i think lindsey nailed it. people expect the market relationship to hold, for free to mean worthless and expensive to mean valuable. it's psychological, and bluntly wrong, but it's massively enforced. and it's connected more to the presentation than it is to the content. it's not really new, either - people used to have the same reaction to independent music and independent film (which youtube is in some weird way filling the void on, despite being one of the biggest companies in the world). one of the things that kind of reversed that was for indie labels to pick up major label marketing techniques.

is the content on youtube shit? largely. but, most films are shit, too. and the music industry is just beyond salvation. i don't think the good parts of youtube are proportionately of a lower quality than the good parts of the film industry or the music industry. if anything, youtube is pretty much the sole major tool to get around the idiotification of the entertainment industry, nowadays.

it sounds stupid - and it is - but i think if youtubers were to integrate something goofy like the 20th century fox logo at the front of their videos, just something to make it "seem expensive", it would have a big effect. on the other hand, i'm not sure that's really a goal worth working towards...

i think a more important question moving forwards is how much longer youtube is going to be free and open like it is. how much longer are they going to continue to host trillions of gigabytes of data with no significant advertising stream? how much longer before it is hollywood?