Edit: good to see I woke the shills
If you’re in a state that goes consistently one way or the other, it’s probably true that it doesn’t matter. For president, at least.
I often vote third party, and I feel very comfortable doing that because my state is very consistent.
I’m very much against voter nihilism regardless of the statistics. Regardless of if I’m getting steam rolled or not, I’m putting pen to paper and I want the record to show that someone didn’t agree with the mob - me, it was me. The US is a two party system and personally I think that sucks. You are definitely “throwing your vote away” by conventional wisdom in such a system, but if everyone thinks this way there is no hope for any traction or interest in advancing third parties - so I agree with this form of voter suicide.
Every vote matters, but you can’t expect it to matter more than someone elses.
Local elections can be decided by a handful of votes. If you don’t think it matters who is in charge of the local government, you should read what happens when Libertarians take over.
So you’re shooting yourself in the foot. You and everyone else who seems to think the ballot begins and ends with voting for who is president.