Has Anyone Else Unsubscribed From Gamers Nexus?

[Needfuldoer]

4 hours ago, HomicidalPingu said:

Nearly everything on short circuit 

ShortCircuit is an unboxing channel/series. The whole point is to give first impressions and read marketing copy.

[Uttamattamakin]

On 4/30/2023 at 1:00 AM, nick name said:

For a while I appreciated their more in-depth videos, but now they just seem gleeful to try to find something negative to post about.  Others present negative things in a more matter-of-fact manner and that I appreciate, but Gamers Nexus seems so much more happy to have found something wrong than to simply report something wrong.  

I interpret that "glee" as being happy to have reproduced the defects people were reporting.  Like if some number of a component catch fire under load that's important to know about but might not happen all the time.  So getting it to happen can be exciting.   

Seeing a CPU burn like a sparkler is going to be exciting. 

[tkitch]

7 hours ago, HomicidalPingu said:

Nearly everything on short circuit 

the unboxing channel has things that look like ads?  The hell you say?

 

/gasp shocked and appalled.  

 

That's how it works.  That's what it is.

 

LTT's channel is VERY VERY Obvious about sponsored content, with big "SPONSORED VIDEO" banners as well as the host *ALWAYS* saying that it is sponsored AT LEAST TWICE.

[tkitch]

12 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

read what i wrote and maybe watch the video... the case did not burn until  he massively "helped"

 

super deceptive... doesn't matter if there where actual cases, its still not upright. 

 

cpu cooler review-- about as good as comparable noctuas, but he "cant recommend it" because he doesn't like the advertising... just odd and kinda showed his true colors (highly biased)

 

simply not a trustworthy channel in my opinion 

*sigh*  Everyone looks bad when you take them out of context.  

 

Yes, he "helped" by installing and uninstalling the riser card a few times, which, isn't something that'd be that unusual over the life of a case.  Tear it all the way down to clean the box?  That's a once a year task, give or take, and when you're grinding away the little bit of PCB that covered the ground plane each time?  Yeah, that's a problem.  

 

It's not like he "helped" by doing something that's NOT what you'd do with the case.  

 

I can't speak to the cooler review, but the ones I have watched, I've been impressed, and haven't seen much that would look like bias from their team.

[Rex Hite]

It's all PR. Sometimes for particular brands or products and sometimes for the consumer tech game market in general.

 If a presenter comes off as knowing as much or less than the audience then credibility would suffer. 

When the starting premise is, "we know something you don't, so pay attention...", then smugness is built-in. It's a required component.

[tkitch]

Just now, HomicidalPingu said:

Not all the time. It’s also mixed with other videos of a similar nature that aren’t sponsored and reviews which muddies the water. They also do sponsored videos about how great a manufacturer says their product is around the product review which muddles it even further 

Yes, all the time.  Find me one video that was sponsored by the manuf that wasn't labeled as such.

 

Also:  Sponsored Videos are NOT reviews.  They're Ads / Showcases.  THEY ARE NOT REVIEWS.

[Thaldor]

I have unsubbed some other tech channels but GN, nope and if something very drastic doesn't happen, never will.

 

To name two: Jay and Bitwit. Bitwit because the new style the channel took after Kyles divorce just wasn't my slice of bread. Jay a bit same reason, doing some random goofy stuff, high-end build after high-end build and then there was the RTX 4000 series rant. Seriously, if someone has the will to make 10 minute rant video about how tone deaf someone else is the least they could do is stand by that rant and not just held it as some venting point, especially when you are fairly famous on the platform. It's the same shit as with Linus taking a stance against binding Quest 2 to Facebook account and rounding it to a marginal low-key notion when Facebook pays for the video. Nothing personal against either one of them and business is business.

 

Which brings well into:

18 hours ago, Mark Kaine said:

about as good as comparable noctuas, but he "cant recommend it" because he doesn't like the advertising

And this is exactly why I require a lot from GN to unsub.

