Even when I let youtube track me, I find that they often like to recommend "normiest" things despite nothing in my view history suggesting I'm into the things they're advertising. Particularly I mean clips from late night TV shows, ads for super hero movies, that sort of thing. Very mainstream corporate content. They know I don't watch that kind of stuff but they keep on trying.

I don't really get it. I don't think their recommender is that broken, so it seems to me like they're deliberately injecting those recommendations contrary to their expectations of what I like. I suspect those videos represent the content youtube wants me to watch, rather than the content they think I want to watch. Probably those videos are more profitable for youtube.