What happened to LTT?

[Scia]

Hi,

 

I have been following LTT for the past 3-4 years. I was very amused as well as informed by the kinda 'crappy' videos in the back room of NCIX of this odd looking guy taking a look at stuff I was interested in buying / wanted more information about.

 

But I feel since LTT became a company, rather than a simple YouTube channel, things have changed for the worse.

 

Let's start with the videos.

While production quality has certainly increased, ~1/3 of the videos is advertisment, videos are split into parts, most likely in order to get that ad money (the sponsor messages) times n(parts). Not only is it rather annoying to watch a video in parts coming out weekly, it's also breaking the flow of the experience.

Next, the content of the video seems to be targeting an increasingly younger population. There's a lack of actual information and for that matter technical know-how.

Compared to channels such as TS for example, Wendell alone probably knows more than all of LTT combined.

One example would be the VM build for 2 gamers on one machine. Using commerical software, instead of something such as KVM or w/e. Followed by the server running Windows. really... this can easily be done on Linux, and through setting up Linux on your server to do your external rendering, you could have made tutorial videos along with it. But ya. Audience getting younger and so on.

 

Which brings me to the WAN show.

As it started in the garage, it was a nice show to watch. You had a nice catch up on the weeks information. Now it's basically 90mins of fooling around and ad banners / product placement / sponsor spots.

I know companies see you as influencers, and considering your rather young audience, you probably are, yet you kinda lost the path you were on when you started.

 

As you can see, I once really liked LTT and the direction it was heading. I even contributed to the first funding campaign for the forums, eventhough as a student I barely got any cash.

But after the success of the 'First Blood' initiative, basically you went looney, asking for 50k and god knows what.

 

The last thing to address would be the forums.

Appart from being obviously insecure, and thank god I use some rng pw here, the community has really gone down hill. It used to be a friendly place, people trying to help eachother and so on. As for what you can read now on a lot of other forum from the same sector is 'Don't go to LTT if you want decent answers.' And from my experience, I gotta say, it kinda became exactly this place. Someone posting a build, and 15 people flaming the OP as well as eachother.

 

I gotta say I am sad to see what happened to LTT and I will no longer be active on these forums after this post.

As well as unsubbing from the videos, as I really do not enjoy any of them anymore. Perhaps I am too old for this kind of content? I do on the other hand closely follow TS as well as participate in their Patreon, so my guess is I kinda grew out of LTT, maybe because I'm double the average age?

 

Be it as it may.

 

Sad to see this community / LTT go where it is heading.

 

Regards,

 

Scia

[spwath]

I agree with 70-80% of this

[yannickverc]

I agree with some parts. I think I actively started watching Linus' videos about a year and a half ago. At first the advertising at the end of the video didn't really bother me because I had seen the video and could close it no problem. But they they started doing advertising at the start and I had to ffw to where the actual video started and then in some longer videos they also put advertising in the middle and I just couldn't anymore. 

 

I'll still watch a Linus video if I want to watch a review video about a certain product, but I'm not watching every single video anymore. Instead I became pretty active on the forum here.

[don_svetlio]

I agree with some things but not with others.

[aneil1998]

He said that the videos were put into parts to keep the audiences attention. I personally rather longer videos.

 

He also stated in somewhere that the builds were to be "ultimate" for some reason that i can remember. I am on the fence for this one as i prefer the ultimate builds as well as Budget builds.

[don_svetlio]

He said that the videos were put into parts to keep the audiences attention. I personally rather longer videos.

 

He also stated in somewhere that the builds were to be "ultimate" for some reason that i can remember. I am on the fence for this one as i prefer the ultimate builds as well as Budget builds.

I honestly prefer Austin's system of 300$/400$/500%/1000$/4k$ builds

[aneil1998]

I honestly prefer Austin's system of 300$/400$/500%/1000$/4k$ builds

What about Paul's Hardware builds of the month. It's just theoretical builds but it contains both ultimate and budget builds and sometimes he builds it. So its a win-win situation

[Godlygamer23]

I understand what you mean in regards to the community going downhill. We do our best to keep the forum as clean as possible, but as you can well imagine with users signing up everyday, we can't see every problem, and rely on users to report things for us.

[Jobbe03]

Forums have been poopy for a loooooong time now. 

 

However, making a post for this is just kinda silly. Not interested anymore? No one really cares,

 

[TheKDub]

@LinusTech

@Slick

 

I agree with this almost 100%.

[KamiKatze]

I think Linus has to expand his portfolio (maybe new chanels) to offer different content for different groups of people. I really enjoyed the quick and dirty unboxings in the old days and I'd really like a dedicated series for such content, maybe even with another host.

Another idea would be just new hardware reviews and benchmarks (CPUs, GPUs SSDs etc.)

A third could then be the reviews if innovative or interesting tech items, which linus seems to prefer lateley.

Just clearly seperate your content and produce more of it (in total 2 or more vids a day). That's probably Linus' plan anyways but there you go...

