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We tech things seriously.

Linus Tech Tips is a YouTube channel starring Linus Sebastian, featuring technology and PC reviews, news, PC builds, and guides. It was originally a secondary channel to NCIX Tech Tips, which was run by Linus and an anonymous camera and editing crew for the now-defunct Canadian tech retailer NCIX. In early 2013, Linus and NCIX split ways, and Linus took the Linus Tech Tips channel with him, although he continued to present videos for NCIX Tech Tips on contract until the end of 2015.

In 2013, along with the split from NCIX, Linus founded the Linus Media Group to manage the channel, alongside co-host Luke Lafreniere and editor Edzel Yago. Within a few months, they added Brandon Lee (not to be confused with that Brandon) as a shooter and editor, and the channel snowballed from there. Since then, the company has grown to nearly 80 employees, and started a number of additional channels, projects, and video series. These include:

  • The WAN Show: A video Podcast featuring Linus and Luke discussing tech and gaming news from the previous week. Occasionally features guest hosts, especially when Linus and/or Luke are unavailable, with James being a frequent relief host in recent times. Airs Fridays, streamed simultaneously to the LTT Twitch and YouTube channels.
  • Scrapyard Wars: A Reality Show in which Linus and Luke compete to build the best PCs on the smallest budget. Between seasons 3 and 6, Linus and Luke were joined by guests in each season:
    • Season 3: a three-way contest: Linus vs. Luke vs. Austin Evans
    • Season 4: Linus & Bob vs. Luke & Rod (Bob and Rod from BS Mods)
    • Season 5: Linus & Luke vs. Kyle (Bitwit) & Paul (Paul's Hardware)note 
    • Season 6: Linus & Dmitry (HardwareCanucks) vs. Luke & Jay (JayzTwoCents)
    • Season 7: A classic Linus vs. Luke battle, with the invokedadded challenge of not being able use the Internet in any capacity (e.g. no Google, no social media, no email, no web classifieds such as Craigslist or Kijiji, etc.) to acquire parts.
  • Techquickie: A channel featuring quick lessons on various technology topics, geared in general towards the layman.
  • Channel Super Fun: A channel featuring the Linus Media Group staff taking part in tomfoolery of all sorts, from water balloon fights to jousting on Swegways to mercilessly pranking each other. Was updated regularly for a few years, but fell dormant in the late 2010s, with occasional uploads. Was revived again in early 2020, with repeated promises that the channel is indeed back from the dead.
  • TechLinked: A tech news channel, with uploads every Monday, Wednesday and Friday (mostly, ish). Also has a Podcast variation on most music streaming services like Spotify.
  • ShortCircuit: A tech unboxing and quick overview channel. Effectively, a spinoff of Linus Tech Tips that brings back the older style of videos that were pioneered back when LTT was itself just the dumping ground for videos that wouldn't meet the production standards of NCIX Tech Tips.
  • They're Just Movies: A weekly movie review podcast. Formerly known as Carpool Critics.
  • Mac Address: A channel dedicated to just Apple products, hosted by Jonathan Horst.
In addition to their YouTube channels, LTT also boasts an active forum community at LinusTechTips.com. In 2016, after the demise of Vessel, Luke's role shifted towards developing a new paid web platform for videos, titled Floatplane, and in January 2018 this project was spun off into its own independent company, with Linus as CEO and Luke as COO.

Linus Tech Tips contains examples of:

  • 555: In "Why would you even...? Nvidia GeForce RTX 2060 Review", the Parody Commercial's phone number is 1(800)555-6969.
  • Affectionate Parody:
  • The Alleged Car: "The Lambo", Linus' Honda Civic, which was painted pink on Channel Super Fun in 2015. It became a staple of the channel, often found parked outside the LMG office, and Linus continued driving it until he allowed fans to vandalize it at LTX 2018 and the seats were covered with glitter glue.
  • The Alleged Computer: In "I was FORCED to buy a Chromebook...", his son needs a Chromebook for school, but Linus is dismayed by the poor build quality of the models on display at a local store.
  • And That's Terrible: In "This Product Aged Like Fine Milk", Linus unboxes a liquid cooling system from circa 2005. He says that putting copper and aluminum in the same loop is a good way to cause galvanic corrosion in the aluminum, and reiterates that it's a bad thing.
  • April Fools' Day:
  • A Rare Sentence: In Linus' review of a monitor he states "I think I've got a defective nipple here", followed immediately by "Words you never thought you'd say!" For context, Linus refers to things which use tiny joystick-like controls as 'nipples'.
