Why MKBHD's Audience Turned On Him | Internet Anarchist

0:00What happens when the critic becomes the one being criticized? How would it affect their public perception, and more importantly, how do they handle the inevitable backlash? Creators like Marquis Brownlee, aka MKBHD, have been asking these same questions, as a series of unfortunate decisions have eroded his reputation to the point that his fans label him as just another out of touch influencer and ruthlessly mock him in the comments. Got here faster than Marquis's driving. 2024 really picked up speed towards the end, huh? Props to Marquis for not pulling him Mr Beast and deleting all the comments making fun of him. Hi, I'm the internet anarchist. I create weekly YouTube documentaries, and today we'll explore the recent controversies driving a wet between YouTube legend MKBHD and his once loyal fan base. To understand why Marquis's relationship with his audience deteriorated so much, you first have to understand what their connection was built on in the first place. During his early days on YouTube, Marquis's content was defined by three key ideals, quality, consistency, and transparency. In terms of quality,

1:02Marquis always strived to improve the watchability and clarity of his content. From gradually upgrading the visual and audio of his video, to giving increasingly in-depth analysis of the products he was reviewing, Marquis wanted to make each video better than the last. We'll get to those in a second, but initially picking up this phone and holding it is a pretty nice experience, which is pretty obvious. It's an all-metal, unibody aluminum back design, which kind of wraps around the front. It's definitely not the thinnest phone in the world, and it's also definitely not the lightest phone in the world either, but it feels rather sturdily built, and that's always a good thing. Pay this with the fact that Marquis maintained an extremely consistent upload schedule for over a decade, and it becomes very obvious why it's grown to almost 20 million subscribers. This pattern of consistency was present from the start of Marquis's career, as he uploaded over 200 videos in his first year on YouTube. However, what truly puts Marquis at the top of consumer tech reviews is his unusual levels of transparency when covering products or handling sponsorships.

2:02When it comes to consumer tech reviews on YouTube, viewers typically gravitate towards creators who are completely on a spatter product's quality and functionality. In Marquis's case, he'd built such a strong reputation front biased coverage that fans naturally regarded his opinion very highly. A good example of this was with the infamous Escobar fold phone, whose negative qualities were glossed over by other tech reviewers, but faced a more critical perspective from MKBHD. I'm a tech reviewer, so I'm typically just focusing on the final product, the finished thing. Should you buy it or not? But this piece of tech we've reviewed already. It's the Galaxy Fold. I've talked about it. It just has gold tin foil on the back. So the interesting part now becomes the behind the scenes part, which is the company that's trying to maybe sell some of them and also not ship most of them. They're trying to scam you. It's one of those situations where you know you have to take any preferential treatment you might get with a gigantic grain of salt. So I guess the lesson we've learned is there are way way way too many cases of people not getting

3:07their Escobar fold for me to ever recommend you ever buy anything from this company. So unfortunately, Marqueeza's critical stance and the impact that comes with it aren't always popular with viewers. In early 2024, Marqueeza's extremely negative coverage of the Fiscal Ocean and Humane AI pin landed him in hot water with fans, because both companies suffered significant financial losses following his videos. With Fiscal Ocean, Marqueeza labelled it as the worst car he had ever tested and focused his review on the vehicles in complete state at the time. Rather than the manufacturer's promises of future updates. I think it's just the worst car I've ever tested, but probably not the ways to expect it. So this car behind me here, this is the Fiscal Ocean. You might not have heard of it. It's pretty new car, pretty new company, new name anyway. And there were a lot of red flags actually going into this, just a couple of days I'm spending with it. Didn't want us to review this one because there's a really big software update, a big 2.0 update coming to this car. And I believe you, Fiscal, but that's the

