ATTENTION HALF OF YOUTUBE: Just because iJustine recently showed you how to add cute little sidebars in place of black letterboxes on the sides of videos filmed with non-widescreen cameras (in her case an iSight), like this:

…it does not mean that you should add these sidebars on top of your videos when you already have widescreen footage.

Unfortunately, this is a practice I have seen a lot of lately, even to the point where some people have posted entire videos asking their viewers if they would prefer to have these sidebars on the side, or to have widescreen video with nothing covered up instead.

Evidently, these people do not understand the fact that the purpose of these bars is to make the empty black space sucking the chi out of the rest of a video a little less empty and black. That’s all they are there for. If there’s something to see on the sides that you have filmed in widescreen that is not empty and black, I would like to please see it.

Dear YouTubers, what you are doing is the equivalent of adding a shower curtain over a shower that already has a glass door. That glass door is already there. Though shower curtains are nice and pretty when there is nothing else to shield water from splashing all over your bathroom, if you have a glass door, that works even better. That’s why it’s there. And adding a shower curtain over it is just going to make it annoying to get in and out of your shower.

Please stop it with the extraneous shower curtains. And also with the unnecessary sidebars. Thanks. (Oh yeah, and Justine? No worries. We all still love you.)