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.