The smartphone has made us all videographers. We're constantly pointing our cameras at friends, family and cats. Well, mostly cats. The problem is that too many of us are shooting these videos in portrait mode. And it's the most annoying thing to hit YouTube since the yelling goats.

Video should be shot and viewed in landscape mode – that's the "long way" instead of the "tall way," the orientation that mimics your HDTV screen. Every time you see a video shot in portrait mode on YouTube or Facebook, you should weep for humanity and its inability to teach individuals how to shoot video so it fits properly into the same shape as the TV they watch in their homes. How much more brainwashing can society be expected to bestow on humans than non-stop video in the form of television, movies, and commercials shoved into their faces since birth? It's a standard we should all know.

Videos, unlike photos, are almost universally presented horizontally. There's a reason for this: It's how we're built to view the world. Our vision allows us to see more to the left and right than top and bottom. So when you shoot a video on your smartphone in portrait mode, you're violating not only the set video standard, but also the laws of nature as they pertain to human sight.

It doesn't help that video apps like Vine encourage you to shoot video while holding your phone in portrait mode. Sure it creates a square video, but it's a bad precedent. So the next time you feel compelled to capture video on your smartphone, imagine what it will look like on your HDTV. If you see it in your mind's eye as a video with enormous black bars to the left and right of the action, turn your phone sideways.

There. You just stopped your film school friends from having an aneurism, and you made your video about 80 percent better.