Blackteqrunner
Moderator
This is not my typical post, but more of a rant. I have personally seen a lot of media, especially on Youtube, trashing Toyota recently and trashing the new generation releases. Now let me get one thing out of the way before I get angry responses about me being a Toyota "fan boy". First and foremost, I admittedly am a huge fan of Toyota and get excited to get any new information that comes our way. I have had 5 Toyotas personally and my entire extended family are a Toyota/Lexus only family and have been for years. With that being said, I will not carry water for Toyota if I see them making a mistake. There is a difference in calling out possible mistakes and going into total grifting. What is an example of a grift you say? I'm glad you asked.
A certain Youtuber, which shall go unnamed for now, fits the description perfectly. He has been in the Toyota scene for a long time and has owned over a dozen Toyotas that have been a big part of his content if not all of his content. I enjoyed seeing his new vehicles, many of which being the hard to get TRD Pro's, Land Cruiser 200's, the list goes on and on. Recently he made a post about how he was happy about keeping his older model Toyota with the naturally aspirated V8, which I agree is a fantastic option especially in the initial release of a brand new powertrain. As his videos started pumping out a few times a week, I noticed a trend. All of his videos had nearly the same format. It was a sensational title, like "I am done with Toyota" or "Toyota is losing it's way" for example. Along with these attention grabbing titles is a selfie imposed on the thumbnail of the best frowny/concerned face he could muster. After a few you could chalk it up to him venting his frustrations, but after weeks of the same video format you realize that he is grifting into audience capture.
It seems to me that he realized he tapped into what a lot of us that have owned Toyota vehicles initially felt when innovation started to replace what we have all known to be a reliable platform. Will this new engine be reliable? Only time will tell, but we have to give Toyota some good faith that they have provided quality products up to this release and should be continuing that level of quality. Now I am a firm believer in free speech and he is absolutely able to create what he wants, however feeding into the fears of change that many of us have and deleting negative comments is not the best way to get your point across in the end. Like I said, we will see what the future holds and if Toyota has once again kept their promise for reliability or if they dropped the ball.
A certain Youtuber, which shall go unnamed for now, fits the description perfectly. He has been in the Toyota scene for a long time and has owned over a dozen Toyotas that have been a big part of his content if not all of his content. I enjoyed seeing his new vehicles, many of which being the hard to get TRD Pro's, Land Cruiser 200's, the list goes on and on. Recently he made a post about how he was happy about keeping his older model Toyota with the naturally aspirated V8, which I agree is a fantastic option especially in the initial release of a brand new powertrain. As his videos started pumping out a few times a week, I noticed a trend. All of his videos had nearly the same format. It was a sensational title, like "I am done with Toyota" or "Toyota is losing it's way" for example. Along with these attention grabbing titles is a selfie imposed on the thumbnail of the best frowny/concerned face he could muster. After a few you could chalk it up to him venting his frustrations, but after weeks of the same video format you realize that he is grifting into audience capture.
It seems to me that he realized he tapped into what a lot of us that have owned Toyota vehicles initially felt when innovation started to replace what we have all known to be a reliable platform. Will this new engine be reliable? Only time will tell, but we have to give Toyota some good faith that they have provided quality products up to this release and should be continuing that level of quality. Now I am a firm believer in free speech and he is absolutely able to create what he wants, however feeding into the fears of change that many of us have and deleting negative comments is not the best way to get your point across in the end. Like I said, we will see what the future holds and if Toyota has once again kept their promise for reliability or if they dropped the ball.