 

That a company does false and misleading advertisement is something to be called out. No matter how good the product is, even if it's the best product in the category and the rest are pure garbage, if the company is shit, the product is shit and we shouldn't let companies get away with the shit they do just because they made a great product. We can discuss about recommending the product when the company has fixed itself but before that, fuck them.

 

This is actually why I was a bit surprised ShortCircuit made a video about garbage Sonos products. It might have slipped them and not jump out while research but every Sonos product is pure garbage, 0/10. Audio quality, looks, price, nothing matters, pure garbage. Why? Because "turn your completely fine speaker into e-waste for 30% discount for a new Sonos speaker because we are taking this old app down" and the app is the only thing able to control those pieces of garbage.

Seriously, tech companies get away so easily. Like Razer has complete garbage software and yet people let that go because the looks of their products. Stop buying that shit and demand the fix before throwing your hard earned money on them. IGN is pretty much only alive today because gamers cannot say "fuck you" and walk away without looking back.

I think we really need someone like Steve who really seems to care about the whole picture and also explaining the reason behind that picture. Like in the case of Zalman, the cooler was very good but they cannot recommend it because the company has misleading advertisement, Zalman can go and fix their shit and Steve will be more than happy to recommend their product. I don't know has Zalman done that but if they haven't, fuck them.

 

What comes to the "pissing on poor", I haven't seen it. It can be my own bias because I think it's always good to take the competition into calculation and if you can get a lot better product by spending $10-20 more, it's not a question, get the better one. If that $10-20 is too much for someone to spend more for a better product, they probably have more important things to spend the price of the cheapest one than that product (like food). If it's not heart-lung machine you are getting, you can wait the couple weeks - couple months for that $10-20 more to afford the better option. Remember: "poor cannot afford bad".

And that "but it is a good product in some cases" is bullshit. Even a stopped clock is good clock twice a day, does that turn it into a good clock? No. Of course thing would be different if we were talking about really specialized product, like some Xeon CPU may suck as gaming CPU but be extremely good in virtualization and that doesn't make it a bad product because it was made for that virtualization. $3 CPU cooler having sub-par performance doesn't make it "low power cooler"; That it has bad performance doesn't magically move it to compete with small form coolers or passive coolers or whatever specialized coolers, it is just a bad product and looking for the few special cases where it actually is a good could be called "scraping the bottom of the barrel".

 

Also in tech space Steve is someone with actual connections (not just official brand polishers giving away free stuff and stamping sponsorships). I wouldn't be surprised if Steve would still get his Nvidia GPUs from some board partner for release testing and I wouldn't be surprised if he did the same with some other products. While some may say he is more sensationalist reporter when it comes to news, at least he does his research and backs his claims (unlike certain others on YT) by getting the faulty hardware (if possible), conducting his own tests (they may require some outside of normal use things but the point is to find what could go wrong) and he contacts people directly working on the problem both unofficially (anonymous sources) and officially (the actual company). That is a huge step from some YT channels jumping on the problem, quoting the reddit and maybe some big media outlet and adding some "I think"/"I believe" on top of it.

[starsmine]

2 minutes ago, HomicidalPingu said:

The Sonos one… beat for beat product marketing with the classic “I was ready to shit all over it but now Sonos only make amazing products and you should buy TWO not one”.

Then why are they presented as reviews and not labelled showcases anymore? You also completely bypassed my second point. 

Short circutis are never once presented as reviews. 

[starsmine]

3 minutes ago, HomicidalPingu said:

Yes they are. Most of their videos are. 

Not a SINGLE short circuit video is a review or presented as one, they are presented as an unboxing and a first impression. 
I think we found the disconect for you, and its that you dont know what a review is. 

[starsmine]

1 minute ago, HomicidalPingu said:

Definition - “A review is an evaluation of a publication, product, service, or company”

 

That is what short circuit does. I have literally given an example where they give consumer advice on purchases. Do you even watch the videos? 

I watch most of them, and they do not give a proper or complete evaluation of any of those listed. They literally open up the box and go hey, this part is nice, or hey I'm not fond of this part. and move on. They spend zero actual time actually evaluating anything to any standard. 

