“Heads up, there won’t be a WAN Show this week. Instead, we will continue to focus on addressing issues raised both internally and by the community during our production break. We appreciate you all for your patience.”
Kinda bummed but also a good choice unless it was Luke and someone else.
Don’t really need Linus opening his mouth right now.
Tarren would be interesting, but I suspect he is probably very hesitant to go live and unfiltered. He has seen how that worked for his predecessor :/
WAN Show’s real appeal (to me, at least) has always been the unfiltered and real time conversations. Though as of late, those conversations have been more about creating controversy then real discussion 😐
Agreed, that is why I like it as well. A lot of the controversy is the community taking their unfiltered words and twisting them, rather than listening for the actual intent that is being expressed. Without the Luke saves Linus would have burned the whole company to the ground a long time ago. Hard R etc :D
If you use a phrase in a way nobody else uses, and asks people to read your mind for what you actually meant, then you already failed as a public facing communicator.
Iirc Linus genuinely thought “hard R” refered to the word starting with R (r****d), not the one ending in R (n****r). He thought he was using it the same as everyone else, unaware that no he very much was not. Meanwhile, Luke was watching his career flash before his eyes
Here is a clip of it: https://youtu.be/MFDiuBomSuY
Less factual input and more “bro this just sucks, trust me”.
I’m glad they recognize the gravity of the situation and are treating this as a true existential moment for the company.
I’m pretty sure Linus saw the absolute shitstorm he was about to face in all 3 chats, and ran the other way.
Either that or the whole management team had to drag him away kicking and screaming so he wouldn’t throw more oil into the fire.
Yvonne said she was the one that put her foot down after his post. The entire vibe I got out of that apology video was “alright, we’re raining in Linus and fixing this shit”
My guess is this. Tong probably said “Linus, shut the fuk up and disappear for a little bit”.
As much as I like WAN show, it does seem a bit symptomatic of the overwork. They go until after midnight on a Friday night? And frequently they call someone who should be home?
Merch messages have metastasized it a bit. Maybe they should just prerecord it during work hours, and answer merch messages from the previous week? Would be less interactive, but most of the curated merch messages seem to be general questions anyway, rather than topic specific questions? They could still automatically show current merch messages in the banner as the video goes live?
I at least hope they are either paying Dan overtime or letting him shift his hours around.
An after hours podcast is not inherently bad. Hell, the vast majority of social media facing companies have to work off hours simply because the stream watchers are at work otherwise.
The key is that this needs to be part of the work week. If you are expected to work 4 PM to 9 PM on a Friday, it needs to be in the job description and those hours have to come off the other end.
Shit like this is incredibly common in tech as well. We have to maintain some services for customers. Not true HA but pretty available. We have a rotation of who is on call and the people who are get the equivalent of time and a half for that (we are salaried so it is a small bonus) and are told to not come in to work on Tuesday or whatever (since Monday may be required to debrief on issues).
Yup, agreed. In isolation, working late or unusual hours is not bad, but with the other things going on, perhaps worth them stepping back and evaluating if it’s the right thing to do.
I doubt Colton has an on-call agreement to cover him getting call up on the show.
I am currently doing on-call work, I get a daily lump sum to hold the phone, and a fixed call out sum of I get called out. There are lots of different arrangements it seems. Compensation and balance is key though
Exactly. Everything that has been “revealed” about LMG makes it sound like every other “channel becomes company” like Rooster Teeth and the like where it is just “You should be happy you can even work here. Now get back in the booth”.
But, done even remotely right, this isn’t a problem. Like, one of my buddies is a community manager for one of the more popular live games and she very much has her schedule built around when she has to stream as opposed to when people are in the office.
There’s no “off hours” for csuite though. At that point you’re expected to act whether you’re balls deep in your partner or chilling at the office.
I dunno if that is typical for most companies? I’m pretty sure the csuite of my company isn’t expected to be available 24/7. Neither would I expect that from the csuite of the BBC or any other media company?
Im not in their industry, is it how it works at other companies?
Usually c-suite are paid annually and are required to work whatever amount of time is required of them by the office, which might include working during what is considered time off for hourly employees. At my previous job they even told them “You’re expected to end the year having worked 50h/week on average.” when 40h was the max for regular employees.
Meanwhile, 20 of those hours every week are spent attending meetings. The “work” That suite folks do consists of meetings, talking to people, and sending emails. Literally anyone can do that for 50 hours a week, especially when the salary allows you to hire domestic help to do the housework, cooking, landscaping, etc… Thatyou’d otherwise spend those hours on.
I know employees not in managerial roles that do pretty much that too. Salaries also depend on the size of the company, I know some that make less than I do in an entry level job in my department.
“C-suites” (didn’t use traditional titles as it wasn’t a private business) at my previous job were obligated to work nights, weekends, interact with clients directly (including helping when facing difficult ones) and so on… Not all c-suites jobs are the same and not all of them are easy either…
Hope Dan is getting reimbursed as well, though if Madison’s claim about time off is to be believed, I don’t have much confidence in that.
A bit of a side tangent, but the way Linus talks to Dan has always kinda rubbed me the wrong way. There’s jokey “Dan wants me to do this but I’m gonna do this instead” banter that’s ok but there are times where Linus just seems to openly disregard Dan and blame him for his own fuckups on the show. Not trying to be a parasocial Andy here but it does make the podcast harder to listen to, imo.
Linus has this attitude with everyone. The reason you see it more with Dan is because it’s Live.
He has an attitude problem
Yeah, I was really annoyed when, during the Billet Labs monoblock “review” video, I saw Linus berating his cohost for not guessing shit he wanted, while the cohost was very obviously trying his best to do all he could while respectfully staying out of Linus’s way.
