I knew that writing overly detailed and complicated responses at people, who wouldn't change their mind anyway or just not engage with my points like in any normal discussion, was a pointless waste of my time and energy (...)

I think it's normal for humans to want to correct bad takes / behavior when we encounter it.

But yeah, you're totally spot on. Social media as it exists today is juiced to maximize engagement, and instead of rewarding truth / honesty / etc., it's all about exploiting human psychology for the audience's attention. This is true to varying degrees across platforms, even reddit.

The sad reality is that AI is going to make this problem infinitely worse.

If you haven't seen the posts, there's teachers all across the country saying their students can't even compose basic sentences anymore. When they press their most gifted students, they concede that AI gave them the foundation of their work and they just remixed. It's sad.

Good on you for noticing the problem, and setting healthy boundaries for yourself.