts at a retail store.
He's just the Dell dude
Holy shit. That's it.
I worked at a shop with a rack of Dell machines all under their care plan. When something went wrong, we had to troubleshoot the issue, determine what actually died, then the Dell dude would show up a day later with a replacement part. He'd fumble around swapping the motherboard (or whatever), make sure it didn't kick errors, then leave.
I remember one time the power supply and motherboard had died. I tried to explain this to Dell tech but they insisted it was just the board. Dell Dude arrived and only brought a board. Of course he couldn't get it running and he was like a lost lamb.
I guess they're like Geek Squad. They need people who know just enough to fumble though, but not enough to demand more pay.