I know of another guy in the same niche as mine who also got banned just a few days ago. His videos also seemingly followed all the guidelines, yet got banned. My videos were very similar to his, so when i saw that he got banned i was worried, but i thought maybe there's something he was doing behind the scenes that i didn't see that got him banned. But now with my own experience and your comment I think they're just banning randomly.

I dont think putting all this work into YouTube is a good idea. i had like 120 videos uploaded, got to almost 500 subscribers. that other guy had like 4000 subscribers. imagine all that work down t he drain. and i dont even know specifically why they banned it, no warning, just an email with some broad generic reason.

well at least they didnt wait till i had 10,000 subscribers then ban.. made it happen quickly, saved me a lot of time and energy that i'll now use towards something else