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. 
The liberals coming here and/or complaining about us is good content, but other than that very little has been gained. I've had a lemmygrad account for a while and none of the other instances are any good, so federation is pretty useless. It's nice that lemmygradians can comment here now, and it seems like there are a couple hobbyist instances/comms that people are enjoying.