Gadgetory

well guys I held out for as long as I could but I think it is finally time for me to weigh in on the Verge's horrendous how to build a PC tutorial video so I'm going to try to keep this as short and to the point as possible starting with a recap of what happened for those of you who are out of the loop then I'll talk about my initial response as well as some recent developments and finally some commentary and handling criticism as well as my just basic suggestions for what maybe could have done to prevent this mess that we're in right now so let's start with what happened the verge if you're not familiar is a tech news website they also have a YouTube channel and they posted a tutorial video on how to build a $2,000 gaming PC back on September 13th 2018 it was a tutorial style video and it was also sponsored by Capital One the video host was Stefan at TN and he made numerous mistakes throughout the video including but not limited to an odd recommendation to use a Swiss Army knife even though he still used his screwdriver most of the video he called cable ties tweezers he correctly recommended using an anti-static wrist band but then he broke out one of these non conductive rubber bracelets ribs strong he installed the motherboard into the case before installing the CPU into the motherboard he installed the CPU cooler into the case before installing the motherboard into the case he installed the RAM in the wrong Ram slot so it's not to take advantage of dual channel memory mode he said that's PCIe slot for your GPU doesn't matter which it kind of doesn't sometimes but it's always best to use the top slot he forgets to install the CPU cooler backplate he messed up the CPU installation itself by putting a plastic installation holder that came with the motherboard but he put it under the CPU clamp he should have just left that out entirely the Oman cooler he was using had pre applied thermal paste but then he went and added more and added a lot of it and added it not in the right place on the CPU so that was just a big mess he didn't put the fans on the CPU radiator he use longer fan mounting screws to mount his radiator to the case which could have gone through the radiator and damaged it he plugged all the cables into his modular power supply even though the point of having a modular power supply is to only plug in the cables that you need he said the power supply needed to be installed on dampening pads for electrical isolation even though in fact the power supply needs to be grounded to the case the entire case is grounded to the PSU PSU was installed backwards which blocked the airflow and he pretty much had zero cable management in the case despite recommending using tweezers at the beginning zip ties so those were pretty much the most egregious errors in the video the video itself has been removed from YouTube but if you type in the verge PC build and look up on YouTube you can find reuploads as well as a bunch of response videos to that original video all posted within the past four or five months after September 14th these response videos became quite numerous online and a bunch of my YouTube friends started posting well-deserved critiques of the Virg video and the accompanying article that went along with it Kyle also known as bit wit posted a parody video starring Lyle his alter ego and there were other videos posted by Gregg from science studio as well as tech yes City Christopher he James two cents and then a bunch of others that you can find by searching on YouTube oh yeah and they also quickly disabled likes and dislikes as well as comments on the video which is never a good sign for a video that you've posted on YouTube that usually you'd want some feedback on so they're trying to hide the feedback and hide their spots of this video and eventually they just took it down so Internet condemnation of the video was swift and harsh to begin with I personally didn't join in very much I just kind of felt like there was a lot of piling on going on whenever somebody on the internet is wrong about something people like to point it out and I'll also say I was somewhat sympathetic to a tech youtuber has posted a video on YouTube who is getting bombarded from all angles with criticisms of the video and the content that they have produced I personally started making YouTube videos about ten years ago now and if you go and look at the old Newegg videos from 2009 just go to Newegg and sort by date added oldest and you can see some of my initial videos that I posted this is the very very first one I think I had some problems with the aspect ratio there you can also see my original how to build a PC tutorial which was posted in August 14th 2009 with horrible green screen and I'll post links to those down in the video's description point being I can look back at those videos and remember how cringe-worthy I was back then not that I've improved too much but I know how hard it is to go on camera to present yourself for the world to see and to feel that deep fear that you'll screw up or get something wrong it's often referred to as impostor syndrome even now I try very hard and spend a lot of time to make sure that all the information I'm presenting in a youtube video is true and accurate but I still make plenty of mistakes we are all fallible humans after all but apart from the brief discussion that Cal and I had during our weekly live show awesome Hardware back when The Verge video first went up I didn't really add much to the criticism but now that some time has gone by it's become clear that the verge and the original create the video never have really wanted to take responsibility for many of the clear mistakes that were made and