For me it's been like a splash of cold water to the face, remembering just how fucked up 
tier liberal takes were, are, and will likely continue to be.
I'm sure there's downsides to complacency, but it was nice having some ground assumptions when going into a thread, like "society can and should be improved somewhat" or "the ruling class acts in its own immediate self interests and any other claims regarding their motivations are propagandized lies" or "climate change is real, it's bad, and it's getting worse," or more trivial stuff like "Tesla cars aren't good."
I'm sure potential comrades are out there and while it really is necessary to reach out to more people at some point (offline too, orgs especially, but while we're here, you know?), it's been sobering to realize just how far rightward mainstream "progressive" liberal thought really is on average. 
For me it's been good overall, though I tend to ignore the bad cases who wander in. Despite the few trolls/libs/reactionaries, there are some cool new people who've been interacting here and it's also nice to be exposed to new communities on other instances for topics that interest me.