For me, it did.
I signed up on lemmy.ml 2 months before the Russo-Ukraine war and learnt about lemmygrad.ml. When the Russo-Ukraine war started, the Lemmygrad posts about Ukraine motivated me to dig more into the conflict. I was already pretty open to ideas, so I didn’t see any risk in it.
The result is that I learned about the scum reality of the United States. I saw a video that showed some atrocities of the Azov Battalion, and another video of Russian troops caring for the Ukrainian civilians. I didn’t get much of an emotional reaction; but I now had a general ideas of the (war) crimes Nazis commit. I also saw a disparity in views on Lemmygrad from Reddit; reddit has (heavily biased) support for U.S forces, while Lemmygrad has general support of Russian forces.
I try not to make sweeping accusations like this. You don’t have a choice where you are born. But thanks.
You’re mostly right though. I’m in a small town and some of the shit I hear in peripheral conversations is reactionary as fuck.