Trying to make everyone happy

I was watching Linus’ latest loonixslop video, for some reason, and realised that over the last decade, Linus, as well as many of the bigger (mostly tech) youtubers, have lost most of what made them watchable to begin with. Values. What was once an opinionated, objective tech review channel, that occasionally did sponsored reviews and was run by a group of friends out of a bedroom has now become what I can only describe as soulless sponsor slop. Instead of trying to make entertaining content, they care about profit margins and shilling their £250 backpack, because they have to pay rent on their three warehouses and badminton courts. They do A/B testing, have job titles like “senior production manager”, which is fancy theater speak for “person who sits in the corner and reads the script”, and overall pump out too much low quality mass-appeal garbage for their own good.

This isn’t some kind of hit piece on Linus, I swear this is going somewhere, but the same problem can be seen in most other large tech youtubers. MKBHD went from a camera nerd who made phone reviews to an editing fanatic with an entire team of professionals. Sure, the visuals are cool and whatever, but most people aren’t technically minded enough to give a single shit about the framing or color grading, which is why they’re watching mainstream tech content. You can’t even argue that it isn’t mainstream either, all Marques does nowadays is talk about flagship phones and how much better a certain model is than another. He does such a good job glazing, in fact, that apple personally invites him to most of their events. He also pompously films his videos in 1:2.35, film aspect ratio, with the most expensive camera money can buy, when the same if not better content can be made with any phone camera in 16:9 and a free copy of davinci resolve. Mrwhostheboss is another good example. He was always one for brand deals, but all of his stuff nowadays is just clickbaity slop with distracting (albeit rather impressive) motion graphics. oooo top 50 small products?? Yeah bro great video idea have 50m views. And the same issue arises again, with a larger platform, more money, more resources, a greater incentive to create, the less interesting the content becomes. Why? Because they can’t help but try to make everyone happy.

Making everyone happy, and why you shouldn’t

There will always be some people who don’t like something. Even water has haters, if you want proof just search up “watertok”. The same is true for content, but for some insane reason all of these “influencers” can’t seem to grasp that fact. In their quest to please, they lose what interesting narrative they used to have. Opinions matter, but in order to please everyone, you aren’t allowed to have any. So they compensate. They overscript, gather talent, buy the most expensive cameras and equipment they can get their hands on, all to try and cover up the fact that they have literally nothing interesting to say at all. The video linked at the top, behind all of the fancy sets and editing and the lengthy script, can basically be summed up in a few bullet points. So here you go.

How to switch to linux (abridged version)

  1. hate windows enough to switch (linus spends half the video talking about reasons that you would want to switch)
  2. look up a distro to switch to (on google)
  3. move all of your files off of your computer (he tells people to use onedrive for this)
  4. install linux and use it (no elaboration)

Like what the fuck?? He doesn’t even give a tutorial on how to install linux itself! He gives shit normie advice like “to prevent wiping disks that you dont want to wipe, remove them from your computer” like yeah fuckwit THAT’S WHAT DRIVE NAMES ARE FOR! He still managed to shill framework, and have 2 different sponsors as well. The complete irony of telling people to back up their stuff to onedrive so you don’t lose it when you wipe windows isn’t wasted on me, either. MKBHD made a 15 minute video to say “the iPhone duo is an iphone but it folds” like bro stfu nobody gives a shit.

What am I yapping about???

All of these channels suffer from what I like to call “mainstream syndrome”, with the main symptoms being never wanting to take a side, and forgetting what you previously believed in. There comes a tipping point, at which a channel goes from something genuine from something corporate. It’s at that point that youtubers disconnect from reality entirely, start selling off their channels (cough matpat cough), or start taking sponsors for every video. Or 2. Or sometimes 3. With enough money and manpower, any passion project begins to dissolve into layered bureaucracy, with managers and specialised teams. Suddenly, the person who everyone subscribed to listen to either gets sidelined by other uninteresting, uncharismatic co-hosts, or loses direct creative control. When multiple unaligned people write a script trying to emulate an existing backlog of unscripted, heartfelt content, everything devolves into slop. Here, there are no opinions, no hot takes. Only pandering.