[divito]

9 minutes ago, HomicidalPingu said:

Yes they are. Most of their videos are. 

ShortCircuit hasn't done any actual reviews. The channel exists for items that the main LTT channel isn't interested in fully reviewing (though I think there are some SC items that warranted full reviews later, but none spring to mind right now).

They unbox the item, give their first impressions, and give out the marketing spiel of the company for items that are new or unreleased. There's little to no interaction with the items, as that would put it into review territory, and simply give a quick overview of features, price, and availability for viewers. 

If you equate an SC video with an LTT review, I'm not sure we can help you with that leap.

[wanderingfool2]

Personally I really do enjoy the Gamers Nexus channel.  I much prefer a YouTuber who isn't afraid to highlight the negatives of products or quality issues.

 

It allows for a more general view of what quality a product is if someone is nit-picking at the details and issues with it.  Compared to some reviewers which tend to gloss of glaring issues, or don't properly address current issues.

 

One thing I wish more YouTubers did was having some form of disclaimer as well to what hardware was or wasn't paid for.

  

16 hours ago, Spotty said:

Can you give an example?

While not 100% in line with an example where I think LTT crossed the line (and to the point where I actually was wondering if they broke at least disclosure laws) would be the following

While they did essentially say No to buying a Mirai (unless in LA), it was more because the fueling stations weren't around.  It was "sponsored" by AMD, but they used the slides from Toyota, and the general talking points about the Mirai (a lot of YouTubers released videos similar around the time).  Including equating more mass in trucks = worse performance which doesn't strictly apply to BEV's (due to regenerative braking); and other fallacies that Toyota had pushed.

 

Toyota covered part of the travel costs, and provided the vehicle which they didn't disclose; whether they like it or not though if Toyota covers parts of their travel costs that video now becomes sponsored by Toyota as well.

[divito]

20 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

they used the slides from Toyota, and the general talking points about the Mirai. 

So, when reviewing something, you're not supposed to show relevant imagery, or mention manufacturer's claims about its product? Is every GPU video crossing the line because they mention the CUDA cores, or clock speed, or show Nvidia/AMD slides from a presentation?
 

27 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Including equating more mass in trucks = worse performance which doesn't strictly apply to BEV's (due to regenerative braking)

It's a mitigation, but it's still technically worse performance even with regenerative braking; that's just physics.
 

33 minutes ago, wanderingfool2 said:

Toyota covered part of the travel costs, and provided the vehicle which they didn't disclose; whether they like it or not though if Toyota covers parts of their travel costs that video now becomes sponsored by Toyota as well.

I don't know where this is from?

[Poinkachu]

22 hours ago, starsmine said:

I read what you wrote, case was throwing sparks and was shorted before he massively "helped"  
it was not deceptive. He showed the mechanism of HOW it was already starting fires. and by helped... he twisted a screw. 

Literally... just twisted a screw. aka something a normal user would fucking do, or would have the screw in the right spot to do that after their build and at some point, it sparks just right and catches fire when not at home. There was nothing misleading here. Screw will twist when in shipping as well as vibrations make it back in or back out. OH WOW went to a LAN party, now my house is on fire. 

Im sorry, lying about your product in your advertising is a solid reason to not recommend it. Dude is biased against false advertising, such an awful thing to be biased against. holy hell. The data is still in the video for those who still want it. Just imagine seeing a company just LIE about a product and saying, oh you fine, ill actively recommend it anyways. 
Is this what you are talking about? 
His statements are, the cooler is average. (which is not a negative) and if you like the way it looks, cool.

 

Just feel like adding some stuffs :

1. Marketing "wording" sounds damn cool to those who are not savvy enough about this kind of bullshitery. I've been a victim once, long long time ago.

I'm glad GN always addresses this. It needs to effin stop ffs.

 

2. I'm glad he spent time trying to replicate and find out what's causing NZXT's fire. It made me realize that plating on the mounting holes is quite important, I immediately checked all the riser cables I had bought. Yes the 12v trace also needs to be close enough to the unplated screw hole for it to happen, but eh, I checked anyway for good measure and ease of mind. And yep, even my pretty much no brand Chinese riser I bought from aliexpress have plated mounting holes.

