Yeah I really never got why people were mentioning it. It seems like Elon Musk is just good at hype, because it never had much exposure to me at all even when he bought it and I am very online and advertiser friendly.
For better or worse (ok, worse), Twitter is the current intellectual trend-setter. You may not be there but many a youtuber/podcaster/academic/politician are scrolling through hot takes as we speak. The cultural power of Twitter vastly outweighs its raw number of users (relatively low).
I'm not sure Twitter is that relevant anymore, as you can't really browse it without logging in. It's more like an echo chamber for influencers now than a platform interesting people could use to reach their audiences directly.
I used to be active in a corner of the science Twitter, but it started dying long before the takeover. Algorithmic recommendations killed it. When a platform starts prioritizing recommendations over explicit user choices, it also prioritizes influencers over people with something interesting to say.