If you only visit youtube.com logged out in a private window, obviously it's going to show you what's the most popular. What else should it be doing?

Personally I never see those top 1000 creators / influencers / celebrities. If anything I find the recommendation algorithm too tuned to my topics of interest so it rarely surfaces new things.

Agreed on the search being less than useless, though.

I don't only get to YouTube.com from a Google search and that on a browser that I'm not logged into - so it only shows me things that I searched for.