The idea is that common knowledge is the tip of the iceberg, and as you go deeper you get more niche and involved. A math iceberg, for example, would start with addition and subtraction, go into exponents, radicals, algebra, then imaginary numbers, series, set theory, then calculus, proofs, theoretical stuff.

The problem is they became popular, so its really just "stuff i wanted to talk about in a particular order". Tier lists are slightly better designed, but people also vastly misinterpret the purpose of those as well; i highly suspect most tier list makers dont even know where S tier comes from

Some used to be that way.

Youtube has folks that dig way too deep into Elder scrolls lore and several use the format. Those work from "literally stated in the game" to "if you read these books in game in this mobile only title from 2001, look at questionably cannon dev comments, and look at the assets names, you'll find this reoccurring thread "

It can be both. It doesn't push the iceberg videos to me, so I guess they're not trending in my kind of demography.

I usually find new things by the suggestions that are related to the channels that I do watch, not from the general feed, which is useless. So I basically only watch the stuff that I subscribe to, making my own feed with those.