*Impotent rage*

Some nerding:
From a technical perspective that's less an issue with people and more an issue with the technology design. People aim for the most comfortable, ergonomic way to hold a smartphone. Which is, you already know it, holding it "vertically" (= long side up, small side sideways). You can easily do it with one hand, whereas you usually need two hands to hold it horizontally. However, it is easily possible to place the camera sensor chip such that it can capture images in widescreen format even when holding the device vertically. Manufacturers usually don't do this, because they want to allow a more intuitive handling, like "what you see is what you get". If you hold the phone horizontally, this is directly reflected by a widescreen image and the other way around.
Since people also usually hold their phones vertically when using apps, several platforms, like YouTube for example as well as their content creators, have developed improved support for this. So you can continue mindless scrolling while enjoying more of an image. If the videos / images were in widescreen, the image would be scaled down and details might be missed when holding the device vertically. You would have a lot of black and just a small box in the middle with the images or videos. Probably everyone who reads this will have experienced this.
However, this is of course annoying for people who don't mind holding the phone horizontally or who are watching videos on a widescreen device like a PC monitor. And that's not a surprise. We humans evolved to have a larger field of view in horizontal than in vertical direction. We can see more to our sides, but less in up-down directions.
I don't fear that movies or shows will be recorded in this format (other than for artistic purposes), since that's a thing where even the comfortable "vertical phone holders" will prefer the wider screen format. But for cheap low effort content or shorter videos and if the target platforms are usually used on smartphones, this is probably a nuisance we have to learn to live with. ;)
- That's all fine and dandy, but what I can't excuse is people exporting a portrait format to widescreen with black bars. Or the reverse, for that matter.
  
  And I can't stand content that has cropping baked in. At least in theory you can zoom in on uncropped content.
- However, this is of course annoying for people who don't mind holding the phone vertically or who are watching videos on a widescreen device
  I think you meant to write “horizontally” here :)
  
  Yes. Thank you, a little mistake. Fixed it. :) (After 3 months. :D )
  
  Only if you want to film ants.
- I think this is the best explanation I've ever seen to the reapond to the vertical video complaint. Thank you!
  
  You're welcome. :>

Ironically, the text on this meme is so small that I had to zoom in on it on my vertical phone to be able to read it
- How is that ironic? It's exactly what we expect when you hold your phone in the wrong orientation for the aspect ratio of the image displayed.

Dude, I couldn't agree more. There should be a special place in hell for people who shoot vertically.

Why can't the software have an option to hold your phone vertically but shoot horizontally? How is this not fixed yet?
- Because the sensors are landscape 4:3 and you would lose resolution when doing so.
  AFAIK there's no other reason other than that and giving people the option might confuse people.
  
  Many camera sensors in phones are so high resolution nowadays, you could fit 4K video in any orientation
  
  Many sensor are 3:2 or non trivial ratios because of how the color filter pattern is aligned. Why do you think the sensors are 4:3?
  
  I used to have a phone with a special camera that took 16:9 landscape video while the phone was in portrait mode. Good times.
  So it's definitely possible for the phone manufacturers to implement they just choose not to.
  
  They'd figure it out real quick if manufacturers could ask agree to build sensors turned 90 degrees and disable recording in portrait. Obviously keep the possibility to take photos, but disable video recording.
  Then I sit back and watch to see what happens next. I see a few possibilities.
  1- Highly unlikely, but newer phone sales go in the toilet, while the second market goes crazy with people trying to get phones that still have the portrait camera. People will be confused at first, but most people tend to pick it up quick and just incorporate it as the new normal. It would have to be coordinated as a big launch at once, to force quick adoption.
  2- People just kind of shrug and move on with it, like they did with changes like headphone jack removal, or charger non-inclusion. Except this time, it's a good thing.
  3- TikTok dies a horrible death, and YouTube shorts jumps on the market, finally becoming an actual thing that's not just a backup copy of TikTok content. I don't think I've ever seen a short that was made for YouTube, not for TikTok.