  • Are We There Yet?:
  • Ascended Extra: Both Riley (of NCIX Netliked fame) and Emily (one of Linus Media Groups' employees) appear more in front of the camera in 2019 than they did previously. For the former, it was due to being brought onto LMG to host a semi-daily news show TechLinked, while the latter gained popularity after appearing in the background of the more technically complex projects Linus does, normally server, Mac Pro, or Linux related.
  • Ascended Meme:
  • Aspect Ratio Switch: Both "5K goes ULTRAWIDE - LG 34WK95U-W Review" and "This GPU SLIDES into this Case!" start with an aspect ratio 75% the width of the main videonote . Likewise, "Was Windows Vista THAT Bad?" starts in 2.20:1 while the rest of it is in 16:9.
  • Ass Shove: In March 2022, Linus released a video showing off an incredibly tiny mobile phone which was allegedly designed for the specific purpose of being shoved up one's ass and smuggled into a prison.
  • Awesome, but Impractical:
  • Berserk Button: Since he used to paint houses for while, bad paint jobs done on houses is a pretty noticeable one for Linus as evident by how "passionate" he got in ''The Paint Rant'' clip.
  • Big Fancy House: Linus' new house, the renovation of which has been the subject of multiple videos over the course of 2021 and 2022.
  • Big Fun: Emily Young, through and through. Portly as she may be, she still brings a positive and laid back vibe whenever she's on the show.
  • Brand Name Takeover: Discussed and inverted in the TechLinked episode "They Broke Up..." (September 16, 2022). Jacob says Intel is ditching Pentium and Celeron branding in favor of "Intel Processor", despite the name not applying to desktop CPUs.
    Jacob Strieb: That's right, Intel made a brand name out of a product category. They did a reverse Kleenex. Is that legal?
  • Bread, Eggs, Breaded Eggs: In "I DESPERATELY Wanted to Love This..." (about the Aya Neo Air and Ayo Neo Air Pro), Linus mentions that Ayo made handheld gaming systems like the NEXT, the Pro, and the NEXT Pro.
  • Buffy Speak: Linus refers to the Nvidia RTX 3090's cooling system as a "through-card blowy thing" in "RTX 3090 SLI - We Tried so Hard to Love It". It refers to how the cooling system is larger than the graphics card's PCB (circuit board), allowing air to go straight through it rather than make a 90 degree inside the card.
  • Call-Back:
  • Censored for Comedy: In "Why is EVERYONE Buying this Monitor??", there's this quote:
    Linus: And welcome back to another episode of "why the Actual holy-
    Text-to-Speech voice: advertiser friendly content
    Linus: Are you guys all buying this?" The best-selling monitor on Amazon.com.
  • Censored Title:
    • According to Luke, a 2013 video entitled "Low End Video Cards Rant & Radeon R7 240 Unboxing & Review" was internally called "Low End Graphics Cards Are S**t".
    • The entire series "Holy $h!t" (pronounced 'Holy [Beep]'), which is mostly about expensive or otherwise incredible or mindblowing technology.
    • The entire series "$H!T Manufacturers Say", which debunks outrageous claims some tech manufacturers say about their products.
    • Averted with "How to Hide Your Porn", though Luke does go to great lengths to avoid saying the word within the actual video itself, and even when bringing the video up in a WAN Show segment.
  • Cold Open: The mainline Linus Tech Tips videos start with the setup for the topic, product(s), or service(s) at hand before the title card.
  • Colon Cancer: The Couch Gag of "Nvidia missed the memo" says "RTX 3090 Ti GTS XXX KO Ultra Pro Max".
  • Continuity Nod: In the TechLinked episode "It's got NO PORTS", Riley says "I think we can all agree we don't want another NCIX and ensuing dumpster refugees." This is a reference to "HEARTBROKEN... NCIX YouTube Channel", where Riley was sleeping in a dumpster after Netlinked Daily had its final video due to NCIX going out of business.
  • Couch Gag: Most if not all of the videos since "Obutto Revolution Gaming Cockpit - The ULTIMATE Workstation Computer Setup?" (released February 9, 2015) contain a new subtitle under the Linus Tech Tips title each episode, with the first one saying We tech things seriously.
  • *Cough* Snark *Cough*:
  • Crossover: LTT have done crossovers with other tech YouTubers, such as Bitwit, JayzTwoCents, and iJustine. Gavin Free of The Slow Mo Guys even popped up as a guest cameraman.
