On the contrary, if someone is able to shoot themselves in the foot and there is a sizeable portion of people who don't immediately think that that person is a bumbling idiot, then things can and should improve from a technological standpoint.

The kind-of-techy gaming crowd is exactly the audience that needs to be targetted for continued improvement of the Linux ecosystem, both because they are the most adjacent to the current target audience and because a not-insignificant portion of them actively dislike Windows and wants an alternative. And if they see that Linus runs into an error and thinks that they might come across a similar error, then that is, in fact, a disservice to the Linux ecosystem that needs to be addressed. It doesn't matter if Linus did it intentionally or not - the fact that many of his viewers think it to be genuine is proof enough that there needs to be more polish.

On a more personal level, I can tell you that that your sort of outlook directly hindered my adoption of Linux. I was part of that exact kind-of-techy gaming crowd at one point, and it took me multiple attempts across almost a decade to really take a substantial leap towards Linux. And throughout all of my previous attempts, the one reason that kept me from adopting Linux earlier was the unshakeable feeling that Linux was made for people who already knew what they were doing, and everyone else gets tossed to the wayside.

That's what Valve understood when they made their Steam deck, and as a direct consequence of that understanding, many of the kind-of-techy gaming crowd want a public release of SteamOS over a much more established Linux distro. And for what it's worth, Linus seems generally positive towards Linux in this particular video, and my interpretation is that his channel will begin to convince more of his audience to try out Linux in the coming months. If nothing else, then it seems worth celebrating that Linux is being talked about in a positive way on a more mainstream channel.

Whether or not I like him is irrelevant to the point at hand, but since the topic is now brought up, I should point out that I don't watch LTT.

The bigger point here is that a major tech channel with a huge audience seems to be pushing for Linux adoption to a novel audience (having Linux content geared towards Linux enthusiasts does not bring in new users), and a direct consequence of that is that we should 1. expect to welcome an influx of new users to the Linux ecosystem, along with all of the consequences that that entails and 2. acknowledge this video as a symbol of increasing Linux acceptance among mainstream users. The particular channel is itself irrelevant, compared to the bigger fact that such a video was even made at all.

To use your example, it would be like if we were a community of used bathwater enthusiasts and we decided to bury any news about that influencer selling her bathwater.