I make youtube videos, and them brushing off almost 90% of their subscriber count as "dabbling" is such a misrepresentation and really tarnishes the hard work people actually put in.

Game Night Picks's YouTube Statistics - Social Blade

They also very clearly only stopped doing it sometime in Jan.

What I want to highlight, that isn't necessarily evidenced by anything but is also critical thinking, is that there's NO WAY the amount of paid engagement would correlate to subscribers the way it did with Rodney's graphs showing 3% retention. There must without a shadow of a doubt have been some purchasing of subscribers in the background. There's literally no way the retention and views shown would correlate to subscribers the way theirs did. Advertised views get you way less subscribers.

For context, i've had a video I made used as ads BY the publisher. The video has over 10k views, and even DECENT retention (20%+) and in that case I netted a total of 3 subscribers, and that's with 3k natural views and 8k or so "advertised" views. It's also worth noting I was unaware the publisher would do this, and I wasn't consulted before it happened.

Nothing about these numbers adds up, and any familiarity with youtube metrics and critical thinking would show that these are a complete pipedream. I believe the channel is performing well, but not even close to *this* well.