  • Curse Cut Short: In the "Why is EVERYONE Buying This..." mini-series, Linus will say before the Cold Open ends some variation of "why the... is everyone buying this", with the supposed curse word(s) being replaced with a computer's text-to-speech voice saying "Advertiser Friendly Content".
  • Cutting the Knot: Happens multiple times in the Tech Support Challenge live stream featuring Jayz Two Cents and Gamers Nexus' Steve. Both are expected to diagnose and fix numerous defects with a pre-prepared PC, including disconnected or poorly-wired components in the case and deliberate severe performance issues caused by changes in the BIOS. Steve gets around half of it by simply dismantling the computer and reassembling it on a test bench from scratch, then resetting the entire BIOS back to factory settings.
  • Deliberate VHS Quality: When Linus inserts an LTO tape into a drive in "We got a $5,500 TAPE DRIVE!", the screen switches to 4:3 and looks like it was shot on a camcorder from The '90s.
  • Dissimile: "I Can't Believe I Paid Two Grand For This" has this line when taking the Xbox development kit out of the box:
    Linus: Inside here is an Xbox Series X. Totally normal except for the fact that is has 40 gigabytes of RAM, extra buttons on the front, an OLED display, and it looks absolutely nothing like the Xbox on the shelf at Best Buy.
  • Don't Try This at Home:
    • The TechQuickie episode discussing User Account Control - an important if often annoying Windows security feature introduced with Vista - shows the menu for disabling it, but accompanies that with klaxxons and blinking red text saying "DON'T DO THIS".
    • Some of the projects the LTT team attempts are this either because they are too dangerous for the average PC user, especially for a novice, to attempt or too expensive to be practical.
  • Droste Image:
    • The short "I do not recommend this!!" shows Linus with two computers remoting into each other, causing recursion with the same window inside itself, like a video camera pointed its own viewfinder.
    • This video on the worst PC's Linus has ever built throughout history, he briefly shows a young Yvonne wearing a white hoodie with stripes on the arms as his old wallpaper in a photo. Linus then zooms out to show a slightly older Yvonne wearing the same hoodie sat right next to the computer, giving off this effect.
  • Epic Fail: In a Channel Super Fun challenge, Colton is asked to divide 420 by 69 by hand, and freely admits that he has no idea as to how to do this. He cheats by asking someone else, yet somehow still gets the answer wrong. Worse, he somehow ends up with a larger number than he started with.
  • Establishing Character Moment: LinusTechTips' first video features Linus bumping his office chair onto a table of expensive electronics. This would eventually go on to establish him as The Klutz.
  • Failsafe Failure: Discussed in "Never Do Tech Support For Your Family Again!" after Emily talks about setting up restore points for Windows 11:
    Emily: All of the above shouldn't fail you. But, if you work with tech, you'll know how often failsafes will fail. "Should" is basically the only thing you can count on.
  • Fake-Out Fade-Out:
    • Linus Tech Tips: After Linus drops one of his 60 20TB hard drives in "Dream has Too Much Money", Jake claims he is leaving the video an not going to finish building the storage server, making the end screen show up briefly.
    • ShortCircuit: The beginning of "I like these! - Nothing Phone (1)" has Linus make a joke there is nothing to say about the Nothing Phone, then brings an end screen with silly pictures replacing video links just 5 seconds in.
  • Foiler Footage: invokedDiscussed in the review of the Nvidia RTX 3080 ti. Linus says he finds a few different reactions to the MSRP before he knew what it was. The MSRP turned out to be $1,199, with the final reaction being a "meh" face with Type B Losing Horns.
  • Foreshadowing:
  • Freeze-Frame Bonus: 2 minutes and 29 seconds into "This Cooler Makes No Sense", the lower right side of the SMPTE Color Bars has low contrast text saying "If you took the time to read what this says, I salute you. Have a good day!"
  • Funny Background Event:
  • Gaslighting: Parodied in TechLinked episode "Nvidia, please." (January 10, 2022). After a computer glitch causes Honda and Acura cars to show the year as 2002, James jokingly accuses the cars of gaslighting people into thinking it's 2002.
  • Greek Chorus: Most TechLinked videos will have one member of LTT as the host, while a second member off-camera interjects with snark, puns, and commentary. (Riley often plays this role if he's not the host.)
  • Have You Tried Rebooting?: Discussed in "Why Does Rebooting Fix So Many Problems?" Linus explains that programs can experience errors they cannot fix by themselves, and that a computer might just get cluttered with processes after staying on a long time.
  • Helium Speech: In "Saying Goodbye...", Linus is moving out of his house, and actually puts helium in his mouth to make his voice higher pitch.
