As a suggestion, maybe see these search results to see many other homosapiens who experienced similar "never heard back" phenomena, and try contacting them to see what their experience has been like. https://twitter.com/search?q=%22never%20heard%20back%22%20(%40TeamYouTube)&src=typed_query …
Glancing myself, it seems the trend (searching for that exact string "never heard back") began since around January 2019, which might be related to changes in YouTube personnel and culture of user experience.