I don't understand why this is surprising. I don't think you can become a YouTube influencer while ignoring the algorithm. It's absolutely not enough to be "naturally gifted" at creating interesting content, because your content will not get surfaced to more users unless the early engagement metrics are unnaturally good. You're always competing with clips that are engineered for engagement, so you have to play the same game.

This used to be different 10-15 years ago. I remember uploading some random stuff and getting 50k views. Now, I get 50 for essentially the same stuff.

And yes, there are some popular content creators who pretend not to care. I promise you that they spend a lot of time looking at metrics too.