  • I Meant to Do That: In the first two minutes of the episode about triple 4K monitors, Linus drops a graphics card and later claims the drop was intentional. He reveals the dropped card was labeled "DUMMY GPU".
  • Incredibly Lame Pun: At minimum Once per Episode in TechLinked, and usually several times more than that.
  • Insistent Terminology:
    • The LTT crew prefers to refer to hoverboards as "swegways".
    • From Channel Super Fun: they're not 'gumballs', they're 'motivation spheres'.
  • Irony: Lampshaded in "Is 4 cores still enough?". Linus says an old quad core PC can still perform well with demanding tasks like gaming (a message against simply buying things), segues to the sponsor (Glasswire), and ends it with "and yes, I appreciate the irony".
  • Jar Potty: In the Techlinked episode "Can AMD keep this up?" (September 26, 2022), James Strieb talks about how trucking companies that worked for Amazon had more dangerous drivers than other trucking companies. James ad-libs a part about "pee bottles" spread all over the crash sites, before quickly admitting to making that part up.
  • The Klutz:
    • Linus is known to drop expensive tech (most notoriously an Intel Xeon Platinum 8180, a $10,000 cream-of-the-crop workstation CPU), to the point of it becoming a Running Gag and a defining feature of his public and professional persona.
    • While attempting to reassemble the iMac Pro, Emily accidentally touches the power supply PCB while trying to reattach the display, dropping and permanently damaging the display.
    • The Couch Gag of "It Took Me a YEAR to Get This"note  Lampshades this. After Linus shows off a brand new Prime TX-1000 PSU with an 80 Plus Titanium rating from Seasonic. The Couch Gag says "he'll probably drop it".
  • Last-Second Word Swap: Happens early in "They Discontinued This Before I Could Buy One!". When Linus is handed a sheet of paper indicating the Hisense U9DG was discontinued shortly after launch, he says "THAT'S TERRI-, rrr, -riffic".
  • Left It In: The Techlinked Episode "OpenAI Is Completely Fine", has host Riley explain the same theory twice about Altman vs the old board at OpenAI and the reasoning for the former's return. This is because Riley had clearly flubbed the line, so a second take was done, but the original take had been kept in the final video too. On a related note, the opening Couch Gag has a green screen visible for a few seconds as Riley walks into the room, though this did get an acknowledgement via the timestamps, named "u have seen the void".
  • Let Me at Him!: Parodied in "DDR5 is FINALLY HERE... and I've got it", where a cutaway gag shows one guy wanting to hammer a piece of RAM into a physically incompatible RAM slot (due to mismatch of DDR4 and DDR5), with another guy holding his arm to prevent the hammer from swinging.
  • Like Is, Like, a Comma: The Couch Gag of "I've been waiting TOO long" says "It's OLED but, like, in a laptop now".
  • Limited Wardrobe: Discussed and conversed in "Saying Goodbye...", where Linus says he sometimes jokes that he "dresses like a cartoon character", and showing his pants drawer full of extremely similar pairs of jeans.
  • Logo Joke: The LTT logo in "My PC keeps turning off... - Tech Support Walkthrough" imitates a CRT display shutting off instead of continuing as normal.
  • LOL, 69:
  • Ludicrous Precision: One of the many problems discussed in "Why our Screwdriver took 3 YEARS" said the ratchet would jam on one of the production samples. The problem turned out to be a lever made 1/5000ths of an inch out of spec. Because it's a lever, the error ended up getting multiplied and causing the jam.
  • Lying Finger Cross: Jokingly discussed in the TechLinked episode "Time to Retire, Miners..." (September 14, 2022).
    Riley: Analysts looking at footage of the deal have determined that while Sony and Discord were shaking hands, Discord was crossing their fingers!
  • Moose and Maple Syrup: The TechLinked episode "Sony Stole My Movies" (July 8, 2022) talks about Rogers (an ISP and cell phone carrier that serves Canada) experiencing a nationwide outage, and Riley jokingly suggests Rogers employees giving the network Timbits and Tim Hortons coffee until it starts working again.
  • Nostalgia Filter: A mini-series of videos titled "Then vs. Now" deconstructs this trope, as newer technologies offer more convenience in everyday tasks such as listening to music.
  • No Such Thing as Bad Publicity: invoked Discussed in-universe in the Techlinked episode "Ryzen 7000 is breaking records...". Riley says "Team green [Nvidia] is really testing the whole 'any publicity is good' thing".
  • Noodle Incident:
  • No True Scotsman: In "I Can't Believe Intel is Selling This.", Linus says Intel's Arc A370M GPU may be valuable as a video co-processor if you have a "real" GPU alongside it.
