You understood it right. Some people are interested in serious things, but if its not really new you will be obfuscated by these people that uploaded it first and thus have more views already, appearing first in results.
Rarely user look at the second page in Youtube or Google. A thing that helps is to use a lot of good tags in your video, also remember that these "famous" people in the majority of times have a way to spread their videos quickly, that being their own sites, famous friends, twitter, facebook or something like that, rarely its based on luck.