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 never really watched any of their videos before, but over the last year as anti-Windows sentiment was on the rise I was watching a variety of "person tries out Linux" videos as a guilty pleasure and this ended up including the most recent attempt of LLT to switch to Linux. I was aware of how poorly it went when he had tried Linux before from general online sentiment and comments like yours, but only actually watched some of the new attempt (which ended up dragged out into multiple videos that I didn't care to try and keep up on).
The thing that had stuck out to me the most was Linus' insistence on using an LLM to decide what distro to use and how to start. He said that searching this online got too many disagreeing answers and that the various listicles he found before steered him wrong before (though much of his poor experience seems to come from the attitude you mentioned) and that the everyman was just going to ask a LLM what to do anyway (despite likely being trained on exactly the same sources he was critical of).
And on this attempt at Linux, other members of his staff were participating - some even used Linux of their own volition before - but he remained obstinent about not asking anyone for advice and just taking this everyman approach he decided on in an attempt to offer multiple perspectives on the challenge, as he chose to put it after negative reaction. It was just so off-putting to me, you can still make your own decision after asking for an opinion online or in person or after spending a reasonable amount of time doing research online (let alone if it was your job). It gives the impression that, yes, he doesn't really care to actually read into these things and that he had enough of an ego to not want to change his stance.
I had no idea about the rest of these controversies until today though, and it's definitely making what I saw make more sense.