  • Once Done, Never Forgotten:
    • The LTT crew will take any opportunity to reference the time when their Ryzen test bench fell over on camera.
    • Ever since Linus accidentally broke his cameraman Andy's bed by jumping on it, the Intel Extreme (and later, AMD Ultimate) Tech Upgrade videos will never let him forget about the bed.
    • Linus' screwups attempting to install Steam on Pop!_OS became this for the Linux distro. Many act as if every single attempt to install Steam on it resulted in the desktop getting deleted.
  • Once per Episode: Someone saying "lttstore.com" on camera while using said product found on the store, normally a water bottle or shirt.
  • Painting the Medium: The intro to video about the 2021 MacBook Pro features a notch at the top of the screen similar to the reviewed computer.
  • [Popular Saying], But...: in "Nvidia, you PROMISED! - RTX 3080 Review":
    Linus: But as we all know, hype disappoints, and absolute hype disappoints absolutely.
  • Porn Stash: The video "How to Hide Your Porn" offers several ways to hiding one's stash, from folder manipulation to encryption.
  • Precision F-Strike: Happens occasionally, but it is bleeped out, sometimes lampshaded as keeping the dialogue advertiser friendly.
  • Product Placement: Hardware manufacturers will often sponsor an episode, and their products will be featured prominently throughout said video. Normally adspots are placed before and after the main video topic.
  • Pungeon Master:
    • Linus and Luke sometimes take their time with them.
    • The whole company gets involved in firing off puns, as evidenced on Channel Super Fun and in behind-the-scenes vlogs, occasionally devolving into a Hurricane of Puns.
  • Questioning Title?: The question titles go at least as far back as "Tt exports Interview - Why Do you Guys Sponsor Tastosis?" from June 5, 2013. But they have become more common in The New '10s. One other example is "Is M1 Max worth $400 Extra?"
  • Reading the Stage Directions Out Loud: Happens on occasion, but on the TechLinked episode "Ryzen 4000 laptops are SICK!?", Linus reads out a piece on a new AMD Ryzen APU for laptops, and ends the segment by accidentally doing this:
    Linus: Bracket, need joke, end bracket; thank you Riley for that, not sure if I was supposed to ...
    Riley: I forgot about that ...
  • "Reason You Suck" Speech: In "NVIDIA pretends to care about gamers", Linus talks about how Nvidia's move to make dedicated cryptomining GPUs just creates more e-waste and prevents more used crypto cards from making their way to patient gamers. He also mentions that calling the RTX 3060 driver that halves cryptomining capacity "unhackable" is a case of Tempting Fate. He was proven right one month later.
  • Relax-o-Vision: In the video where Linus tries out counterfeit LTT merch, there is a bumper with the message "Please hold as Linus strips." as he indeed strips just to try out some unlicensed LTT-branded underwear.
  • Ridiculous Exchange Rates: The Techquickie episode "Nvidia's on a roll..." (October 5, 2020) has Linus say Apple is suing an Ontario recycling firm for reselling over 100,000 Apple products that should have been recycled. He also says that Apple is suing for 23 million US dollars in damages, which he says is about "100 trillion Canadian shillings". Doing the math, one US dollar is approximately 4.3 million Canadian shillings.
  • The Roast: ...of Linus Sebastian. His co-workers, as well as a few fellow technology-focused YouTubers all poke fun and vent their frustrations of him at Linus, everything from his unerring ability to act like a salesman on demand, the fact he sponsors videos with very weird sponsors, his higher-pitched voice, as well as other things.
  • Running Gag:
    • In The Roast episode, pretty much every person who stands up to rant at Linus also says; "Oh, and f*ck Colton", much to his very visible confusion.
    • Someone saying "lttstore.com" on camera while using said product found on the store, normally a water bottle or shirt. Exaggerated in "How bad is this $20 SSD??" where Emily codes in an easter egg that shows the URL when the test is done in a Linux executable file script meant specifically to test read/write speeds of a cheap SSD.
    • This episode on a project of getting hotswapping PCIe cards to work (plugging in a graphics card, for example, then taking it out again without the OS crashing). Throughout the episode, Linus say "Go ahead and cut" 22 times!, with the subtitle for the episode lampshading the entire ordeal as; "3 Hours of Raw footage later...".
    • Anytime AI or robots are mentioned in a good light (such as them delivering pizza via robots, or drones delivering packages), the host tends to make a joke about the bots and AI preparing for a robot uprising.
