It’s not his first misstep and a double one: Marques Brownlee angers his 20 million subscribers by being a speeder and with advertising.
Which YouTuber is it about? Marques Brownlee is a tech YouTuber with nearly 230 million subscribers. In his video “How My Video Gear is Changing!” he introduces a new camera, but forgets to make it clear, apart from a brief mention after a few minutes in the video, that this is a sponsored format. The manufacturer of the highly praised camera had paid him.
And then there’s the sequence in which he drives a sports car on a road with a speed limit of 35 miles per hour (about 60 km/h), at a whopping 96 (about 155 km/h). His community is hard on him for this. According to onlookers’ observations, this was an area near a school:
96 miles an hour in a school zone? What the hell?
YouTube, WilliamTM
Comments of this kind, including reports from those affected by traffic accidents, are increasing under his video. He then reached for digital scissors.
If you would like to read about how students built spy glasses to demonstrate companions of technology, you can find an article from us here or the students’ video:
Students spy on passers-by with a hidden camera and an AI, find out their name and address in seconds
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Apologies from Marques Brownlee
How does Marques Brownlee behave? The YouTuber has since removed the part, which lasts just a few seconds, but images from it can still be viewed on Reddit. He also apologized by post on X:
In the last video I did something pretty stupid. […] There was a clip from the action cam where I was test driving a car and driving way too fast. Absolutely inexcusable and dangerous.
I have it now […] cut out. I also understand that this seems like covering it up, but I think it’s the right thing to do. There’s no reason to leave this clip in (there was no reason to include it in the first place) and I would never want to give the impression that it’s okay by leaving it in the video. […]
All I can do is apologize and promise never to do anything so stupid again. This is a terrible example and I’m sorry.
However, he can hardly save his reputation with this, because as Kougeru writes on YouTube: Cutting out the crime doesn’t make it go away.
He does not go into detail about the payment by the manufacturer, which is only inadequately disclosed. He only points out under his video that he is aware of the feedback on “sponsored videos”.
Meanwhile, it wasn’t the first time that Marques Brownlee attracted negative attention. We recently reported on an attempt to market a wallpaper app that is still ongoing today. The crux of the matter is that you can find plenty of free wallpapers on the Internet. But he tries to make a profit from it by offering it in the form of a subscription.
If you would like to delve even deeper into the world of tech YouTubers, you will find interesting information in the articles linked above. Or you can read how JayzTwoCents gets a PC bargain on the used market and speeds it up amazingly using two simple settings. Maybe the options used here are still buried untouched in your UEFI.