You mean the faces and executives are paid; the people doing the actual work often get the shaft.

I always think about this. Like a lot of the engineering youtubers I follow do some pretty dangerous stuff. They take the necessary safety precautions, but I have no idea how insurance can work when you're flagrantly disobeying OSHA regulations.

As an independent operator, you can abuse yourself in a way that legally nobody else is allowed to.

Corpos are skilled at wringing any and all interesting bits out of something and reducing it to harmless, overdone slop that still sells. They don't take risks because that may make them $5 less. But indies do.

I'm still amazed at how Gearbox managed to royally fuck up Risk of Rain 2. They had a great game with solid foundations handed to them, and they somehow managed to both regress the game logic into being tied to framerate and release a buggy mess of a DLC in one fell swoop.

We could quibble over the definition of "a show" but a good place to start would be:

Big Top Burger

The Gaslight District

MonkeyWrench

Auralnauts' Larry series

Mummy Joe's Kid Vampire

Natural Habitat Shorts

Speedoru's Punch Punch Forever

Space Station Weird by Luke Humphris

Gobelins (entire channel)

DoodletmeGO (ditto)

Bite Shift by Liz & Ivy

Don Hertzfeldt

Lazy Square

Felix Colgrave

Bravest Warriors on Cartoon Hangover

The "5 Second Day" playlist from titmouse studio

Lackadaisy

Otaking (random animations)

Out of Joel Haver's insane challenge of making 12 feature films in 12 months that nobody watches because they just want the cartoon filter shorts, I loved these two films:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lbZDX_J3nOE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9RS5dUZ2WNg

I liked 2 others, but these were the strongest of the bunch IMO.

Then you're wtching the wrong kind of atuff on youtube my dude

I can think of a few off hand but the best to come to mind is the dude who did the Astartes videos.

Good creators get paid. Why split the buck with Hollywood rapists I mean producers?

It may just be a factor that a lot of YouTubers don't want to give up creative control. Working with Hollywood ultimately usually means giving up a lot of control on the type and content of your work. They're paying for the big production budget; they get final say in all creative decisions.

YouTubing is a career type that naturally attracts those that want creative independence. And by the time someone would be of the clout to make a deal with a studio or network, they're probably already earning enough money to be making a comfortable living from their work. 10,000-follower YouTube channels aren't getting calls from Discovery, Nickelodian, or Fox News. They're only going to be recruiting from the top channels. And people at that level are probably already earning a nice full-time living. Channels of that level are often entire miniature production companies. The biggest YouTubers aren't individuals, but creative teams.

That's a level of success many people would consider ideal. You get to live comfortably, you get to have a decent amount of social esteem, you get to pursue what projects you want. And you get the personal satisfaction of providing incomes for a whole bunch of your closest colleagues and maybe even closest friends. Many would call that about as perfect a life as there is possible. And you want to maybe give all that up to go work for a cable network?

I suppose for enough money, you could buy people out. But there's more to life than money after all. If you're already living quite comfortably, already very financially secure, would you really want to give up what you have - complete creative independence*, just to make a bit more? YouTube's top ranks are filled with people who left the rat race to get into YouTube. Many simply won't want to go back into that big corporate world, regardless of how gilded their chains may be.

*Obviously, creative independence is relative. All forms of ad-funded content will have to pander to the whims of advertisers. Even completely audience-funded works are subject to the whims of the audience.

David F. Sandberg aka "ponysmasher" comes to mind. He started doing largely horror films himself on no/low budgets. One of his own films got opportunity to become a feature film. That then gave him future opportunities, the largest of which was Shazam! (2019).

Additionally when YouTube Premium (YouTube Red at the time) first launched they also launched YouTube Originals. Many of those programs were created by YouTubers.

The "Originals" eventually stopped being made, but it's not clear if the issue was the content, the service or a bit of both.

Olan Rogers made Final Space and he's working on Lightspeed right now. It had a pretty successful run and has a loyal fanbase, despite it being cancelled.

But yeah, stories like these are very rare.

There have been semi-successful Youtube creators who transitioned into the studio system, who mostly never were big on-screen personas but rather worked behind the cameras.

The Corridor Crew has talked about how they always wanted to make it in Hollywood, but when they were finally being offered deals it simply was not financially or creatively wise to give up their business just in order to be part of a system where others are in control.

Just rewatched it a few hours ago! I can only recommend it, it is my favorite webseries. Still mind blowing how they put out this amazing content for free.

It's not that they're allergic to money but rather the inflated sense of self-importance and ego. To rightsholders and executives, it's unthinkable that fans could come up with something better and profitable using the intellectual property that they earned (read: bought) fair and square. And if someone somehow did, it's a threat to the bottom line, not something to embrace and encourage.

My favourite journalism outlet is Jung & naiv. They are German but purely YouTube based and donation funded. They do very long interviews with relevant political figures from the chancellor to the UN Special Rapporteur on Torture. Another german creator who made a full blown fiction series with CGI and of a quality that is equal to traditional production companies is Julien Bams 'Songs aus der Bohne'.

Check out Real Engineering. He does good research and a lot of his own interviews.

Practical Engineering writes hits own material and makes a lot of mini models to demonstrate the effects he is talking about.

Red Letter Media has a ton of movie discussion and analysis.