    • Linus being short is joked about enough that a sponsor once got in on it.
  • Screens Are Cameras: "Is Samsung Trying To Impress Me?? -- Samsung Galaxy Z Fold3 5G Early Look" talks about the titular phone having a camera hidden under the folding screen. Instead of using a "notch" or a "hole punch" to get the screen around the camera, it covers the camera with more screen. The catch is the circle (or rather the octagon) over the camera has a pixel density much lower than the rest of the screen, and the camera sees some grid-like light artifacts with lights in the frame.
  • Self-Deprecation: The Techquickie video "Why Do YouTube Channels Die?" mentions that too many ads and sponsorships can harm a channel's health...while showing clips of many of their own sponsored segments.
  • Sensory Abuse: In "This was all a waste of money. (about YouTube's shoddy HDR support), an in-universe example is a cutaway of a hypothetical scene of an LTT employee looking at an HDR TV when it's tuned to "an even worse version of the Vivid mode in the Best Buy showroom" (meaning way too bright).
  • Shoddy Knockoff Product: "Unboxing Counterfeit LTT Merch!" has Linus try out counterfeit LTT merch (i.e. stuff not being sold at the official LTT store). Those products range from T-shirts that are of lower quality to clothes (and even a blanket) with Linus's face printed on them. And there's now a part 2!
  • Shout-Out:
  • Sitcom Arch-Nemesis: Linus and Colton have this dynamic in "Caffeine-Fueled Midnight PC Building Stream", which preceded the aforementioned Madrinas Coffee-sponsored roast (and in which Linus announced it would be happening). Right at the start of the stream, Linus threatens to shank Colton with a Threadripper torque screw, and soon after (facetiously) announces to the audience that Colton's fired. Then Colton makes a bet as to whether or not Linus and Alex can build three PCs in two hours, during which Colton and Linus trade jeers (and Linus accuses Colton of trying to sabotage, calling off the bet).
    • During the stream, Linus explains the reason for the (playful) banter: Colton had a habit of repeatedly sabotaging personal plans Linus made in advance, setting up events with sponsors on short notice and forcing Linus to cancel his own plans. The icing on the cake involved the Backstreet Boys reunion tour, which Linus was really excited to see and was willing to bail on any short-notice plans Colton made ... except that after he and Yvonne bought tickets Colton then notified Linus that LTX got pushed back onto the date of the concert—through no fault of Colton's own, Linus admitted. Linus wasn't willing to bail on his own fans, but made a compromise to leave early on the day of the concert.
  • Sound-Effect Bleep: "I Was RIGHT!!!! (and I hate it) - Semiconductor Shortage Explined" shows Linus chanting "🎉 you [cryptocurrency] miners!" three times before backtracking.
  • Special Guest:
  • Spiritual Successor: invoked "HEARTBROKEN... NCIX YouTube Channel" explicitly states that TechLinked is the spiritual successor to Netlinked Daily, the former daily news show on NCIX Tech Tips. After NCIX went bankrupt in 2017, Linus tried everything he could to purchase the YouTube channel and related assets, with the intention of at least reviving Netlinked. When this plan fell through, they instead launched TechLinked, with Riley Murdock, the final presenter of Netlinked, as the main writer and presenter.
  • Spoonerism:
    • In the first part of "This Seems Rushed... - GeForce RTX [2000 Series] Review", Linus calls Nvidia's launch approach "bass ackwards" for releasing the ray tracing hardware before many games support it. The Couch Gag also says "Tray Racing: Cafeteria Edition".
    • In "This $5000 Graphics Card Can't Game", Linus Sebastian realizes that GPU-Z does not recognize the Nvidia cryptocurrency mining card. In response, he submits a validation report under the name "Sinus Lebastian"
    • The Techquickie episode from June 8, 2022 has Linus say refer to Quick Bits as "Bick Quits".
  • Stating the Simple Solution: In "My monitor just got an UPGRADE", Linus goes through the arduous task of VESA mounting two very heavy 32:9 monitors on top of each other. At the end:
    Linus: Could I have just put a TV on my desk? Yes. But DAMMIT! This is Linus Tech Tips, that's not how we do things around here.
  • Strange Minds Think Alike: When Linus and co. visit FreeGeek Vancouver he is digging through some old cables and comes across a bunch of PSU couplers to run two power supplies off the same motherboard, and mentions that Austin could have used them during Scrapyard Wars where he was running a PC with two power supplies. Linus calls over a FG staffer to show them to him, and the staffer says unprompted that Austin could have used them during Scrapyard Wars.
