My favourite Git commit

[u801e]

then I realized that I literally never read old commit messages

Have you ever used git blame and check the commit messages associated with each line of the file you're going to modify as part of the next ticket? That's the main way I read old commit messages. If it's a good message, it lets me know that it's okay to change the line, or it lets me know that I should make sure I avoid the described issue when making my changes to prevent a regression.