[ShadowCaptain]

Honestly I kind of prefer the simpler videos, I dont want to watch 3 hours of him explaining how a cooler works or going through every cable on a power supply

 

I just want him to go "hey look heres a cool product, it works great" 

 

There are channels that spend an hour digging into menus if you want that, I like the Linus and team can deliver concise and to the point videos about a product, yes sometimes they could do MORE information, perhaps they do too many videos, but honestly the videos are long enough as is

 

 

I will admit, I watch it more for entertainment and to see cool stuff, more than I watch for actual information 

[Lays]

My biggest issue is the dragging on of certain series, it's now been nearly 2 months of SCW 3, and we've gotten like... 7 episodes...?

 

I understand they are a business and want to drag it out to make more money off it, but I really don't like it.   By the time I see the finale, I almost don't even remember the rest of the episodes.

[Master Disaster]

Linus addressed exactly this point in the last WAN Show.

 

If you want the "full fat" explanation then there are plenty of other sources available for that. Linus is following his own methodology which is where he wants to take his company. If you don't like it then that's cool, go and find another creator who caters to your expectations, I mean you can't please everybody all of the time.

 

Asking him to change his view of LMG in order to meet your expectations is just plain selfish however, he has built LMG up from zero to almost 2 million subs on his own (OK so not entirely on his own) and now he is not only one of the biggest YouTube channels in existence but he is also an industry figurehead too. He can't be doing things too wrong, can he?

[Samfisher]

My biggest issue is the dragging on of certain series, it's now been nearly 2 months of SCW 3, and we've gotten like... 7 episodes...?

 

I understand they are a business and want to drag it out to make more money off it, but I really don't like it.   By the time I see the finale, I almost don't even remember the rest of the episodes.

Linus has said multiple times that it takes a whole week to go through all the footage and edit 1 episode, that's the only reason why it's a weekly release.  It's only their third foray into this, they are still experimenting on what works.  It is after all, their most popular and newest series.

[brownninja97]

I 100% agree with everything. 3/4 years ago when i subscribed to LTT i was learning stuff, they included information that mattered, you would learn something from the videos etc etc. Not anymore and while ive not said anything ive not watched an ltt video in a while because none of it interests me. LTT has alienated its original audience sadly.

 

Forums have degraded in quality massively, 90% of people that i would talk to a year ago would be knowledgeable on most IT subjects, those that werent wouldnt reply with a stupid comment. With the exception of consoles and apple the forum would be mature and reasonable about everything, these days however its horrid, extremely high level of troll responses and the news has dropped in quality massively. I used to do news because i had time, now i dont and no one has been able to make news since i stopped and since victoria secret got banned.

 

Ive invested a ton of time here and its a real shame to see where its going. 

 

I'll miss your input Scia, yet another one of my friends leaving the forum, the number of early people that are still here is starting to dwindle and that truely is sad. 

[brownninja97]

Linus addressed exactly this point in the last WAN Show.

 

If you want the "full fat" explanation then there are plenty of other sources available for that. Linus is following his own methodology which is where he wants to take his company. If you don't like it then that's cool, go and find another creator who caters to your expectations, I mean you can't please everybody all of the time.

 

Asking him to change his view of LMG in order to meet your expectations is just plain selfish however, he has built LMG up from zero to almost 2 million subs on his own (OK so not entirely on his own) and now he is not only one of the biggest YouTube channels in existence but he is also an industry figurehead too. He can't be doing things too wrong, can he?

The issue is that when he was growing many teenagers subbed to him, over time they have become adults but youtube has become less mature and linus has slowly whether he knows it or not catered more for that audience. it makes sense because kids have more free time hence they can watch more videos.

[Master Disaster]

The issue is that when he was growing many teenagers subbed to him, over time they have become adults but youtube has become less mature and linus has slowly whether he knows it or not catered more for that audience. it makes sense because kids have more free time hence they can watch more videos.

Any business that wants to be successful has to cater to the largest common denominator, that's just common sense. Remember that Linus has a lot of mouths to feed, not only his wife and child but also each of his employees and their families too.

 

He has to cater for the people who are going to give his company the most money, be it from sales, ad revenue or any other form of income otherwise there would be 10+ people looking for another job and one failed business under administration.

[kgorringe]

tl;dr version - "ltt has more videos with less quality and some ads. WAN show is basically the same but with ads and some foolishness, and the forums just got sucky"

[DarkBlade2117]

I watch TechQuickie more than LTT

[Quincy15]

I recognise what the OP is saying but as LTT grows its inevitable that Ads become more prevelant to pay the bills. How big is the team now? If you dont like it there are plenty of other tech youtubers who do not operate this way.

 

Personally I skip all the ads on Youtube and do not watch each video and have seen the channel become a infomercial for tech products as they rarely say anything negative.  

 

The OP is brave saying what he has, the LTT Forum community can be very toxic (almost as bad as the people who troll Reviewtechusa) and some will defend everything Linus does

 

They are drawing out Scrap Yard wars 3 because its the reason why most people watch Vessel

[Aytex]

well they have been getting larger and larger soooooooo i would expect this to happen to anyone in the same shoes 

[ManWithBeard1990]

I don't think it's that bad, to be honest. The guy has to bring bread on the table somehow, after all.

Although binge-watching scrapyard wars would have been fun.

[Smooth Bunz]

I agree with probably 70ish% of this.. I miss the actual computer parts videos... I know they still do them just not like they use too..

[Quincy15]

well they have been getting larger and larger soooooooo i would expect this to happen to anyone in the same shoes 

I agree.

 

They have reached such a headcount and size that they have to do this stuff