 

I was also thinking to buy either H1 or Phanteks Evolve before that fiasco surfaced. I'm glad his coverage brought the possible house fire to my attention.

Because in my country, I can't return a case to the seller easily, and RMA for stuffs like it is annoying at best.

 

3. As for that Zalman cooler video, I think he viewed it in a fair way, slightly towards positive even.

From Filmot.com.  As can be seen (or heard if you watch the video), he pretty much list that cooler as an option, out of three.

He even praised the fan clip saying it's more secure than the NH-D15.

 

Mentioned again in another video :

 

[wanderingfool2]

1 hour ago, divito said:

So, when reviewing something, you're not supposed to show relevant imagery, or mention manufacturer's claims about its product? Is every GPU video crossing the line because they mention the CUDA cores, or clock speed, or show Nvidia/AMD slides from a presentation?

Not saying that, but when you use slides from them without reference that it was created by Toyota (only reason I knew was because I also watched other videos which did disclose that).  They also use numbers that were skewed towards hydrogen.

 

1 hour ago, divito said:

It's a mitigation, but it's still technically worse performance even with regenerative braking; that's just physics.

But there was a heavy implication in the video that the battery size would make it impractical.  The battery weight makes up only a smaller percentage of the total weight of the semi when loaded...which then regen braking becomes a massive factor (since now you aren't punished fully by accelerating the cargo).  Yet none of these offsets were mentioned in the video.

 

1 hour ago, divito said:

I don't know where this is from?

It was mentioned after a few of us were asking on the forum what was Toyota's involvement in the video.

[thrasher_565]

On 5/1/2023 at 6:56 PM, starsmine said:

I read what you wrote, case was throwing sparks and was shorted before he massively "helped"  
it was not deceptive. He showed the mechanism of HOW it was already starting fires. and by helped... he twisted a screw. 

Literally... just twisted a screw. aka something a normal user would fucking do, or would have the screw in the right spot to do that after their build and at some point, it sparks just right and catches fire when not at home. There was nothing misleading here. Screw will twist when in shipping as well as vibrations make it back in or back out. OH WOW went to a LAN party, now my house is on fire. 

Im sorry, lying about your product in your advertising is a solid reason to not recommend it. Dude is biased against false advertising, such an awful thing to be biased against. holy hell. The data is still in the video for those who still want it. Just imagine seeing a company just LIE about a product and saying, oh you fine, ill actively recommend it anyways. 
Is this what you are talking about? 
His statements are, the cooler is average. (which is not a negative) and if you like the way it looks, cool.

 

hmm to point one thing out. this video is about the cpus at that time. dont need a d15 for 6600k (even thow i have one) but it didnt work for the 8700k witch needed a 360 aio... and then some... at some point dont rember when all the testing was not on pcs any more but a hotplate. and well the carbon nano tube thing also would help things in constancy. the point is no one is perfect.

[DeerDK]

2 hours ago, HomicidalPingu said:

You’re not getting the issue that it’s a paid review that isn’t marked as such. 
 

Same company, same standards. They also muddy waters on the main channel with taking sponsors from companies of products they’re reviewing around the launch window, for example they peddled nvidias 8K gaming BS around the time I think it was the 3090 or Ti was launched. 

Link?

I just tried looking for ShortCircut and Sonos on YT, could't find one that said sponsored by Sonos. Or do you equate free review sample as paid?

Edit: Is your claim that an unboxing cannot include any personal impressions/thoughts from the presenter without morphing into a full flegede review?

[DeerDK]

23 minutes ago, HomicidalPingu said:

It’s from 5 days ago. It’s not marketed as being sponsored by Sonos but it clearly is with how it hits every bit of marketing point and doesn’t really cover anything else. 

So you accuse LTT of doing a paid but undisclosed review/sponsor spot? 

 

Do you have any proof? Because that is a serious accusation. 

 

But if they are not doing anything but presenting it and giving some first hand impressions, why do you insist it's a review? 

