[DeconBlue]

I have had this issue for a very long time.

My first recommendation is if you want to watch potentially weird/out of the usual videos is to right click the video and "Open in new Private Window". It seems that the new request keeps the one-off from becoming part of your watched record. Also, the private window for topical searches. I made the mistake of clicking on a Diablo IV video, and 2 weeks later there are still 10-12 "recommended" videos in my feed.

As a previous commenter mentioned, I have all of my subscriptions in an RSS feeder so only new posts show up in my filtered list (without thumbnails). This allows quick scanning of titles to see if there is anything of interest. Then I can simply directly open the link without going to the YouTube landing page.