Comment by pfannkuchen

YouTube seems to treat popular videos as their own interest category and it’s very aggressive about recommending them if you show any interest at all. If you watch even one or two popular videos (like in the millions of views), suddenly the quality of the recommendations drops off a cliff, since it is suggesting things that aren’t relevant to your interest categories, it’s just suggesting popular things.

If I entirely avoid watching any popular videos, the recommendations are quite good and don’t seem to include anything like what you are seeing. If I don’t entirely avoid them, then I do get what you are seeing (among other nonsense).