4:13thing is it's not really in my policy to wait on promise future software updates. I'm going to review the car that's out now that real buyers are actually living with. While Marqueeza appreciated the car's design philosophy, he highlighted obvious bugs in its software, infotainment features, and build quality. Ultimately, he concluded that the car needs much more improvement before being considered as a finished product. That's the thing about these electric cars is they're connected to the internet, their computers on wheels, they can improve over time. I feel like it's going to take a long time for this car to be acceptably usable given how many issues I've had with it, but I'm rooting for it only because competition is good and the fundamentals are solid. Even though Marqueeza wasn't the only one to review the Fiscal Ocean negatively, fans of the start-up considered his take to negative and blamed him for the company's stock price going down. Some vehicle owners even made whole videos discussing Marqueeza's coverage and their own hands-on experience with the vehicle. First offering, right, there are market pressures to get the

5:19vehicles out, and this vehicle was delivered with an incomplete software stack that we see improving here over time. The last three months as an owner, I can attest to seeing improvement, not just in the software, but also in terms of delivery, as well as service and support, as I just shared a little bit about my own experience. In the comment section, Marqueeza left a brief statement on his thoughts about the EV and its potential for improvements, reading, thank you for this owner's perspective. I'm hoping you're right about the continued rate of improvement, because I think it certainly needs it. I do still honestly find it borderline irresponsible to release a vehicle so incomplete that it feels like owners are beta-testing, but that's just my own opinion. As for the human AI pin, Marqueeza called the wearable AI assistant the worst product had reviewed, since all its features could be done quicker, easier, and more efficiently on a smartphone. I've said like a bunch of the downsides and the problems

6:23this device has, but I really genuinely think the biggest problem this pin is going to have is that smartphones are kind of OP. Like that's the number one thing I've reminded myself from the week of using this pin, trying to get it to do stuff, is that smartphones are not going anywhere. Everything that this pin does, a modern smartphone does better and faster and easier and higher quality and just better and everywhere. While the video was well received by his fans on YouTube, multiple users on Twitter began criticizing Marqueeza for potentially harming the start of his potential with his harsh coverage. Reading, I find it just tasteful, almost unethical, to say this when you have 18 million subscribers. Hard to explain why, but with great reach comes great responsibility. Potentially killing someone else's nascent project, Ricks of Calisness. Do not harm. To which Marqueeza would respond with, we disagree on what my job is. Despite all of this, management at Humane AI saw Marqueeza's critical take as a learning experience.

7:25By the 17th of April 2024, Marqueeza would upload a video responding to both situations and present the viewers with the question of whether or not bad reviews kill companies. Discourse lately on this topic, there will be some negative reviews and then a company will eventually go out of business and the internet poses the question. Do bad reviews kill companies? Do bad reviews kill companies or do bad products kill companies? I do have a lot of thoughts. Marqueeza would make the argument that the validity of a review solely depends on how honest the review it is when conveying their experience with the product, regardless of whether it's good or bad. Back up for a second. What is a review? Little pet peeve in mind is I think people misuse or overuse that word a lot, but a review is just somebody use the product and then just delivers their impressions on whether they think it's any good or not. How well it actually worked

8:25and if they're honest to opinion is if it's good, then that's the review. If it's bad, that's the review. That's basically it. But the thing about reviews is if they're not honest, then they're basically useless. To illustrate his point, Marqueeza would share an example of when his harsh but honest feedback on a raise a gaming phone positively impacted the company's future releases. And I specifically remember the vibration motor was horrible and I remember calling it out, I remember saying this. Also the vibration motor in this phone trash, straight trash. I'm going to call myself so you can hear this. The phone. Just one of the worst vibration motors I've ever experienced in a new phone. Fast forward a year, right? I'm at a briefing. It's in New York City. It's for the Razer phone too. The guy turns to me and he says, and Marqueeza, you got to try the new vibration motor in this phone. And it's such a niche thing, but I'd sure enough, I try it,

