There's a lot of content on YouTube besides just how to videos and often times top results from a direct search are not always teaching styles that I like.
> Turn off the feed and turn on your brain.
Don't suggest I don't use my brain, please. For this purpose I built my own feed reader (as part of all kinds of social functions for my website system, link in bio), which I also use to scan for new videos on Youtube's channels that I follow. It works great. Sometimes I want to discover new channels and go directly to Youtube.
> Think about what you want to learn and search for it.
This is exactly what I said in my OP. I searched for topics on Youtube to discover new videos and channels, it's hard and doesn't work.
You must be reading my mind, because I recently let some lasercutting shop make some aluminum for a hardware project that I'm doing. I have all kinds of projects on https://www.theredpanther.org - partly (or should I say mostly) inspired by Youtube.
So for me it works both ways, I get inspired, make something of my own, share it on Youtube. That's why it is such a nice platform. I even meet people through Youtube (fawowa scene is big in neighbouring Germany, for example) and I regularly leave comments and get comments.
On the other hand, the algorithm pushes me certain ways that I don't like. And it makes me sad knowing there are thousands of people making nice videos that I want to see but will never see, because Youtube's algorithm favors what they want to show, not what I want to watch (although their algo must be more than smart enough to give me hours and hours of good content). I have to take the bad with the good, I think.
I sometime forget that feature exists, but I have channels I like that seem to only show up when I pull up subscriptions and never make it to the “home page suggestions” (I guess my own personal algorithm?).