People like AdoredTV fall into a completely different category. They are clearly influencers (for better or for worse) and need to be categorized as media or journalists (extremely loosely using the term here). Yes, people like AdoredTV blurting out dumb shit isn't the best thing but anyone with half a brain knows better. The rest, well it really doesn't matter what is said for them does it?
Well AdoredTV makes it highly relevant, as most of the hype could be traced back to his stuff. The point being that when these people with influence, who have a responsibility to be critical and properly informative, are not, then issues like what we saw the last 6 months arise. And it fires up a community who we know are very easy to rile up, in terms of fantastic expectations. AdoredTV's video(s) was so impactful that when Techspot released an article on December 8th, 2018, a week after AdoredTV's leak, titled
"Our take on AMD Zen 2 CPU and Navi GPU rumors" (video version
here) in which they played down the hype and made arguments for why they found Jim's claims unreliable, they recieved heavy negative feedback. Interestingly, Jim took up arms against criticisms against his "source", of which that Techspot article was in the centre, and said that the Zen 2 release would "redeem" him and prove everyone else wrong. Needless to say, that never happened.
The whole saga from then on is really interesting. As the HU guys explained the first video I linked:
Techspot said:
For us, we were just trying to inform our viewers that 'look, I know you guys are excited. We're excited as well, but maybe put excitement in check', because it's going to be quite a few months before you really hear anything concrete, and it's going to be a Q3 thing for when you you buy them. The reason we covered it in News Corners is because we were getting hundreds of hundreds of comments saying "why aren't you covering this [AdoredTV leak]. $100 6 core Ryzen 3 CPU is definitely going to be my next buy"
This was the kind of hype the Reddit leak and Jim from AdoredTV had helped spread. When Techspot releasd
this video back in December 7th, contradicting Jim and saying that Zen or Navi would not be announced at CES in January, 2019, the negative backlash in the comment section was enough for them to finally conclude:
Techspot said:
In the future we'll probably just keep what we hear from industry sources to ourselves, it's too much hassle to deal with the rubbish from the community.
Of course, the negative feeedback was far worse in their "Our take on AMD Zen 2 CPU and Navi GPU rumors" article and video, where they downplayed many of his claims as "insane", "unlikely" and "not possible". There were over 2000 comments there, of which a large portion of them were defending Jim's leaks.
They sum it very well up in the latest "Too Good to be True" video, and Tim echoed the same sentiments posed in this very thread, near the ned of the video:
Techspot said:
I don't agree with [the talk of Zen 2 being disappointing] at all (...) This is kind of why we don't cover leaks or rumour, or like these sort of leaks in general. Imagine if this leak hadn't happened, and there was no information of this degree about the Ryzen 3000 line, and then it launched (...) people would actually be amazed that AMD has a 9900K-capable part that is not only 65W (TDP), but is also costing you $200 less than a 9900K (....) But when you come from the perspective suggesting there'll be a cheap part [it'll disappapoint].
And my point, is that average Janes and Joes on a forum have no impact on expectations and reception and should speculate away as long as everyone understands the context of the discussion. Most people don't pay any attention to what a nobody says on the internet. So what is the point of even bothering with this thread?
I disagree. People coming together and having discussions, like on this forum, is precisely about making for more informed human beings -- that's the entire purpose of having public forums like these. We might not carry the same weight of influence as AdoredTV or Hardware Unboxed, but we nevertheless have some influence and some impact; namely on those reading and participating on TPU. If you think that's insignificant, then you are also disqualifying the entire function of the forum of TPU, and other similarly-sized forums, as a whole. Why have any discussion at all to begin with, if it won't matter much on a larger scale?
Although I completely understand your point, and it certainly touches upon an issue of constraint and marginalization, the pessimism won't get you far.