Side note, I'll also recommend people to look up "X city in 1990s / 2000s" on YouTube. San Francisco, Tokyo, Hong Kong, Toronto, London and etc. have cool slice of life content from people who were very into camcorders.
It's not rose tinted glasses, it's just a poor comparison.
The absolute vast majority of these videos have double digit if not any views. You're seeking them out, using a little quirk of naming and the poster's DGAFism. There is no pretense of promotion to a large audience or virality. Anything spoonfed you on a Tiktok or Instagram feed could not be more different. The default Youtube experience is the same as mass Tiktok. Moreover you can find plenty of similar material like this on Instagram and Tiktok if you go looking for it, that is after all what most people are using it for, bumming around with their friends. The algorithm isn't going to spoonfeed this to you, and obviously Youtube never did either.