For me this is where these YT tropes get interesting. When you get past the thumbnails of the mega channels with multiple full time employees who are obviously doing something very baity and strategic, you’re left with the ordinary channels who mimic these tropes likely without deep consideration or even consciousness.

It’s just more of a will to survive kind of thing, and thus an entire ecosystem shapes its own desires by way of unknowingly optimizing for an algorithm which itself is based on honing in on community trends.