instead they've accused the Internet of forgetting the video and responses to it they've even gone so far as to claim that the criticism was racially motivated but now as of yesterday February 12 2019 The Verge has issued a copyright strike on Kyle's parody video via Vox Media Incorporated even though the original PC video from the verge was taken down months ago now quickly I want to point out the difference between a copyright claim and a copyright strike when it comes to YouTube videos a claim is fairly easy to do for a company trying to protect their intellectual property and it's often automated because YouTube has their Content ID system that can automatically identify copyrighted content it's also a bit more of a minor infraction for YouTube channel they claimed video can either be removed or it's more often left up and the ad revenue from that claimed video just goes to the claimants rather than the channel owner who posted the video originally the important thing is that with a claim the channel status as well as other videos on that channel aren't affected a strike or copyright takedown requires direct action from the copyright owner the copyright takedown requires the owner to submit a formal notice to us with all the legal requirements filled out according to YouTube also you can't just remove a strike by simply deleting the video a strike can affect your channels ability to monetize videos and can also disable your ability to livestream for 90 days so this affects me as well as Kyle I mean Kyle's my friend I sympathize with him he's in a bad situation right now he's gonna have to get this worked out through his MCM full screen but if I'm speaking strictly selfishly that also affects me because it's going to disrupt our ability to do our live stream every week but let's move on to the third point I wanted to make here which is about handling criticism how should the response to this have gone I could spend the rest of this video talking about birds or Vox media and how petty their actions have been and calling their basic decency into question but instead I will try to help by pointing out three ways that they could have fixed this and done better the first way would have been to admit that they're wrong that would have been a very simple thing that they could have done very early on now the article is still up on this build on verge so you can still go and read it and they did issue a correction to it and they removed the video from it but the errors and omissions in this supposed build guide definitely warranted free their action this wasn't just some typo to be edited out some of the mistakes like those radiator screws could actually lead people to damage their hardware in the future so it definitely needed a bit more than just a correction on the article the second way they could have fixed this although it would have required some foresight would have been just to phrase the entire video differently if you don't know how to do something you can still make a video about it people do that on YouTube all the time you just need to indicate from the get-go that you don't know what you're doing and that you're learning as you go their video probably would have actually done better if it was titled like we failed trying to build a $2,000 gaming PC people tend to learn from others mistakes but the mistakes have to be pointed out that their mistakes in order for people to learn from them the third thing that the verge could have done at any point within the past five months is to redeem themselves by showing that they have some self reflection what if they had reached out to any one of the YouTube critics or other critics and asked them to collaborate on fixing the problem people love a good comeback story and the Internet is actually capable of forgiving you sometimes if you display genuine remorse of course a follow-up video with the verge and then Jay or Kyle humbly noting that man our first video didn't go so well trying to teach people how to build a computer but we brought us some help to do it right and let's do a collaboration and actually do a good video this time I think that would have turned the entire situation around redeemed them shown positivity in every way but instead they've gone this method of issuing a copy strike against Kyle's reaction video and remains to be seen if they're going to do that to any of the other reaction videos that I've shown up there so that pretty much sums up what I wanted to say about this situation and if you think this is an overreaction to the action that the verge or Vox media has taken I'll consider that as tech channels building pcs is not just our hobby but it's also the way we make a living if somebody has a bad build experience due to a poorly made tutorial it could sour them on PC building as a whole maybe they'll go tell our friends about that and be like PC building sucks everyone go buy Max or something Mac's are fine not gonna get into that debate right now but the point is we don't want anyone to have a bad experience building a PC and a poorly made tutorial is not gonna help that in one bit so to sum up everyone makes mistakes but your character is represented by how you handle those mistakes admitting you're wrong and doing what you can to correct the situation is the right thing to do playing the victim claiming the mistakes never happened making excuses and especially attempting to censor or silence your critics will only make things worse let's give the Virg one more chance just just browsing through their recent articles see if there's anything related to the topic I've been discussing today and oh look now for some reason Capital One decided not to sponsor this tutorial