I know many people do watch YouTube videos but indeed, when a link leads to a YouTube video I don't follow it (and nobody ever just sends me links to YouTube).

I do turn to YouTube if I need some kind of visual guide, like for auto repair sometimes, but it's rare.

Most links to YouTube videos I find are excruciatingly slow explanations of something that could be done in two paragraphs and one screenshot, or some kind of meme that I don't find funny.

I normally look for text alternatives, to be honest. It's not necessarily a bias against YouTube, but more video-based content in general. If I can't find an alternative I'll skim it with subtitles on. I certainly wouldn't have it open for one and half hours in a 3 hour period though!

If a friend sends me a link to youtube, i might click on it to see what the video is, and then close it without watching it. This doesn't happen very often though. If someone gives me a timestamped link and tells me to watch 30s at that spot i'll humor them, but that's about my limit.

That perfectly describes my behaviour. I don't care for video content. (I similarly don't open tiktok or instagram reel links.)

For a few things I've found where youtube has some specific content I'm interested in, I'll use yt-dlp to download and archive it to watch outside of youtube.com.

I download it with yt-dlp like any sane person should.