According to Billet themselves, they heard nothing about compensation or payback until about 3 hours after the original GN video went live… Which Billet hadnt even replied to before Linus made his post saying they’ve already made the deal on compensation.
This response has made me lose so much respect for LTT. Linus really needs to learn when to shut up and stop digging himself into these holes. He could have just apologized, compensated Billet properly and worked on fixing whatever communication issues his team has, but instead he wrote a long non-apology where he deflected blame, tripled down on the Billet situation and just straight up lied about compensating them. Very scummy behaviour from Linus.
Linus is a narcissist.
Narcissists have to prove how wrong everyone else was.
They have to control the narrative.
And when all else fails, they have to make themselves look like the victim, so they get all the positive attention.
Thats why he cant shut up, and always doubles down to make everything worse.
I’m not either for narcissistic behavior or ADHD being the cause.
I have several TBIs (traumatic brain induries) and I act like he does sometimes. Most of the time I can catch myself but everyone once in a while I’ll go into full “you’re all wrong, I’m right and stop hating on me” mode even when I am wrong. But I always admit I’m wrong afterwards.
It’s a maturity and, hate to say it, grace thing. Even when you mess up this bad, and then do it again, and then a third time, you have to step up and admit you made a mistake.
I have brain damage and I can do it. It’s just learning how to do it. Making that effort. I don’t think he knows how to do it or has never fucked up bad enough to want to learn how to admit to mistakes, or the reactions have never been negative enough for him to own up to it.
Either way - he messed up and should sit and think about it before doing anything else. He didn’t do that and it’s going to cost him. Maybe not a lot but something.
Yeah, apologizing, paying Billet, and promising to slow down to improve quality would have been the perfect response. That would have been enough to keep me watching. But with the way he responded instead, I unsubbed and will avoid their videos, because he’s made it clear he can’t be trusted and doesn’t deserve my money.
And I was the perfect kind of viewer. I have money, have bought things from YouTube sponsorships, have Patreoned people, and I’ve actually been considering buying stuff from LTT’s store for a while (the only thing that stopped me was that their best shirts were sold out).
I suspect that for the most part, the kinds of people who would pay to support otherwise free content are those who are more informed and also care highly about the quality of what they pay for. The only reason I Patreon to stuff is because the creator has high quality and good ethics. I’m not gonna give money for no reason to someone who can’t be bothered to act ethically.
While this definitely wasn’t an okay response, I still prefer this transparency over every single response having to go through a filter/PR representative. At least we are closer to knowing what he is actually thinking.
Is this the straw that leads to LTT going full corporate mode?
He said it himself, he doesn’t know how to read the room.