Not all users bother to make comprehensive playlists though. Sort by oldest is convenient when playlists are incomplete or missing altogether. I really don't think it's a serious burden on YT's infrastructure, since it just involves sorting some metadata by reverse order.
YouTube wants in on this directly too with Shorts. It only allows you to dismiss the shorts widget on your logged in home page for a month at a time despite other boxes like channels or topics being possible to dismiss permanently
I would go so far as to flip it: What kind of lunatic watches someone's earliest content? A lot of these people have been doing this for 10 years at this point. They've learned a lot. Their style has matured. Their production values increased. Why would you go back and watch all the content when it was one dude with a handicam and a tripod when there's years of high quality (not to mention more relevant) content at the top of the Newest list?
>Viewing videos in order and with context is so passe
Disordered minds are easier to control.
Welcome to the TikTok algorithmic feed. Viewing videos in order and with context is so passe.
That said, I rarely do this as well. If I've found somebody's content I like, I'll tend to then go see what playlists they've made for similar topics. Some channels will have over 500 videos dating back a decade at this point - I'm not going to watch that in order, but I'll at least browse by playlist.