Daddy, daddy, look what I found on YouTube

It used to be that my children would come to me and say "daddy, daddy, look what I made out of Lego". Now they say, "dad, look what I found on YouTube". (They don't really say "daddy" as I put in the title. That's a carefully crafted sentence designed to get you to click through from my social media feeds.)

What they are showing me is episodes from their favourite "series". I say series, because apart from the length, they are like TV series, with new episodes coming out regularly, weekly for example. The quality is professional. I wonder who's paying for this stuff? The money for those cameras has to come from somewhere, the people who do the work need to eat.

In the case of Rhett and Link (500 web videos produced) they "support themselves by creating and distributing their branded entertainment", though they do get paid to do stuff for other people. I'm not clear though whether the video or the money came first.

Video Games High School is another interesting one. 5,661 pledged $273,725 on Kickstarter to make this series. All those people paid all that money and we get to watch it for free. (Internet connection charges apply.) How does that work?

I don't have time to dig into all the other people my kids are telling me about. (Jenny Bee signed our ukelele, does that give me street cred?) I'm just bemused that all this good quality stuff is up on YouTube and people are managing to eat too.