9:27and it's way better. In addition to this, Marqueeza would point out how both Humane and Fiska were already being poorly reviewed by other tech channels long before his coverage. He even stated that if everyone was honestly reviewing the same product, then everyone's experiences should be similar. I was not the only one to review the car, and I even close. And so yes, the stock price did drop after my video, but the stock was in freefall for many, many months before my video too. And if you zoom out on YouTube or in the car review space in general, I was far from the only person saying these things about the car for all of these months. Many other reviewers had been having a plethora of issues, even stuff that I didn't have with this thing. Actually, I feel like that might be the easiest way to tell if a review is honest or not. Like, we're all reviewing the same product. Basically, if we all have the same thing, so we're all going to find a lot of the same things. We're eventually going to have a lot of the same upsides, downsides. If there are issues, they may eventually surface. So yeah, there. The current state of both startups not only shows the impact of

10:29on bias criticism when looking at a product, but also its necessity. YouTube reviewers are sometimes the first place potential customers learn about a product and decide whether to spend their hard earned money on it. While creators like Mark, he seemed comfortable dishing out harsh reviews, he was about to get a taste of what it's like to be on the receiving end of a bad product launch. By the 24th of September, 2024, Marquis published a tweet announcing the release of his new wallpaper app, Panels. I'm so pumped to be launching this app, people have asked where I get wallpapers forever. So this is the answer. Now, and forever, panels. At first, fans were very optimistic about the application. Since Marquis claimed it would feature handpicked art from other online creators. However, when digital art is involved, there's always the possibility of it being AI generated, and users weren't shy about expressing their concerns. Reading, it feels a little late now, doesn't it? What's stopping me from asking AI to create a unique high-quality wallpaper that no one else will have? I'm leaving the dot open feeder prove me wrong. I hope to see a YouTube video showcasing your app, proving me, the skeptic, wrong. In response, Marquis would write,

11:34these are all made by artists who can choose to involve AI or not in their creation process. It'll be up to you how much you value the human touch. Over on YouTube, Marquis shared a few extra details about panels that would hopefully paint a clearer picture of what the application does, how much it costs, and how it will be improved in future updates. You guys have always been asking me where I get my wallpapers. Like, it's frequently the number one suggested search result under my name has been for years, so now we've put them all in one place. It's called panels, and it's finally live in the app store, both on iOS and on Android. It feels really good to be able to say that. So, if you're wondering where the wallpaper on these phones and the review came from, panels. If you're wondering where the wallpaper on the last video came from, panels. Matter of fact, almost all of the wallpapers on the devices and in backgrounds you've seen in my videos for the past year have all come from panels, which is pretty sick. And we have some pretty big plans for this thing. So, it's starting off as a wallpaper app now. I don't want to overpromise too much, but it's going to be pretty consistently improving over time, which is part of the reason why we're offering

12:38a subscription to support it. So, go pick it up now. While panels seems like a good step forwards for the MKBHD brand, fans hated the idea of paying $50 a year for smartphone wallpapers, no matter how good the art was. With comments reading, no one's paying $50 a year for a regular wallpaper app, little bro. MKBHD graduated from the Apple School of Pricing, MKBHD. Never buy something for the promise of something it will do later. Also, MKBHD. My app will have a lot of better things to come, so don't get it now. Overall, it seems like the controversy around panels was born out of both its incomplete state and high price tag. This gave fans the impression that MKBHD wasn't putting any real effort into the app and was releasing it solely for profit. Fortunately, MKBHD recognized his mistake and attempted to set the record straight with a video titled Let's Talk About Panels. I made a lot of mistakes along the way, including the fact that I didn't really explain anything. I didn't explain the UI, what was in it, the point of the app, and most importantly, why it had a freaking $50 price tier, and so appropriately, the entire

13:42internet was very disappointed, and that's 100% on me. After reiterating his reasoning behind creating panels, MKBHD would recognize and address the issues with the app's initial pricing model, privacy concerns and design. Even though MKBHD promised better updates to the app's design, wallpaper offering, and functionality, he wanted people to download panels for what it is today. Thing I keep saying, which is never buy a product based on the promise of future software updates. Buy it for what it is today, and I'm never going to stop preaching that. That is still extremely true. But the irony is not lost on me that I've also made a lot of references and promises about the future of this app in this video. So I'll still say if you want to grab a wallpaper or download this app and check it out, get it for what it is today. Thankfully, viewers were equally as optimistic about panels, and felt that MKBHD had adequately addressed the issues with his product, with comments reading, masterclass and handling criticism, and an apology. Messed up, check, accepted his mistake, check, apologize without excuses, check,