Wait till the vertical TV comes out, and then the vertical cinema, oh and of course the first vertical movie that guaranteed gets an Oscar.....
- You mean Samsung the Sero? :’(

Then you have the opposite.
Fucking dimwits uploading stretched 19:6 gameplays to YouTube of videogames that were designed for a 4:3 aspect ratio.
No, you idiot; Gran Turismo 2 wasn't designed for widescreen.
- I hate when they do that to TV shows. Of course watching it in 4:3 with black bars is better than having it zoomed into to get 16:9, but have the top and bottom cut off.
  I don't know why it's hard to understand that having the complete picture without half of it removed is superior. You can still zoom in on literally any TV from the past what like 15 years at least, right?
  
  Dude, back in my day, I'd regularly have customers bitch and moan about "the black bars cutting off my picture" when they'd rent the widescreen edition of something by accident. People are idiots.
  
  Zoom or stretch depending on which one the viewer prefers.
  Personally either drives me nuts.
  
  Well just zoom out then, duh ¯(ツ)/¯
- I just can't understand how people can notice and be bothered by black bars but not a horribly distorted picture (or even having half the image cropped away.)
- Nah everyone in the 90's really was squashed-looking. The video games are true to life.

I will say, I frame based on the subject & purpose of the video. Leaving aside platform requirements (TikTok's vertical-only format), I don't mind shooting vertical if it's a 1-person eye-level video, especially if I need to get their whole figure in the shot. More than 1 person and it's horizontal.
What I seethe with rage at are the idiots who shoot historical events (tsunamis, daring rescues, sporting events or any fast action) vertically and then firehouse the camera back & forth trying to capture the action. Those people should be smacked and their phones taken away.

Vertical video is for teens. You sign an agreement never to do that again when you turn 18. Those who film vertical after the age of 18 are forever forbidden from leaving Facebook
- Oh shit, so that's what happened to all my friends. :(

Overall 16:9 is mostly better than 4:3 if you aren't scaling up the size and price of your screen with the cube of the diagonal length, and I'm glad we've moved on to 16:9, but 4:3 wasn't actually ever that bad. It's fine. Not great, but fine. There's no need to be melodramatic about it.
- I don't think anyone thinks 4:3 was that bad, it's just being used as a precursor/setup for "stop recording in vertical!!"

I like 4:3 aspect ratio, gives video a better sense of height. Grand Budapest Hotel looked amazing, and it's mostly in 4:3.
3:2 is my favourite aspect ratio though, shame moves and TV never adopted it.
- Right. I like 16:9 too but also enjoy 4:3 a lot. Content can be improved using either depending on the shots. I don't get how ones better than the other though I'll admit widescreen does seem more versatile. I don't like how these things are viewed as linear upgrades. Reminds me of when 3D games started coming out. We've come back around to 2D but for awhile many people viewed these things as a linear progression.

What, you don't like watching videos like you're looking through a keyhole?

I say we change the ratio to metric paper
- Hell yeah ISO 216 forever babyyyyyyy
  I believe one of the overpriced Google tablets actually did use 1: √2 ratio, but they didn’t stick with it. Of course, google has the attention span of a lobotomized gerbil so they don’t stick with anything.

I blame Snapchat for it still being this way in 2023

awful 4:3 box ratio
Retro computer nerds:
- Here is an alternative Piped link(s): https://piped.video/watch?v=UZMMeflHvYY
  Piped is a privacy-respecting open-source alternative frontend to YouTube.
  I'm open-source, check me out at GitHub.

And also websites in a vertical paper format

youteub wul begin playn four videos at once, justa save bandwidth!
(cant find video link yet) ah here it is
- This is pretty good, but damn it’s almost 11 years old! I guess 2012 was well into smart phone adoption, but it seems like it’s only gotten worse thanks to apps like Snapchat and tiktok