Youtube’s algorithm is very good at showing you videos similar to what you’ve watched previously. If you watch dross, you’ll get more dross.
I do wonder whether the algorithm understands sarcasm. A while back, I watched a video about some movie bombing, something objectively bad like Morbius, and they joked that the movie wasn’t actually failing for all of the obvious reasons, but because it was “too woke”. They didn’t really believe that, they were just making fun of people who say that about movies. Still, for the next couple of weeks I had to keep marking channels as “Don’t recommend” because they were all unironic right-wing rage-bait about the woke agenda. I don’t know for certain that that’s why I suddenly got all those recommendations, but that was my best guess.
I’m certain that video probably got a lot of likes from folks who didn’t get the irony which is probably why the algorithm associated you watching it with that crowd. (Also I’m really sus about the whole “joking about being a hateful prick” industry, but I’ll assume your assessment is spot on here.)
I suspect that’s the answer. You look at the comments on here on something that is an obvious joke, like the one on linked in lunatics about someone changing their occupation to “inmate at prison”.
There were some utterly unhinged comments from people not realising the person was making a joke at their own expense.
