The reason channels always say do shorts is because they do provide value once you're monetized.

Shorts can make you money, and when your channel is established (aka Youtube lets you be an official channel, probably because you played the retarded globohomo Youtube game well enough) you get extra features with shorts, including linking URL to your channel and other stuff.

When you're a channel that can't make money, can't access other features from shorts.

All they really do is....nothing. You'll get views, maybe a comment or two if it reaches 1,000 views or more. That TDS short that had tens of thousands of views, had about 8 likes and two comments.

Now if you're a decent sized channel and you really focus on getting two or three shorts out a week, it can be quite profitible, for a much lower effort than regular videos.

But the shorts that do well are all the really annoying and retarded ones that we hate. And while shorts can build your channel if you're already willing to play that faggy youtuber game, they're essentially meaningless if you're a normal person who refuses to be these weird sellout types with clickbaity titles, and whatnot.