I can assure you, this is not about people wanting to take down the 15M subscriber titan. (though undoubtedly some haters are just jumping on the opportunity, I don’t think that’s the majority) For many of us fans, we have been seeing this coming for a while, or those who are blindsided feel utterly betrayed after such a long time watching LTT religiously. It’s always been possible to ignore the awkward moments in videos or write off the bad behavior as just an “on-screen persona” thing. There’s a clear problem with company culture at LTT, and these things usually come out in this way, with victims waiting for the right moment. Presuming innocence on his part means presuming lies on the part of the victims, and that doesn’t sit right with me. I wouldn’t necessarily take it 100% at face value truth but there’s no doubt something majorly wrong going on in that office.

As a fan, I want to see transparency and a healthy working environment behind the videos. Linus’ response wasn’t just underwhelming, it was a complete betrayal. Even before I knew about the nasty working conditions, the simple back and forth between GN and Linus was enough to put a massive crack in the LTT facade. I didn’t need someone to confirm the working conditions were bad, to make an educated guess at how the guy totally unwilling to spend “up to” $500 man-hours more on a video to ensure it’s done right probably isn’t running a fair system of work.

Lately there’s been this weird undertone of discomfort in Linus’ videos, and I think I now understand why. He does a great job appearing to be a decent and relatable guy who’s just being mean for a gag, but it’s becoming more clear that’s not a bit. His relationship with the people he appears with on camera only seems to work because there’s a back and forth in their quips and insults. Whenever he’s on with someone who’s not a staple of the channel, there’s this sense that he’s untouchable, that he can dish it out but grounds for pushback are shaky at best. Communication overall seems to suck, and there’s never not a Disappointed Linus moment when he’s involved in a project. You can really feel the unnecessary stress he’s piling onto the situation, and if it’s that obvious on-camera, how bad is it when nobody else is around? Or for the employees who feel like a bit of a squeaky wheel? It’s been clear for a long time that Linus is a cheapskate (he openly complains about relatively acceptable prices for the silly stuff he’s doing in videos pretty often) but for some reason in the back of my mind I thought maybe he wasn’t so stingy as a boss, where it counts. Wouldn’t bet on it now.

For someone who’s even a little bit out of place at LMG, I can 100% see how Linus has built a toxic work culture. It should speak volumes that nearly everyone, when given a chance to speak without Linus’ final say on the video, expresses much the same criticism toward his hustle culture. They don’t have the time they need to do good work, I don’t get the sense that they have a supportive and creative environment conducive to enjoying the process, and the output is clearly suffering.

Linus’ initial response dropped the ball harder than anything he’s dropped in his storied career of dropping things. But even if his response was heartening, the further reports of toxic culture and fanbase are enough for me to keep my distance. I’m going to miss their flavor of “tech nerd fun” videos, but the “Linus is a bad guy” Pandora’s box is open, and it’s going to take a lot of goodwill before I can just enjoy their videos again. Sad to see another titan of Youtube let it all go to his head, but this just goes to show that success doesn’t make a man better, it just makes him more powerful.

They’re complaining about when people with preorders don’t pick up their order - which means those people basically gave the dealer a free $500~1000 with the only string attached being that the dealer now has one more vehicle on their lot to sell.

I’ve put down a few preorders and across the board the story I get is the same: once I fully place my order (customize and lock it in), I can’t get my deposit back. So the only ones really losing, IMO, are those who assume a preorder means a guaranteed sale. That was never the deal they struck, and it seems they’ve forgotten the wiggle room they built into the deal to manage the pitfalls of losing that ‘guaranteed’ sale.

Particularly when it comes to these trucks, both Ford and Chevy promised “$40k” for theirs and that definitely moved massive numbers of deposits. Both jumped to an entry level price of around $70k, and that’s if they even let a consumer buy the lower trims. If that keeps happening to other models, like the promised $30k Equinox EV, they really can’t get mad when people back out once more details are known, or get cold feet when they realize the market’s not in a good spot for them. Personally, I’m not finalizing any purchase or locking in my deposit if I can’t get hands-on time first. If that’s not workable for dealerships, then good riddance. They have one job, and that’s to educate me and let me test drive.

I don’t want to gatekeep what is and isn’t aww, but I definitely don’t appreciate the realization that something fake was slipped in right under my nose without warning. AI may be harder to get good results from than I imagine, but if it’s not being presented as exactly what it is upfront, it’s naturally going to fool a lot of people into thinking they’re seeing an extraordinary image.

Come to think of it, this doesn’t just extend to AI. If someone was trying to pass a photo realistic render or heavily Photoshopped pic off as real (and I mean on the level of replacing, grafting and moving parts of multiple images to make something that gets attention for how surprising or special it seems) then I would feel the same way about that. It’s about honesty. I want to see all kinds of mediums on here allowed to shine, but not if it’s done through obfuscation of the medium used.

And also, AI stuff just skeeves me out. I want to be able to filter it out, or just know that there’s a rule against it and another community for that content. There’s something deeply human and heartwarming about an “aww” to me, and if it’s not real, or at least presents itself honestly in a way I can appreciate the love that went into the craft, it’s no longer aww.

I’m on my way out of this sub right now due to AI posts, so feel free to disregard my salty butt, but I feel the need to say that I’m really not okay with AI generated content in this community, especially it being allowed to go up un-tagged and un-filterable (if there’s a way to filter out posts on this site I wouldn’t be totally against it as long as there’s a rule to tag images appropriately).

I find the idea of putting an AI generated image up as the community’s banner is asking for exactly the wrong kind of content. Look - real life can’t compete with this stuff. Any random dude with a graphics card can Stable Diffusion the cutest and most exotic pic you’ve ever seen, (an approximation of) the kind of thing a photographer might capture after years of seeking out that perfect one in a million shot. The guy who made this can casually pump out several dozen like it’s nothing. You want a baby red panda and a squirrel instead? They’ll have it generated and posted in the time it took me to write this rant.

There’s a specific community on this site for AI generated aww, and I recommend people who like these go make it active. I don’t think I’m alone in saying people don’t expect that content here. Most don’t know what to look for and aren’t zooming in to spot it, and while this form of misinformation (presenting pictures that are not real as if they were, as another AI generated post here has done by being posted without context or tagging as AI generated) is far from innately harmful, I don’t think it should be allowed in this sub’s rules. If that other post’s comments are anything to go by, people feel cheated realizing it wasn’t real.

Again, I don’t entirely mind if the sub isn’t strictly limited to real pictures only. Aww comes in many forms, from real life to movies to games to art. IMO, AI is far too much of an ‘easy button’ to get a free pass, though.