Users gaming the system is part of it, BUT its youtubes blatant lack of caring for that fact or policing that fact that is hurting youtube. No matter what part of large organization you are apart of in life i guarantee that people will try to get around the system in many ways, be it with games and hacking, youtube and fake views/subs/likes, or even in professional sports with steroids and other performance enhancers. In the end it's all about how you choose to go down the path.
path a) You get youtube views/subs/likes the right way, and gain an audience that likes you for who you are and what you make. In the end you will probably feel more accomplished knowing that everything you have done and shown, all the views and subs you got, were because people liked your content. In more normal cases people would be much happier with themselves about that.
path b) game the system all to hell, go for it, but in the end realize that all the subs/likes/favs you have are nothing more than a fabrication of yourself, and that less people actually like your channel than you are led to believe. People who game the system aren't in it for the self accomplishment, they do it either because they want youtube to pay them lots of extra pizza money or because people in real life don't like them so they have to fabricate their own "celebrity" status in order to justify making content.
tl;dr If you make completely original content, that is good quality, PEOPLE WILL WATCH YOUR VIDEOS, and GASP!!! THEY WILL SUBSCRIBE!!!
on another note: There are tons of people on here that are confused why they aren't getting the views or subscriptions they think they deserve, and it's not because they aren't getting seen, it's because their content isn't fit to be shared. Maybe ill make a tutorial about this one of these days about good/bad cinematic practices....
