Linus and Critical Comments (WAN Show)

[InitSap]

So, I don't hang out here much but I'm a regular longtime viewer of pretty much all the LMG channels and I really want to get something off my chest about what I think is starting to be a bit of a troubling theme on the WAN Show. Sorry, this is gonna be a bit of an essay, but I hope maybe it'll go somewhere.

 

Disclaimer: I don't watch the full WAN show, I watch clips - so maybe my experience of this is a little bit skewed by sampling bias (which parts of the whole WAN show make it into clips, and which clips YouTube happens to recommend to me). But even if that's the case, I still think it's a pattern because I've been noticing it for some time now (like, since the summer).

 

I think Linus is wasting a huge amount of his energy on contemplating and addressing individual pieces of criticism that don't ultimately matter and which he should just be ignoring, for the sake of his own sanity (but also for the sake of WAN show viewers).

 

Don't get me wrong. I love that Linus cares what the community thinks and is happy to engage with feedback (including negative feedback), and obviously WAN Show is the perfect venue for that. But I think for some reason - and it may well just be the stress of all the changes at LMG and the whole global situation right now - Linus has really started taking random destructive feedback from lone individuals to heart, which I feel like he didn't use to.

 

To be clear - I don't mean when people disagree with the takes presented in videos, or even some of his actions. There's been plenty of times where I've watched a video and thought "I disagree with this take", or "I don't agree with what Linus has done here". And sometimes I've left a comment to that effect on YouTube, explaining my reasoning for why I disagree. And if he wants to address that kind of criticism on the WAN Show - whether it comes from a YT video comment, a forum post, or a Floatplane chat message - great! I think that makes for great content and community engagement.

 

But a lot of what Linus has been responding to recently is basically just random allegations of bad faith that don't merit a response. Because people allege bad faith for only one of three reasons: (1) They're genuinely convinced someone is acting in bad faith, (2) they feel attacked and are using an allegation of bad faith as a coping/defence mechanism, or (3) they just disagree with something and are trying to use an allegation of bad faith as a rhetorical tactic (ad hominem) in an attempt to make the other person feel bad and retract their opinion.

 

The thing is, none of these motivations are worth addressing. First of all, it won't accomplish anything. More importantly, I feel like it's almost always (3). If you genuinely think the whole LTT screwdriver endeavour is just a scheme to scam viewers out of money, why are you supporting LTT on Floatplane? If you actually think Linus is some sort of sociopath who doesn't care about mowing down children in a school zone, why are you subscribed to his channel? If you think his criticisms of products are based on egotism and entitlement rather than useful criteria, wtf are you getting out of watching Linus criticise products to begin with?

 

It's so blatantly vacuous and trollish that I just want to headdesk whenever Linus wastes his time trying to engage with this sort of nonsense and asks "What do you want me to do differently?" as if there could possibly be a sensible answer to that question (I know it's more of a rhetorical question, but even rhetorical questions only work when they actually have some kind of meaningful answer). And it's clearly not just me: Every time this happens, Luke keeps pointing out that these are just angry individuals and not the community consensus, that Linus isn't doing anything fundamentally wrong and should just ignore them.

 

Now you might be like "cool story bro, but why do you care?" Well, the problem with paying too much attention to haters is that it makes you more stressed and more defensive yourself. If you preoccupy yourself with destructive criticism, it makes you stressed; stress activates your monkey brain, and your monkey brain starts to learn "criticism=destructive". So then in time *you* become defensive and start acting like a hater in response to criticism - even constructive criticism.

 

There was a YouTube comment somewhere that pointed to a forum exchange between Linus and a community member where the member was setting out his objective reasons for disagreeing with something or other (I can't even recall what it was). Linus's reaction? Well, he baselessly accused that guy of bad faith. Not too surprising in light of what he's been engaging with - see point (2) above.

