For me, the ‘proper’ way to use YouTube is to have two dozen playlists to ‘watch later’. They together have hundreds of videos now, if not in thousands already. What I do is, whenever I see a vid that looks genuinely interesting to me, I put it in one of the playlists—and when I want to watch something, I use the playlists. This way, a) I don't need to rely on the questionable pile that is the front page, and b) I get videos to watch from the recommendations on videos that I already liked. (Though it worked better when the recommendations didn't mirror the front page so much.)