There is no magic bullet. A lot of things have to come together to get someone to click on your video, much less stay and watch. Just because other people don't use keywords yet get more views doesn't mean you should abandon the use of keywords.
Do you have the talent, resources, time, overall life situation to run your channel without keywords like the people you mention?
For me takes about a year or two before you'll notice any bump due to keywords. It's something that you build over a very long period of time. Not "I put one set of keywords in on one video, and I don't see a landslide of view coming in, therefore keywords must not work."
Success = to all the right things over very long periods of time. You have to plan to do this for several years, not one video.