It’s not hopeless, it just means we’re looking in a way that’s very limited. Nobody really figures we’d get an actual message over SETI, we’re just hoping for some sort of regular modulation that implies deliberate action, thousands of years ago. Part of exploring will be to find a better way to communicate, much like we’ll have to find a better way to travel. Astronomical distances are... well astronomical. Hopefully there’s a short cut, there’s plenty of theories, sadly we aren’t putting much work into verifying them. One of them might work, and then the whole game changes.
It comes back to what I posted earlier
We need more computers and more telescopes(by an order of magnitude)
And I suppose more particle accelerators and more physicists.
Somebody needs to figure out a way to transmit a measurable nothingness across a space composed of nothing and make it arrive before it left...and be able to observe and prove that it happened. It will require manipulating something that is neither matter nor energy to achieve it.