[Thaldor]

2 hours ago, DeerDK said:

Link?

I just tried looking for ShortCircut and Sonos on YT, could't find one that said sponsored by Sonos. Or do you equate free review sample as paid?

Edit: Is your claim that an unboxing cannot include any personal impressions/thoughts from the presenter without morphing into a full flegede review?

While the sponsor spot is for Alpaca keyboards, the video is sponsored by Sonos, or do you think LMG made direct affiliate link to Sonos webstore out of their goodwill instead of their usual Amazon affiliate links?

 

As in the link in the description (lmg.gg/RQPJB) leads to sonos.com with affiliate link "Linus Media Group".

Mostly SC and any LMG channel does mention that the video is sponsored by the company behind the featured product, not this time so maybe not 100% sponsored video or something else.

 

Either way personally not my problem does someone disclose their sponsors and biases or doesn't. My problem is that after 2 years Sonos hasn't changed a thing and people were pretty fucking angry about the "turn your completely fine speaker to e-waste for 30% discount" campaign Sonos was having. Even from the SC video you can find the part that turns every single Sonos product to garbage, the part where the speakers need to connect to the SOnos app that Sonos may nuke at any moment they deem good moment to force everyone to buy new speakers.
As in the best thing you can do with Sonos product is not to get one, not to review one, not to give them any fucks. If you need to do something with Sonos, do as Dave did and rip the brains out of that junk and replace with something actually working.

[DeerDK]

3 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

While the sponsor spot is for Alpaca keyboards, the video is sponsored by Sonos, or do you think LMG made direct affiliate link to Sonos webstore out of their goodwill instead of their usual Amazon affiliate links?

 

As in the link in the description (lmg.gg/RQPJB) leads to sonos.com with affiliate link "Linus Media Group".

Mostly SC and any LMG channel does mention that the video is sponsored by the company behind the featured product, not this time so maybe not 100% sponsored video or something else.

 

Either way personally not my problem does someone disclose their sponsors and biases or doesn't. My problem is that after 2 years Sonos hasn't changed a thing and people were pretty fucking angry about the "turn your completely fine speaker to e-waste for 30% discount" campaign Sonos was having. Even from the SC video you can find the part that turns every single Sonos product to garbage, the part where the speakers need to connect to the SOnos app that Sonos may nuke at any moment they deem good moment to force everyone to buy new speakers.
As in the best thing you can do with Sonos product is not to get one, not to review one, not to give them any fucks. If you need to do something with Sonos, do as Dave did and rip the brains out of that junk and replace with something actually working.

That is concern to put on the sponsor feedback forum for sure. 

 

And yes I agree that affiliate links are a grey zone area. They are disclosed though. 

 

But I'm still questioning about the undisclosed sponsor deal/paid review accusation. 

[crazzp]

1 hour ago, Thaldor said:

the video is sponsored by Sonos, or do you think LMG made direct affiliate link to Sonos webstore out of their goodwill instead of their usual Amazon affiliate links?

Affiliation= sponsored?

Meaning almost all youtubers in the world are sponsored by Amazon by having affiliation link of the products they are review? Good lord.

 

55 minutes ago, DeerDK said:

But I'm still questioning about the undisclosed sponsor deal/paid review accusation.

You wont get any evidence. They are just here to make wildass claims and accusations without providing any supporting evidence.

[Thaldor]

24 minutes ago, DeerDK said:

That is concern to put on the sponsor feedback forum for sure. 

 

And yes I agree that affiliate links are a grey zone area. They are disclosed though. 

 

But I'm still questioning about the undisclosed sponsor deal/paid review accusation. 

They do disclose they will get kickback from the products bought through the links but that the payer is actually the company making the product.

I would argue that using third party links (like Amazon) are grey area, like yeah, you have some interest to make the product look good to get people buy through your links and get money but Amazon could care less about your video.