  • Stunned Silence: When Linus helped Gavin Free build a custom server for Gavin's own channel, he asked him how long would the server last him until it reached capacity. When he estimated that it would be about 3 months, Linus's reaction is simply a wide-eyed stare followed by a whispered "Oh my God".
  • Swivel-Chair Antics: In the ShortCircuit episode "I hope you can find a 3080 Ti in stock - EVGA FTW3 Ultra", Alex has a little fun spinning around in his chair. He does this while he is waiting for isopropyl alcohol to remove thermal paste.
  • Suspiciously Specific Denial: Dan in Linus's Galaxy Fold fixing video:
    Dan: Okay no pressure it's fine! Nothing happened while I was...fixing the other one, it's all okay.
    *beat*
    Linus: I feel like I'm not getting the whole story here...
  • Synchro-Vox: A live-action example happens early in "I Hate It When He's Right..." when Jake says (with Linus's voice and mouth) "That's really stupid. You should get [an EPSON LS12000B home projector]"
  • Take That!: One video had the title slate replaced with Linus Tech Reactions, complete with copyright notice at the bottom.
  • Tastes Like Chicken: In the TechLinked episode "Nvidia Did Nothing Wrong?" (November 18, 2022), Riley reports about lab-grown chicken from Upside Foods getting FDA approval, and remarks "I assume Upside Foods decided to make chicken because it would be easiest since it tastes like everything".
  • That Came Out Wrong: In "The Fatal Flaw in HP's Omen 45L broke me":
    Linus: You will end up with the same great 45L design, just with less HPenis choding it up. I need a sponsor to cleanse my palate.
  • Time Abyss: "Young People Try Windows 98" claims that Emily is infinity years old.
  • Tradesnark™: The Couch Gag of "Next Gen Desk PC: The Final Chapter" says "Stoked™"
  • Tranquil Fury: It's very rare for Linus to actually be angry on-camera when doing a review of a product sent to him, but he does have his moments:
    • In his Intel Core i9 10980XE Review, he gets more than a little angry at Intel having the gall to set the NDA for reviewing the chip at midnight, mere hours before AMD's Threadripper 3900-series of processors were going to be announced and go on sale:
      Linus: "[A higher-up at Intel] then laid down the law and went ahead with this plan to launch first by a matter of hours. Why? So that the launch day reviews, which tend to get referenced by buyers over the entire product lifecycle, Couldn't. Contain. Direct comparisons, to something you are afraid was going to be better. You are a weasel, and you are a chicken. You seek to misrepresent the strengths of your product to consumers; Weasel. And you seek to duck away from a fight, rather than take the criticism that you know you deserve; Chicken. I hope you get fired, because there are people with more integrity serving lunch in your cafeteria, and maybe they could use a raise. They certainly wouldn't have handled this any worse than you did."
    • When talking about Nvidia blacklisting fellow tech youtuber Hardware Unboxed on the WAN show, he tears them a new one over the course of about 25 minutes.
    • Linus tears Nvidia another new one over the company's kowtowing to cryptocurrency miners with the introduction of the CMP line of mining cards, stating the cards' long-term unsustainability once another crypto bust occurs and the cards end up as e-waste.
    • The WAN Show for April 29th, 2022 has Linus extremely furious at Teamviewer messaging him to upgrading ad nauseum, despite the fact he made clear, multiple times, to the company, that he doesn't want to, as his Teamviewer setup already works as is, and has no interest in upgrading from his older versions' perpetual license for the newer version he would have to pay for again. Teamviewer cold-calling him to pressure him into upgrading really pulls a chord with him, especially when he was assured that they had a list of people like Linus who do not want to upgrade (which he points out is either Blatant Lies and such list never existed, or some people in the company do not care and call him and others anyway).
    • During a WAN show Linus alludes to the aftermath of the clip where Dennis and Coltan try to secretly live in his house for 24 hours video. He admits while he did not yell he was perhaps the angriest he had ever been at any of his employees. For context, Linus had just moved into his mint fresh new house and the pair managed to do "not a small ammount of moneys worth of damage" to it including taking a huge chunk out of one of the hand rails (tripping and bashing a camera frame off of it), dripping paint over the new carpets and dropping a bed onto the literally new wooden floor then dragging it leaving a crater among other things. He believes yelling doesn't accomplish anything but it still takes a huge ammount not to lose it in that situation.
  • [Trope Name]: The Couch Gag in "DIY Ghetto Networking Wall - A renter's solution!" says "Something witty."
