Sometimes you'll see a landscape video letterboxed into a portrait video, just to make sure it's terrible no matter which way you view it (but extra bad watching on a landscape monitor). So I don't see this as a badge of anything.

On a sidenote, I've noticed video cropping is pretty nice on a phone (widescreen+landscape) depending on the content (I got an OLED phone free because the screen is cracked). Like Wall-e is pretty good like that. Also the music video for Long-Legged Larry (some things are cut off but not enough that it detracts from understanding)