An interesting thing that no one (I think/hope) has mentioned: Shorts are just glorified videos. Mind you, I have only watched less than a handful of them, more than a couple of months ago but here it goes: The URL is something like youtube.com/shorts/w12jfk. That last part is the random ID YouTube assigns. If you change the link to a video link, youtube.com/watch?v=w12jfk, then you get the normal interface. (The ID is randomly typed)
Maybe a bookmarklet, or something, could make things bearable, but there still giving clicks to Shorts, probably.<p>Edit: But the post is about Stories, huh... A thing I hardly remember it existed. So much for a first comment.