In education, fear of failing your in front of your peers or teachers is a strong motivator for most people. It is a positive thing in most such cases.
> "why uninterested parties in X took the subject"
As for this, it is known, that sometimes in life we have to beneficial things that we hate. Like washing the dishes. We are not "basing our educational system on it", but part of it will often be beneficial+uninteresting.
School system that assumes that everyone is perfectly motivated, organized and disciplined at all times will fail a lot.
Second, many people are motivated by social contact with other people who do the same thing. By both competition and mutual help. That is again quite normal for humans and these people will find watching videos more boring.
I can only imagine how people think fully remote learning will work long term, without an overhaul in how our education system is structured (does everyone need to know algebra 2 or how to balance chemical reactions?)
Based on the experience of teaching this semester by multiple colleagues, the problem, of course, is that students will not consume that material at all. If you try to do short quizzes to ensure they watched it, they will cheat, or just take the grade penalty.
The problem with online is that the the modicum of shame present in offline classes that forces them to pay some attention, is almost completely gone.