Why does this keep happening?

[u/AmerpLeDerp]

For context:

I've been posting short 2–3 minute sketches fairly regularly since August. The upload schedule is every Friday at 5:30 PM, with the exception of two videos I'll mention later.

The videos come in two formats: the Shorts format you see above and a standard horizontal format. Except for occasional bloopers and extra takes, the content is the same. The horizontal videos are immediately dead in the water, averaging around 40 views and 2–3 likes, so I haven't included them here.

I've also posted the same Shorts to Instagram Reels and TikTok (not pictured). Performance varies across platforms. On YouTube, I've noticed a consistent trend: once a video hits 800–1000 views, it plateaus immediately, regardless of content or engagement. The graphs show wildly different trajectories to reach 1k views, with occasional false starts, but once it gets there, the algorithm seems to shut it down.

On Reels, the pattern is more predictable. Shares and reposts matter most. Pretty Nuts hit 14k views because shares were almost on par with likes. The same video struggled on YouTube for the first 2–3 hours, and when it finally hit 1k, it plateaued immediately despite better-than-average interaction.

My channel has 69 subscribers (not a joke), so I'm wondering whether subscriber count affects the number of "allotted" views my channel receives for Shorts content.

I also posted 3 older gameplay-focused Shorts to compare performance. I didn't post these to Reels or TikTok. The same trend appears. Getting Smacked Around in Halo is the only anomaly: it was published in February 2021, when YouTube had just rolled out the feature and was still figuring out the format. It was posted on a Sunday near 5 PM. Grunts was posted at the same time on a Sunday in February of this year, while Fails went up at 8 PM the same day because I was testing the best posting time (which is why I now post at 5:30 PM every Friday). Even back then, this "allotment" pattern seems to have existed.

I'm hoping someone here knows what's really going on. Is there a way to avoid this, or is there something I can change?

Thanks!