The confusion is reasonable, it's the clunkiest implementation of online in a game I've probably ever seen (and is now being peeled out into it's own live service).
I'll defer mostly to someone who actually enjoys it, but there's a ton to do, be it hesits, be a CEO of a company and running missions related to it, or just yolo and run around participating in random stuff that pops up. There's also playlists of stuff you can queue up for, races, deathmatch, etc.
Unless they've changed it, think you have to do a few missions your contacts reach out to you about to open up some things.
Here's a random google result about getting what to do in GTA Online - https://www.gamesradar.com/gta-online-guide/

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