But when the affiliate link goes directly to the featured products manufacturers store, that is a way different thing. It could be dark grey if we were talking about Amazon where everyone and their dog has affiliate link and it could slip there because it's always there. But I don't think Sonos affiliate links are something common, I don't think Sonos affiliate program is something automated you just sign up for and start making money and so I think it is far more clearly sponsoring to have Sonos affiliate link in a video featuring Sonos products.

[DeerDK]

10 minutes ago, Thaldor said:

They do disclose they will get kickback from the products bought through the links but that the payer is actually the company making the product.

I would argue that using third party links (like Amazon) are grey area, like yeah, you have some interest to make the product look good to get people buy through your links and get money but Amazon could care less about your video.

But when the affiliate link goes directly to the featured products manufacturers store, that is a way different thing. It could be dark grey if we were talking about Amazon where everyone and their dog has affiliate link and it could slip there because it's always there. But I don't think Sonos affiliate links are something common, I don't think Sonos affiliate program is something automated you just sign up for and start making money and so I think it is far more clearly sponsoring to have Sonos affiliate link in a video featuring Sonos products.

It's still not a sponsored commercial. I tried looking up ethical influencer rules/guidelines for affiliated links. It seems like everything is within bonds. There is a text right under the link.

 

But we are discussing techicalities in relation to affilate links now. Where is the evidence of an undisclosed sponsor deal?

 

Because HomicidalPingu claims there is some sort of under the table deal going on where they get a good sponsor deal on another vid for doing this.

HomicidalPingu also claims its a review and not an unboxing, while at the same time saying "It’s not marketed as being sponsored by Sonos but it clearly is with how it hits every bit of marketing point and doesn’t really cover anything else."

So i repeat my question. Is an unboxing supposed to be only presenting without any opinion or impression?

 

Edit: Actually, lets try another approach. Would you kindly, in a few own words, not a wall of text, define "unboxing" and "review" as well as noting the key differences. No copy paste from some dictionary or anything. Your own subjective opinion of the matter. Because, I think figuring out a common ground for the different terms is the best way to continue this.

[starsmine]

6 hours ago, thrasher_565 said:

hmm to point one thing out. this video is about the cpus at that time. dont need a d15 for 6600k (even thow i have one) but it didnt work for the 8700k witch needed a 360 aio... and then some... at some point dont rember when all the testing was not on pcs any more but a hotplate. and well the carbon nano tube thing also would help things in constancy. the point is no one is perfect.

I do not know what you mean. I used a d14 for my 2600k, CPUs always benefitted from more cooling. I  don't know where you are getting it did not work for the 8700k, it very much does. Yea, they did hotplate to control wattage and standardize the test at some point, but I don't get what point that is. 

[Stahlmann]

On 5/1/2023 at 7:07 PM, Caroline said:

They review cheap stuff only to make people who can't afford any better feel bad and throw shame on their choices. Have a Chinese cooler? you're an idiot and also a communist, here's a 20 minute video on how Noctua and Thermalright are far better.

It's the stereotypical elitist reddit-infused channel that does 'reviews' on cheap products for the lulz. I'm not giving them any more views (therefore money) but the few videos I've watched a while ago were that, in a nutshell.

You're talking about a completely different Gamers Nexus than everyone else it seems. He has never called his audience idiots and he has never steered anyone towards a specific brand. He reviews the products in a mostly objective way (as objective as humanly possible) and if a cooler for example is better than a Noctua cooler, he will point that out. He hasn't recommended a Noctua cooler for a long time, because he reviewed ones that came out on top and are cheaper at the same time. They don't review cheap products "for the lulz". They review them because they know there is a huge market for them. Most people do buy cheap, so why not point them towards known good options?

 

On 5/1/2023 at 7:07 PM, Caroline said:

That other guy Jayz 2 cent is the same. That's what gets them views I suppose. When it comes to tech I'd rather read articles or forum posts than watch videos because the quality of most tech channels is close to terrible.

I'd rather watch bigclive or electroboom than PC channels but that's.....

That's more of a fit. Still, you seem to take one sentence or video and apply that to their complete content library for some reason. And somehow you see "this is a bad product" the same as "you're an idiot and also a communist, here's a 20 minute video on how Noctua and Thermalright are far better."