A simple Google search can give you the answers about "watch time" rather than assuming something and going with it.
Quote:
You can use the Watch time report to see data about watch time and views. The report shows the following data collected from YouTube.com, the embedded player, and mobile YouTube apps. No personally identifiable information is collected or shared in the Watch time report.
Watch time: The amount of time that a viewer has watched a video. This gives you a sense of what content viewers actually watch (as opposed to videos that they click on and then abandon).
Views: The number of legitimate views for your channels or videos.
This hurts vloggers who just simply don't have engaging content. For a Vlog like Trooper's a lot of people here have said they watch the opening shots and skip to the totals. If that's a ten minute video and you watched the first 50 seconds and skipped to minute 8:52 for the totals and watched the rest, you're a little under two minutes of "watch time" which is affecting the creator. 2+2 is a very small percentage of the viewer base so I'm not saying that thetrooper97 channel is going to suffer a huge loss, that was just for examples sake.