And that’s just one example in a single video.
Damned if you do, damned is you don’t. You just can’t win.
Hand me the scissors /s
It’s really off-putting to me too, even if it was truly fake banter. And I’m no longer sure it’s even mostly fake banter.
I know what you mean. Without knowing their personal relationship it can seem a bit cruel at times.
They went about this in the last episode and Dan was actually so into it that Linus felt bad.
Do you have a link?
Yes he does, he gets reminded quite often to put in the overtime
That’s good, thanks for letting us know, I must have missed it whenever that has been said.
We are no longer dicussing facts anyway and want to burn people at the stake
I don’t want to burn anyone at the stake. I just want to know that everything is done above board. If they are getting overtime, then all is well, and I’m happy.
That’s the exact same thing I’m thinking every time I’m watching. I wouldn’t stay at work after midnight on every single Friday that’s for sure.
But when you take in over $10k an hour in merch, you might put up with it.
Their leaked internal WAN Show dashboard:
That’s crazy.
Another symptom of the overwork is that I believe they’re late to start most weeks?
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They’ve been using polls for a lot for a while now - even things that were recently criticized like the Framework investment, was originally a poll on WAN asking how the audience felt about the ethical implications of that investment. And whether the audience thought it was acceptable so long as they always disclaim that Linus is a Framework investor during coverage of other laptops. To me it kinda makes sense how they could get so caught up in an echo chamber of die-hard fans who encourage them into things that people who aren’t in that core fan group see as problematic or at least ethically questionable. I see using fans to guide decision making as one of the root problems at LTT, because fans, pretty much by definition, already think you can do no wrong, and will often be blind to the way things look to a broader audience.
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So every youtber who has patron is ethical questionable?
They probably had some floatplane exclusives ready to go pre- scheduled. Asking about that from their paying customers honestly seems fair.
Pretty sure I saw another screenshot that said they did have a couple in the wings they asked about postponing.
But at a certain point the outrage has to apparently turn into a witch hunt and blaming them for stuff they didn’t or haven’t done, so here we are. There’s plenty of real stuff to be mad about without making anything up.
Does the floatplane subscription specifically say how many videos per month they get? If not, then it really isn’t “fair”
What it IS is (?) covering their asses. They already lost a sizeable chunk of floatplane cash for the month and recovering that is going to be hard*. So anything else that might hurt the floatplane bottom line needs to be avoided.
And I assume production is still going full bore internally. Because they only have so many filming days a month and still need videos for a week from now.
*: Calling it now. They are bringing scrap wars back or whatever it was called.
They have stopped releasing videos, maybe they could, you know, just postpone what they’ve already got?
That works for some videos. Others you would want to film a block of content ahead of time and then edit it into videos.
Its one of the things Steve was a bit harsh on in his video. Just getting someone back into the studio to re-record a three minute video can be a challenge when they are also head of writing (and busy sexually harassing everyone around them…). Odds are a good chunk of those three minute videos are filmed in the same two hour block of time weeks ahead of time.
Of course, this is what he alluded to when pointing out how insanely wrong the “random CPU” video was: ADR is a thing and all you need is a shot where the presenter’s mouth is not on screen. Yes, this doesn’t work for talking head shots. But for anything with B-Roll, you have the kind of fix that can be done in the time it takes to call someone on the phone.
The fact they don’t just fix it in post with audio is insane to me.
They can do it, I remember several insances where they have (f.e. Linus voicing over with his phone mic). It’s a bit jarring when not shot on the same equipment, but it’s so worth it
Little different for being paying outright for the content I guess.
Yeah, I’m by no means happy with this turn of events, but given that they actually pay for content on Floatplane, it makes perfect sense to me to ask them if they should do a show.
how else do you expect him to read the room and know not to make sex jokes or
stealauction shit that isnt his.They had exclusives already produced, uploaded and scheduled to go live, so no actual work to release them. The poll was if they should let those go ahead or hold them back in the spirit of the break.
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Haha. I saw what you did there. ( ͡° ͜ʖ ͡°)
If they continue it meant they value tradition more than righting the wrongs. Remember that it’s deep seated tradition that allowed the work culture to fester in the first place.
Not to mention all the chats would be bombarded.
Lastly I think Dan deserves a break.
Good. They need to take this shit seriously. This could be (imo should be) the end of LTT.
Why should it be the end of LTT? That’s so not constructive! We should strive toward forcing a change at the company, but not ending its existence! There are many people employed there, and whatever has occurred regarding Madison, only a fraction of those working there 9 to 5 will have had anything to do with it.
I’m not in the crowd of should be, and I’m all for second chances. But, I could see why someone wouldn’t want Linus, and a company under his name, to not be successful because of who he is and what’s happening. Liking a product but not the person behind it is ok. Making a choice not to support either is also ok.
Does anyone have any suitable “alternatives” in podcasts which are similar to the WAN Show in atmosphere? (As in: longer conversations about tech-adjecent topics) I don’t feel comfortable wanting to go near LMG’s content (my only consistent watching was the WAN Show to be frank) after these discoveries.
Probably the level 1 techs various shows, used to be one big thing but now I think they release different “categories” each day or something, it’s been a while since I’ve watched them, damn you YouTube messing with my feed.
The Waveform podcast is pretty decent. It’s MKBHD’s podcast.
Jay-Z 2 cents has a pod called RTFM if you like his content. Not necessarily the same but still in the tech world.
I would suggest you check out Smashing Security. Although it doesn’t have the variable length that WAN Show has, it’s worth a listen.
