When I go to youtube, I'm looking for something.

But I will see the front page of crap in my peripheral vision and wonder about the millions of people who click on that garbage. Sometimes I'll even look at the names for a second and think how it's the same few names always, and how crazy that they somehow get all the attention in the world for some nonsense.

For that matter, now I see people use the word "influencer" as if it sounds perfectly respectable to them, and it shocks me every time.

Honestly... it depends if you have an ad-blocker.

I would prefer TV to Youtube any day, if I had a TV ad-blocker, simply because the content is far more likely to be reasonable quality rather than a 20 minute clickbait video with 30 seconds of actual content.

Are you sure? When I used to watch Battlebots on Discovery channel it was basically 6 minutes of action wrapped in 10 minutes of fluff and 15 minutes of ads. Discovery Magazine had 3 sections per half-hour; comparatively speaking any science channel in YT will have way more content, and a lot of it really good for specialized audiences. Travel YT are way more up-to-date and useful than TV travel documentaries used to be.

There's a ton of really good Youtube channels, and the level of information density is astounding.

I never said all content on TV was good. Similarly, not all content on Youtube is bad. But the most hyped/advertised content on TV tends to be pretty entertaining (and usually fairly accurately advertised), while the most hyped/advertised content on Youtube (i.e. frontpage) is 90% clickbait and 10% people I'm subscribed to.

Maybe being better than TV was a bit of a low bar to shoot for. Youtube has super good stuff but it's like with email: there are very good emails and then there is the spam. But there is no youtube 'spamfilter'. Hm... idea?

Subscriptions are basically that. A curated feed of only creators you're interested in.