[shoelessone]

I came here to ask if there is some way of fixing this. I'm guessing not.

Youtube lately seems particularly bad in terms of showing lots of "shorts" all over when I have zero interest in watching them, but also suggested videos seem somehow aggressively chosen. I'm not sure how to describe that, but that's what it feels like to me.

[SoftTalker]

You can subscribe to channels you like, and then just look at your "Subscriptions" tab to see new content from them. They do stick a Shorts feed in there however which is annoying.

[driverdan]

Stop looking at the homepage and go to your subscriptions instead.

[exo762]

There is a plugin called Unhook. It allows to remove shorts, recommendation feed, or even set subscriptions as your default page.