 

And again, don't get me wrong - I'm not saying Linus has turned into a hater. He still owns up to his own shortcomings (even if some rando on Floatplane accused him of not doing so after he literally did so...), but my point is, Linus's current level of engagement with asinine bad-faith criticism can't be good for his mental health or his general stress, and a stressed and exasperated Linus isn't good for the community, either.

 

Last and also least importantly, it's also just not good content. Nobody needs a justification from Linus for a complaint that basically no one actually has to begin with. Like, imagine if Binging with Babish received a comment claiming that his hatred of cilantro means he's a racist, and then he decided to dedicate a full 2-5 minutes on a livestream to justifying why not liking the taste of cilantro does not in fact make someone a racist. It's just a defensive ramble that doesn't matter to anyone because you're getting defensive about some random person's completely unfounded opinion about you which isn't shared by the community at large.

 

So, yeah. I don't really know what I'm hoping to accomplish with this post, but I really hope Linus stops engaging with toxic criticism so hopefully he has more capacity to deal with actual *legit* criticism and also so he doesn't end up having a nervous breakdown.

[Ign0tus]

I think Luke has tried to keep him in the right mindset. That mindset being (imo) either "you can't fix stupid" in regard to people that simply can't understand the point like the discussion about cruise control in a school zone, or "you can't please all of the people all of the time". Luke obviously isn't going to even hint at any of the viewers being stupid, but he has tried to push that second point about trying to please everyone all of the time. There will always be some who are going to find something to bitch about regardless so you just have to let them whine and move on.

 

On one hand, part of me thinks Linus' ego keeps him from being able to accept that someone thinks he's wrong, but on the other I genuinely think he's a good guy and gets frustrated if anyone thinks otherwise. I don't doubt his heart is in the right place. Hopefully he can get to a point where he doesn't worry about it because it's very liberating. For me personally, once I realized the first one (people be dumb), not being bothered by their ridiculous comments got much easier. Don't argue with the donkey.

[Erioch]

No way I'm reading all that.

[Ign0tus]

8 minutes ago, Erioch said:

No way I'm reading all that.

I skimmed it and got the gist.

[eatstorming]

I agree with most of the OP's points and share some of their thoughts. I stopped watching the WAN Show live a few years ago and one of the main reasons for it is the cringe whenever Linus goes off on those tangents. I realized that by watching the VOD instead of the stream, I can save myself the torture of watching him give way the hell too much airtime to people and comments that do not deserve it, so I skip ahead.

 

However, I feel like since the screwdriver/backpack nonsense started coming up, this has become even more of an issue and an insane amount of time is being dedicated to the nonsense. Yeah, I get that going completely silent on things would make it worse, but I think he needs to learn to draw the line and drop it after he addresses what needs to be addressed, and to not try to please everyone because that's just never going to happen.

[ThousandBlade]

32 minutes ago, Ign0tus said:

I think Luke has tried to keep him in the right mindset. That mindset being (imo) either "you can't fix stupid" in regard to people that simply can't understand the point like the discussion about cruise control in a school zone, or "you can't please all of the people all of the time". Luke obviously isn't going to even hint at any of the viewers being stupid, but he has tried to push that second point about trying to please everyone all of the time. There will always be some who are going to find something to bitch about regardless so you just have to let them whine and move on.

 

On one hand, part of me thinks Linus' ego keeps him from being able to accept that someone thinks he's wrong, but on the other I genuinely think he's a good guy and gets frustrated if anyone thinks otherwise. I don't doubt his heart is in the right place. Hopefully he can get to a point where he doesn't worry about it because it's very liberating. For me personally, once I realized the first one (people be dumb), not being bothered by their ridiculous comments got much easier. Don't argue with the donkey.

This.

 

not only can you not fix stupid but you also can't understand stupid.

Linus is probably so used to being a public figure and avoiding angering parts of his viewer. so much so that he went down the rabbit hole of trying to understand stupid.

 

Yeah, that part is not fun to watch. 

[Yoinkerman]

Tldr but Linus has been deeply involved in reading posts and comments and feedback since literally before lmg guys, I don't know why you'd expect that to change