I occasionally find channels which are hiding their subscriber numbers. When I ask them why they do it, most reply by saying it’s a trick. The average viewer does not subscribe or checks out videos if a channel has a low number of subscriptions. If you hide your number, the chances of subscribing increase because they do not know how many subscribers you have, thus do not automatically walk away just because you don’t have many.
This of course works only with idiots who judge channels based only on popularity. In effect, you are trying to increase the amount of people watching you, by targeting the lowest common denominator, which is a secure way to build a cringy fanbase.
At the same time it’s like a cheap optical illusion. Once you are told this, you figure out immediately that if someone is hiding the subscriber number, is because his channel is very small, thus rendering this trick meaningless.
You might think that there can be big channels which hide it as well, even if it’s counter-intuitive. You can never be sure if only small channels do this. Which is not true, since it’s fairly simple to tell if they are big or small. Just notice how many views at an average every video has on that channel. If it’s only a few hundred, it’s obvious that not many are following it.
And yes, there is a way to cheat by buying views and making it seem like every video has millions. But that is something only big music companies are usually doing to make it seem the latest run of mill pop song is a smash hit. It’s not something small channelers can afford, so that doesn’t count either.
In conclusion, this whole thing is a cheap trick that can work only on idiots, and is used only by those who want to be followed by idiots. It is not something a channel which produces quality content would go for.
I can see the allure of cheap parlor tricks like that, but in the end content is what matters. Time spent on cheap tricks is better spent making good content.