14:44reduced 85% of the costs, check, made it better, check, I don't think he deserves any more hate after this. And he messed up and he realized it, you have to respect him. While MKBHD's apology over panels would go down as one of the best in influencer history, it soon be forced to make another one following some extremely reckless activities on camera. On 12 November 2024, MK's uploaded a video titled, How My Video Gear Is Changing, in which he was promoting an action camera that was sponsoring his channel. While the video was controversial for being an entirely sponsored video for another GoPro-type company, being packaged as a genuine video about his gear changing, that wouldn't be what made this video so infamous. Around 7 minutes in, MK would showcase a clip of him accelerating a land beginning to over 96 miles per hour in a 35 mile per hour zone. Although MK would eventually cut out that clip due to criticism, the damage was already done, as the video would receive over 120,000 dislikes and a furious comment

15:49reading, editing out the crime does not make it disappear. This second time being flamed by the comments in one year? Damn, it's getting serious, as well as 96 miles per hour in a school zone. Dude, what the hell? To quote the backlash, MK's would release an apology on Twitter that read, There was a clip where the action cam of me test driving a car and going way too fast, absolutely inexcusable and dangerous. I've since cut it out of the video with YouTube's editor tool. I understand that this looks like covering it up, but I think it's the right thing to do. There's no reason to leave that clip in, and I would never want to make it seem okay by leaving it in the video. I'm well aware of this rise and effect, and I know everything on the internet lives forever, but I think that's the best decision right now. All I can do, apologize, and promise never to do anything closer that stupid again. That's a terrible example to set, and I'm sorry for it. As you might imagine, the response to MK's apology was heavily polarized. On one hand, people accepted his apology since he didn't hurt anyone, and the clip was removed. On the other hand, uses flame-tim for even filming the act of reckless driving. While both sides had their merits,

16:52the truth is that Marquis holds himself to a very high standard of credibility, which makes things especially heated whenever he makes a mistake. In the week after the incident, experts like Legal Eagle would weigh in on the situation and analyze its severity. Now MKBHD films most of his videos in New Jersey, so let's assume that New Jersey traffic laws apply. First up would be the speeding violation. It looks as if he's driving a suburban area. Under New Jersey law, it is quote, prime facial lawful for a driver to drive 35 miles per hour in any suburban business or residential district. That means it's illegal to go above 35 miles an hour in those zones, though, and if he was in a school zone or children were clearly visible in the roadway, or when children are going to or leaving school, the limit is 25 miles per hour. This chart shows how it works, so if a person was driving 30 miles or more over the speed limit, it's a five-point speeding violation and five points on a license. Sadly, this wasn't to Marques's first traffic offense, as it had been pulled over several times before. He will learn from it, hopefully in the sense that he won't film his crimes, but also in the sense that he won't do them in the future. But we live in a car-centric world,

17:52so it's easy to fetishize those cars and forget that there are real people who can be hurt by a three-ton box of steel hurtling down the road in a hundred miles per hour. And MKBHD might want to consider shifting his mindset to a more human-centered world. While Marques hadn't faced legal penalties for his most recent traffic violation, it was still a very real possibility. The biggest question that people had, apart from why would you drive 60 miles an hour above the speed limit, is can MKBHD get in trouble from the video that he posted, especially now that he has deleted the video clip in question? Now, I can't believe I have to say this, but don't put videos of your crime on social media because yes, the police might find them and use the videos to prove that you committed those crimes. Although there weren't any legal consequences, there were undoubtedly social ones. As fans constantly reminded Marques of his mistakes in every subsequent upload, with comments reading, can you generate a video of you not driving over the speed limit, or is that impossible even for AI? Can't wait for the AI-generated video of MKBHD addressing his reckless driving, as well as Ronita drop a video on radar detectors going 59 in a 25 is crazy.

