Couldn’t have said it better myself.

I use a custom filter in uBlock Origin to hide the recommended sidebar in YouTube (all except the video of what’s next). Even so, there will occasionally be a video in search results with a topic that might be interesting from a channel I don’t normally watch.

I’ve learned to right click and open the link in a private browsing window so that my search results (and that one remaining sidebar thumbnail) do not become poisoned by that one channel/topic.

It’s insane that clicking on one video makes YouTube think that I’m now obsessed with that channel. And, it’s going to fixate on that for the next few weeks.