HOW Is This Guy Getting So Many Views?

[zebracrunk]

I've tried this whole review dung before and was only successful in 2012, the algorithm changing screwed my "game". So just "he titles it so and so" isn't a very clear answer, because I've tried that this year and got nothing. I tried copying titles, being misleading, and spammy and it doesn't work. That's why this guy's "success" is a mystery.

Yeah, as I said in the first post, using popular titles won't do jack if you're competing against thousands and thousands of other videos. Canaderps has a point when saying his titles are the exact same as the VEVO uploads, which probably helps. If he titled the videos "One Direction - Best Song Ever (Beeki)" or "One Direction - Best Song Ever (Reaction)", that'd be fine with me. On a side note, YouTube doesn't differentiate videos due to how similar they are to the original, do they? (eg. One Direction - Best Song Ever, his version, ranking higher than One Direction - Best Song Ever Review) Wouldn't YouTube only factor in the first five words of the title for any "one direction best song ever" search, or is being as close as possible to the search term better?

I don't think his thumbnails are in the "bait and switch" category, he's clearly depicted in the thumbnail, so perhaps his views come from people who click around all over the place without looking at what they're about to watch. The real question is how he's getting such good placement in search results. Once again, saying "he makes videos about popular topics" doesn't help and has nothing to do with his ranking because I'm talking about ranking for those particular topics to begin with.
His subscriber count is low, the interaction/feedback is low, watch time is probably terrible, he doesn't properly optimize his videos, video quality sucks, etc...it doesn't add up.

He could be botting, but I'm wondering if there's anything else he might do or if he somehow stumbled upon a new algorithm trick.