The only argument against MKBHD could be the YouTube title he chose. But if a "company" with many hundreds of people can't handle a title and goes under, it never deserved to exist.
The problem isn’t that a reviewer called it junk. The problem is the product is junk.
I clicked through to that Vassallo guy's twitter and that is exactly the argument he is making. He isn't defending the product, which he admitted he has never actually used. He isn't defending the company. He isn't even arguing against a single thing said in the body of the video. He is solely objecting to the title for being "sensationalized" as if it is impossible this product is the worst one MKBHD has ever reviewed. It is fundamentally, to use Vassallo's own words, a "distasteful, almost unethical" argument to make because it is attacking someone's character rather than a product that seemingly everyone agrees is at best half-baked.
But let’s talk about the clickbait. The full title of the video is, “The Worst Product I Have Ever Reviewed…For Now”. If it was just “The Worst Product I Have Ever Reviewed”, that would be a perfectly fair summary—maybe a little clickbaity, though it doesn’t seem like MKBHD’s style to go on a rant and completely tear a product apart for the amusement of the audience, and that’s not what he does in the video, either. The “…For Now” vaguely implies that maybe, somehow, in the future, it will improve to the point where it is no longer quite so terrible, and there is some sort of hidden nuance to the otherwise strident tone of the first part of the title, that maybe there is some hope of the product one day, in the future, having some redeeming quality perhaps delivered via OTA update. You don’t know! It’s a mystery! And that mystery—the hope that maybe this piece of junk isn’t totally pointless after all—that’s the clickbait. You want to know what he means by “for now”! The most sensational, clickbaity part of the video title isn’t the negative part, but instead the part that implies the product might be of any value!
> Actually, the deference Brownlee gave the vision and the potential of future upgrades was arguably generous
But of course, pointing that out would be a red herring, because I don't believe the original tweet was made in good faith in the first place. Vassallo sounds like the sort who would be satisfied only if nobody is allowed to criticize something he likes (and ideally if at some point you click through and pay money for his… Influencer newsletter? Idfk).
And even wilder to me was this bit: "If a single person can affect the stock price of a company, we usually restrict what they can say or when. MK should be cognizant of the unconstrained power he has (for now)."
That's just wildly untrue. For example, John Carreyrou absolutely destroyed Theranos. Nobody restricts what he says in the sense Vassallo appears to mean here. Indeed, the Wall Street Journal is successful as a business precisely because their journalists see getting the truth to their readers as core to their jobs.
That is not a personal attack on someone’s character. And it leaves the door open for the product to improve in the future, which he also suggests in the video.
The worst you can say is that it’s clickbait-y but mkbhd doesn’t usually use such extreme titles.
The twitter guy is saying mkbhd is attacking the creator of the product’s character.
MKBHD: This is "The Worst Product I Have Ever Reviewed…For Now".
Vassallo: It is "distasteful, almost unethical" to criticize a product like that.
Me: No, the way Vassallo challenged MKBHD's character is "distasteful, almost unethical".
The transition from explaining Vassallo's argument to explaining the problem with Vassallo's argument is a bit abrupt. It's not immediately clear whether you're referring to Vassallo or MKBHD at that point.
I think maybe a line break around "It is fundamentally", or switching the pronoun to a proper noun, might help it parse better. Overall I liked the way you worded it.
If MKBHD’s title was Why you shouldn’t buy the pin, it would have been better.
But I accept this interpretation is subjective. That’s why I said “I find that…”
"The worst product I ever reviewed", even for MKBHD, is drawing from a pretty small set. Big deal, Humane. Take your lumps, fix the criticisms, and move on.
He also a video about the worst car he reviewed recently, which somehow didn't get the same negative feedback.
The main takeaway I had was "who the hell is this guy telling Marques what he can or cannot think about this product?"
The video was not a bait-and-switch. He was generous with criticism but fair in describing how it was supposed to work and what he wanted from it. So for this random Tweeter to suggest that Marques was being either dishonest in his "unofficial mental ranking (the worst)" or should have been dishonest in minimizing his critique is so patronizing and itself dishonest.
99% of the junk that companies release he/his team simply won't waste time on.
So the title is probably true.
He is and he isn't. If he feels something is not worth it, he'll tell you.
Like the crypto phone: "This is a Crypto Phone. Don’t Buy It." with a photo of him face palming: https://youtu.be/hRSMJGs0YMg?si=_sD9MA7JLeDbI0f1
And who can forgot the famous "Escobar Folding Phone"? https://youtu.be/O8FJSjy3bXA?si=nfAe9tZniafBwDmc
And the follow up video when the company responded to his original video: "Escobar Responds! A PSA" https://youtu.be/Ns8ydpZ5-4o?si=3tppQYwiMbSVMfb7
If you filter through his videos, there are plenty of reviews of stuff that he rips that aren't Apple products. Even his review of the Cyber Truck was brutal. And there very clearly are reviews of emerging products they rip like the crypto phone.
> But as many videos as I've made about products, there are way more products out there in the world that exist. So the process of selecting which products to even review in the first place is like an art form to itself. Most products are just, meh, they're fine. Like they exist, they get made, they're fine, whatever. So they have to reach a certain level of interest or being really good to even be considered for review. Or sometimes really, really bad.
But when you have a $700 device, with hundreds of millions in funding, and a ton of marketing about it being the smartphone killer and the future of computing, yet the device is total junk, that makes it worse in a way than other junk marketed as junk.
The hardware is good enough to test it. Power-consumption, projector and voice-cloud-voice latency is too high.
But that's probably all forgivable if it's a "public beta" with the clear statement that this is not a final mass-product...