There is an amazing amount of fairly high quality content on youtube these days. For my personal use, it has given all the "traditional" media sources a seriou

There is an amazing amount of fairly high quality content on youtube these days. For my personal use, it has given all the "traditional" media sources a serious run for their money. If it wasn't for my partner I could easily cancel cable, netflix, HBO, and everything else and just live off of youtube content. To me, the coolest part about youtube is it is "direct to consumer" with no middlemen. With few exceptions, all the content I watch comes directly from regular people making videos about things they are passionate about (be it mine exploration, building stuff with CNC mills, urban exploration, documenting abandoned malls, filming their day driving a train, picking locks, etc). There isn't some production company that sets guidelines or provides funding... it is just regular people. I do agree it is a problem that youtube is the only real player in town to host this sort of thing. Hopefully that will change over time.