What started as criticism over errors in recent YouTube videos has escalated into allegations of sexual harassment, prompting the company to hire an outside investigator.
What started as criticism over errors in recent YouTube videos has escalated into allegations of sexual harassment, prompting the company to hire an outside investigator.
So much for the flippant “I won’t be responding to this outside of this text post”.
You would think that after so many YouTubers sucked at apologizing and got called out they would figure out how to do it the right way. But no!
That big ass team and you couldn’t get a PR person to help you?
None of this was irredeemable. Sure, it will take a significant amount of time to rebuild trust but you can choose to be transparent in response and right your wrongs.
The hubris
This is how assholes behave. They don’t even see themselves as having done wrong.
They just know they got caught and they’re pissed off and annoyed about it. Why should they need a pr person, they think.
The whole reason for sexual assault, employee abuse, and egregious errors in test results isn’t simple “oops”, it’s indicative of priorities and biases and behaviors from the top down.
I mean the Madison stuff is pretty bad. The rest of it, was probably recoverable from.
I think the thing is in these kind of situations they are typically no win situations. When the fuel is burning really the only answer is let it burn itself out, then deal with the aftermath. I don’t think any response would be good enough because right now people are out for blood, some of it very justifiably but people would need to be blind to not see there are people who have an axe to grind and the usual drama chasers. I’m not here to say they didn’t do anything wrong but people are going to try to connect some unrelated controversies to keep the fire burning (Note: This isn’t about the Madison leak) like the mindchop tragedy.
To some extent, I agree. But while you’ll never craft a perfect response and some people will always call your response, “Not enough,” or, “Disengenous,” there are better and worse ways to do it. Dan Harmon sexually harassed a coworker, created a toxic work environment, and harmed one of his writer’s careers. When that started to come out, he talked to her first, then he laid all the cards on the table, took full responsibility, and talked about how he’s trying, not always succeeding, but trying to improve and not do the same things again. It’s impossible to ever say that a simple apology is enough, but even the person he hurt said that his was the kind of apology that people should strive for. It was brutal, honest, and it didn’t shy away from anything. He admitted fault and talked about the very real and non-idealized path forward.
LMG’s response… Was horrible. Even if the apology was only for the bad data stuff, it felt like one of his joke videos like the April Fool’s Day slave farm video, in tone. Sponsor segues, jokes, merch promotions, things like that. I admit that maybe a little humor could be justified because some people make jokes when they’re stressed out, I do that! My mom was damn near on her deathbed a few years back, barely made it out of that alive, and between the sobs, I cracked jokes because that’s how I handle things, so I fucking get that! But that was a scripted video that was supposed to be their apology to the fans, and it felt like an insult. They didn’t feel like they were taking the accusations seriously, it didn’t feel like they were taking responsibility for the problems, and it didn’t feel like they were serious about making changes going forward. It felt like a hollow, “This will help us ride out the storm,” response.
So, I agree with you that even if they’d done the best apology video they possibly could have, people would have still criticized them for it. You’re right. There’s no way around that. But it doesn’t change that that’s not what they did. They put out that apology video instead. And that was just an insult.
I’m not super familiar Dan Harmon stuff. I’m going to assume most of the stuff about that apology was done in private, where things can be properly be talked about. This is a public apology video, so I don’t think they can really get in a very nitty gritty details about what went wrong (especially around the Billet Labs prototype being sold). I agree they should have demonstrated some ways they are improving but I do believe the audience is placing blame on the executives and in some ways they are truly responsible but I think this is mostly them covering for a mistake of a lower level employee did at least for the Billet Lab’s incident. I just don’t think it would have done any good to throw the person who screwed up under the bus since it ain’t going to look pretty for any party involved.
I agree them monetizing the video and having the stupid jokes in it was pretty poor planning for them. They realistically should not had Linus in it seeing as its clear the team is really trying to fix his mistake of a post from Monday.
That’s when you hire a crisis PR firm because no operating company should have enough experience to handle the situation properly. If the new CEO knows anything they’ve already done that and muzzled Linus.
Oh I didn’t see the Madison stuff yet I guess I am behind