  • Technology Porn:
    • All over the place, but particularly the 7 Gamers 1 CPU build, featuring a PC worth a whopping $30,000. Like its name suggests, it's able to run seven gaming rigs within one tower.
    • Then he topped it with 8 Gamers 1 CPU, by not only adding one more gamer but addressing Problems like having everyone be near the PC at the same price.
    • In the same vein, an ongoing project as of October 2018 is 6 Editors 1 CPU. Comprising two $10,000 processors and six $3,000 graphics cards, the entire project cost is around $40,000.
    • The 'Holy $h!t' series is built on this, with expensive or otherwise incredible technology being the point of the series.
      • Possibly epitomized by the 16k gaming miniseries, wherein Linus and the team put together what would be the internet's very first successful attempt at 16k resolution gaming. Though most of the hardware involved were provided by partnering sponsors, the total tally came to sixteen top-of-the-line 4k monitors, a custom made desk and monitor mounting rack with an included computer case, which itself was loaded down with four Nvidia Quadro P5000 graphics cards, 128 gigs of ram, and a professional sync card used to keep all the monitors aligned with the proper image without tearing the image.
  • Visual Pun:
    • In "The BEST Keyboards Under $75!", Linus sets down the keyboard boxes and says "Now let's see how they fall into place", then knocks them down like dominoes.
    • In "This GPU SLIDES into this Case!", Linus tests cooling configurations of a graphics card in a small case. The testing with and without a plastic shroud shroud respectively show a green checkmark and a red X over the profile picture of Polish-Canadian esports gamer Michael Grzesiek, better known as Shroud.
  • Vitriolic Best Buds: The phone case company dbrand is this with Linus - while they sponsor videos on the channel frequently, and have collaborated with LTT on products previously, they also take every available opportunity to troll Linus and his viewership in the process. Some of their stunts include offering "SHORTLINUS" as a discount code, registering "notlttstore.com" as a link to their website, advertising a Linus face phone sticker as the "shit tier" sticker, and paying the channel to specifically advertise that a limited-time collab product is no longer available.
  • Walking Techbane: In The WAN Show clip "I think I'm cursed…", Linus says bricked an Ubuntu computer in less than an hour. All he tried to do was launch Steam and play Counter-Strike: Global Offense. Since this wasn't the first time Linus accidentally bricked a Linux installnote , he says Jake figures he "must have some kind of aura" and that he's cursed to break any Linux machine he uses.
  • What a Piece of Junk: Linus is no stranger to building sleeper PCs that utilize old cases but are packed with high-performance hardware and cooling options. There are three builds nicknamed "Hubert", "Dale", and "Margaret"; as well as a rig built inside an Xbox. Furthermore, Intel commissioned a build for him that uses the case of an IBM 5150 and sports the Core i7-8086K, a CPU that celebrates the 40th anniversary invoked of its direct ancestor, the 8086. And then, there's another sleeper PC that uses the case of a Micron Millennia and is packed with hardware such as the Crucial Ballistix RAMnote  and an RTX 2070 (which is later replaced with an RTX 3080). And then, there's yet another sleeper PC that uses the case of a Compaq Presario 5000 and is built with components bought from Micro Center.note 
  • What Are Records?: In "I Thought My Childhood was LOST", Linus asks Arthur Rafael if he still has a VCR, and he asks what a VCR is.
  • Who Writes This Crap?!: In TechLinked episode "Nvidia, please." (January 10, 2022), James reacts to a joke about bringing a Starlink dish everywhere if your iPhone SE 3 isn't the 5G model with "This is stupid, who wrote this joke?"
  • Word Salad: When Linus is trying out TempleOS, the OS occasionally makes sentences made of random words, such as "exultation abides surmount seducers retired hereditary circuit mouths names occur discovered" and "grievest shakes discord decided allay whatsoever potter biting mark observed province ye whilst likewise scourges by".
  • Writing Around Trademarks: After NCIX went under, Linus tried to buy assets pertiaining to the NCIX Tech Tips channel. When that failed, he instead hired Riley Murdoch to host a new channel; TechLinked, to get around the deals falling through. Techlinked is a carbon copy of Netlinked Daily, a show that Riley hosted on NCIX Tech Tips.

 
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From the episode "Have we gone MAD??" about the Blackmagic Ursa Mini Pro 12K. The quirks of using its footage in Adobe Premiere is so confounding, it distorts reality.

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Linus Tech Tips

From the episode "Have we gone MAD??" about the Blackmagic Ursa Mini Pro 12K. The quirks of using its footage in Adobe Premiere is so confounding, it distorts reality.

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