I knew that even 15 years ago when I was watching crazy pranks pulled by French YouTuber Rémi Gaillard[0]....he was so popular back in the day on YouTube.
Make people watch more YouTube.
Crazy videos might become passe or burn people out, at which point the 'formula' will change, but the underlying reality is the same. It's a paperclip maximizer. To succeed at YouTube make people watch more YouTube.
Yea but how do you do that? By making more compelling content than competitors. That's the basic formula.
There's whole subcultures of people doing unboxing videos. People framing existing videos as "unintentional ASMR" (https://www.youtube.com/c/PureUnintentionalASMR)
The point is : it doesn't matter what you upload. As long as it allows Google to show ads to people.
Also, I think his videos might be predating YouTube, or at least predating YouTube dominating the format ? IIRC he used to self-host as well as publish on other platforms ?