18:57Eventually, Marques would address all of his controversies in a video recapping his creative and personal journey in 2024. The Fisker Ocean on the Auto Focus channel, as the worst car I've ever tested, which then proceeded to blow up. I was far from the first person to say negative things about this car, but for a number of different reasons, this one hit a little different, I was accused of sabotaging the company's stock price on purpose, killing the company as a whole, none of which are really true. I also don't care about the stock prices of these companies, but we learned some lessons about negative reviews and bad products in the relationship that they have. Regarding his coverage of other products like the Humane AI pin, Marques would reflect on the massive impact of negative reviews on the products and the equally critical response it could elicit from fans. I reviewed the Humane pin and the Rabbit R1, two standalone AI products that just clearly came up way short of their promises and still do to an extent, but this reignited the

20:01conversation about negative product reviews. No pun intended about ignited, but it felt like everyone on the internet had something to say about it this time. People weighing in on the side of consumers, also on the side of product makers. I still stand by everything I said in those reviews, but what I mostly learned was the power that these reviews actually have. When it came to its own products being harshly reviewed, Marques acknowledged its shortcomings and recognized the irony of now being on the other side of criticism. And then we launched panels, our wallpaper app to the world. This is something we'd worked on as a team in the background for the better part of a year, you know, sourcing from artists, developing, designing everything, and then launching it with the review of the new iPhone. Unfortunately, that was a total misjudgment on my part. I spent way too much time, well, way more time on the product review than actually explaining the app itself, which it needed its own explanation. So people didn't really understand. I didn't really properly explain the features or what it did, why it existed, or why it even had a premium price

21:07here. This openness to criticism carried over to its other mistakes, such as the recent speeding incident. Then directly after, I released a DJI Action Cam video about using these Action Cam's that was sponsored, but I wanted to use this opportunity to address the bigger issue from that whole experience, which was the driving clip, even though it's no longer in that video. So there was a clip in that video since removed of POV driving, a Lamborghini, and accelerating to over 90 miles an hour in a 35 mile an hour zone. It's just stupid and dangerous, not just for the actual act, which was stupid and dangerous, but also for the potential precedent that it could set, because like we said, in addition, my case gave some extra context to the situation. So earlier in November, another YouTuber who will remain nameless, invited me out to test drive a car. And I said, okay, yeah, sounds fun. We went out and the way these work is that the sales person sort of takes

22:08you out on a pre-designated test drive route. It was outside New Jersey. I didn't know the space very well. So I just followed their lead. They sort of showed you where to go. And we went out and then came back. So I had the Action Cam with me as I had for the past couple weeks as I'd shot clips here and there around just on how it could be used to shoot anything anywhere. So on the way back, I was like, okay, I'll shoot a clip of a few seconds of driving because this could be used to shoot driving shots. He also noted how he said a bad example for his viewers and other creators who looked up to him. I learned several valuable lessons here, you know, making mistakes and genuinely learning from them and changing. I think that's a super important thing to just have as a human. And then also as the responsibility that I have as a very visible creator and that people look up to what I do and what we make as a team. So clearly everything deserves an extra layer

23:10of diligence. At the end of the video, Makis recognized the privilege and responsibility that came with running such a large channel. So 2024 was a crazy year. And I learned I learned a lot of lessons and I think what's maybe the most interesting is the one main lesson kind of came from both ultimate frisbee and this stuff here on YouTube, which is and I had a coach say this and I never forget it. That pressure is a privilege. You don't necessarily get to make something and create something new and send it out to the internet and have anybody care about it. So the fact that we get to do that here is a privilege and I don't want to forget that. Throughout his controversies in 2024, Makis expresses two key traits that every creator could learn from and ability to accept criticism and the willingness to fix their mistakes. Makis's situation is evidence that being a creator will always come with some level of criticism and it's the ability to bounce back from it that determines the longevity of one's career. A creator who did not bounce back from criticism

24:14was Nas daily. Click the video on screen to find out how.