I run an instance by myself, so I tend to default to “new” mostly to catch spam and shit early and axe it.
On my LW account, I tend to stick to “Subscribed” unless I’m looking for new content to subscribe to. I also block a lot of communities and pretty much all bot accounts because of exactly what you listed in the post.
And watch the next season of that show I like and condense it down to a bullet point list of spoilers. (/s if not obvious)