Heh, yes you did go off the deep end a little. I agree with everything you said.
We do have an impact, even though we don’t often hear about it. I was fortunate enough that someone actually messaged me back in 2016 and thanked me “for opening their eyes about trump”. That was really satisfying, because up until that point I felt like I was just shouting into a void. But people are listening, even when they don’t take the time to tell you they are. Of course for every one person that is actually affected, 30 of them aren’t. But reaching even one person is better than not reaching any.
You’re right about leftist messaging being targeted by propaganda too. Some of it is from Russia, but a lot of it is from the right-wing. They take a message and twist it to the extreme so that it turns off people who would have otherwise supported it. What’s most frustrating is that a lot of gullible people actually agree with the extreme version, and now you have people supporting what was an intentionally ridiculous idea. I’ve even seen my friends fall for this.
I think what makes discussion so difficult online now is the sheer volume of it, and the expansiveness of subjects to be discussed. It becomes overwhelming and then people just completely tune out, which of course was the troll farm’s purpose all along.