I don't care about video comments anymore; in my experience it was filled with attention-seeking content and incels trying to look cool. It's also full of bots in the reply sections.
Instead, I use mpv
media player to watch YouTube. I pick a video off my recommendations or the subscription page then I copy the video link and then I just have to do mpv <video link>
in my terminal. It's also much faster on my low-end PC.
It doesn't have sponser-block support, but it does have ad-blocker. I haven't really checked sponser-block support yet either.
Edit: found this for sponser-block support.
I disabled shorts everywhere. Before I saw your post, I couldn't even recall YouTube having shorts.
Also, Google tracks your everything, not just your YouTube history. You likely use Google Search a lot for adult content. Even a VPN and browsing on incognito mode might not save you. They have lots of ways track you.