The prominent tech YouTuber Marques Brownlee is in a controversy after it was discovered that he drove much higher than the speed limit in a recent video showing off his Lamborghini. After his long, respectable career as a reputably ethical tech journalist, it’s probably best that we forgive Brownlee — but that doesn’t mean we should forget what he’s done.
Brownlee, known online by his alias “MKBHD,” has not been having a good time over the last few months.
Issues started in September when he released an overpriced wallpaper app, which featured a premium subscription for $50/month just to download high-definition wallpapers for your smartphone’s home screen. The app also featured some questionable privacy practices, asking iOS users to allow app tracking, something that should be completely irrelevant for an app simply intended to provide cool phone wallpapers.
The situation led to a surge of backlash and prompted a public apology from Brownlee, leading him to make changes to the app to better suit user demands. It was an unusual moment for Brownlee, who had up until that point been considered the pinnacle of ethical, honest reporting over his 15 years of tech reviewing. Many viewers rightfully saw the situation as hypocritical, with the app featuring problems that Brownlee likely would have called out in a review if it weren’t his own product.
Brownlee’s latest controversy, however, is perhaps even more damning to his reputation. In his recent video “How My Video Gear is Changing!,” there was a segment in which Brownlee recorded the dashboard of his Lamborghini as he raced down a street. Suspiciously, the dashboard’s speedometer was blurred out in the video — but it seems whoever edited the video didn’t realize that the car featured a second speedometer on the passenger side, revealing that Brownlee reached 96 miles per hour during his drive.
Eagle-eyed viewers would then discover signs on the road featured in the footage, revealing that Brownlee was driving through a school zone with a speed limit of 35 miles per hour.
The driving segment was quickly edited out of the original upload, with a now seemingly deleted comment from Brownlee saying that he “cut out the unnecessary driving clip that obviously added nothing to the video.” This was a clear lie meant to hide the fact that he likely edited out the clip to remove the evidence of his crime.
Unfortunately for Brownlee, anything that’s uploaded to the Internet stays there forever. Multiple viewers have already re-uploaded the clip to YouTube on their own channels, where the incident will remain public for all to see.
It goes without saying that this is not a good look for Brownlee.
It’s incredibly disappointing to see, given his formerly squeaky-clean track record. For years, Brownlee had been seen as a journalist with ethical standards, releasing honest and fair reviews that were taken so seriously that they’ve actually doomed companies with poor products.
Marques Brownlee’s voice has always been respected and taken seriously in the tech review industry, and it’s a major letdown to see him behaving so recklessly. This is something you might expect from a YouTuber riddled with controversy like Logan Paul, but it’s especially disappointing to see it from someone who’s universally trusted within the YouTube community.
With that said, I don’t think this means Brownlee’s career should be over, as so many online critics are suggesting.
While this is certainly upsetting to see, and Brownlee definitely deserves some sort of financial penalty or fine for his reckless behaviour, it doesn’t seem quite fair to suggest that this incident cancels out 15 years of honest tech reviewing. He made a major mistake, something he’s apologized for on X and called “a terrible example to set.”
At this point, there’s not much more he can do beyond refraining from engaging in reckless driving in the future.
The truth is, it’s incredibly easy to sit behind a computer screen covered by the veil of anonymity and viciously argue why someone else’s career should be destroyed. It can be fun to hate, especially when everyone else is jumping on the bandwagon — a common facet of “cancel culture” — and act as though you’ve never made any mistakes yourself.
Granted, what Brownlee did was a bad mistake, and many people have likely never gone triple the speed limit in a school zone. That’s why he completely deserves backlash, a fine or even potential jail time for his actions. He shouldn’t be exempt from general punishment simply because he’s had a reputable career.
But there’s a difference between legal punishments and having your entire career stripped away at a moment’s notice. Even though Brownlee did something awful, that doesn’t negate the many wonderful things he’s done over the course of his career, and I don’t believe this one mistake justifies destroying his entire legacy.
With that said, I encourage MKBHD viewers to maintain a more watchful eye over Brownlee’s work. There’s an old proverb that says to “forgive but not forget,” and I believe that would be an appropriate response here. While Brownlee doesn’t deserve to have his entire career stripped away, he does deserve to be held under a lens of skepticism from this point onward. If he wants to regain the trust of his audience, he should have to earn it — not have it handed to him on a silver platter after issuing an apology on social media.
It’s a difficult situation, and no one’s happy to see Brownlee engage in such reckless behaviour. But I believe that he deserves a second chance, even if he has to work a bit harder to regain the trust of those who are disappointed by his actions.
Let’s forgive Marques Brownlee, but not forget what he’s done.