You don’t want to scare away the people that swear by windows, so you can’t be too detailed. You don’t want the idiots who make up the majority of the platform to click off when you start talking about iso images, so just skip by the entire install process just to be safe. They are literally pretending to be interesting. We have been played for fools. What makes content enjoyable is the discourse. I don’t mean the kind of discourse that twitter brews, but the fact that you might not agree with this other random person on the internet who was brave enough to post their opinions online. I don’t give a fuck about mainstream content because if there’s any nuance then people will click off. If the host takes a side then half of the viewerbase won’t want to watch the video. This is the issue with modern youtube. Profit over content has always led to garbage output.

Opinions are why Linux in the first place!

The reason linux exists is because some crazy person was annoyed at proprietary software one time. The whole UNIX and linux philosophy is built on having different opinions. If I didn’t have opinions on how cluttered my system shouldn’t be, I would still be using arch like a loser instead of having a youtube channel. In the same vein, if I didn’t think of arch users as lesser beings, I equally wouldn’t have a youtube channel. People watch my content because I stand my ground. I hate what AI is doing to the world. I hate unfree software. I hate home manager and the wordpress foundation. I don’t change what I say because I have an audience. I don’t chase higher view counts or more money because I didn’t expect to succeed, and still don’t. I don’t review my scripts over and over to make sure that the viewer retention is maximised. I only A/B test titles sometimes because I couldn’t decide what to name the video, not to learn anything about how to get a few more views.

Not to be an elitist or anything, but these content farms aren’t the grand visages that will bring on the fabled year of the linux desktop, for the simple fact that they’re too afraid to divide people. Instead of trying to get people interested in the ins and outs of linux, through guides and explainers, they make vague statements and tell people to “find their own way” by doing questionnaires on what distro they should run. It’s all bullshit, designed to get as much watchtime as they possibly can. If they just picked a basic distro and made a tutorial series, i guarantee that droves of people would actually try out linux, atleast far more than what they’re currently causing through their vagueposting. Linux mint is perfect for this kind of thing, but they’re too scared of the backlash they’ll get from the linux community for not choosing some other distro. Newsflash dumbfucks, YOU AREN’T MAKING CONTENT FOR THE LINUX COMMUNITY, THEY ALREADY USE LINUX!!! All you’re doing by trying to appeal to the widest audience is appealing to the wrong audience, and then using that as an excuse not to make the interesting content that people actually would need.

Coming out of my hyperspecific ranting session, the same mentality could be applied to almost any other tech youtuber. MKBHD is a really knowledgeable guy, he already branched out into cars, to a far lower view count, but the content he makes there is far less pretentious and has actual passion behind it, unlike most of his recent main channel videos. If you go back and watch some of Mrwhostheboss’ old reviews, before he bought a mansion in london and built a volume screen into his garage, it was genuinely charismatic and interesting to watch. Do you know why? Because they expressed their opinions! They still thought of the money as a bonus and not a purpose! MKBHD already has the main channel as an income stream, as well as his career in frizbee, which means that he can put his passion and opinions into the second channel as much as he wants. Full creative control and almost no consequence for performing badly. Arun operated out of his parents’ house for most of his career, so rent wasn’t a concern, which meant there was less incentive to chase analytics instead of just having fun. The second he has to pay for his own house, though, he doubles the size of his team and starts making slop.

Some kind of conclusion

I just wanted to complain lol. The image most people have of “success as a youtuber” just seems like selling yourself out over and over again. The solution? Don’t make youtube your job. It’s a hobby, and it should stay that way. It should be genuine, and manageable to do around school or a job. The second you rely on youtube income, you lose the choice that you once had to make whatever you wanted. If I ever sell myself out, feel free to unsub. Bye now!