Ask Lemmy

D&d groups worked for me. But yeah also offline clubs.

In general you tend to make real friends doing something other than just trying to make friends

Join a club. An offline one.

you do not find people for long-term friendship. You meet people and sometimes it turns into friendship. Looking after t is like looking to only buy a winning lottery ticket: doesn't work like that ;)

So, you need to have some common interest to share with other people and spend time doing just that... expecting nothing, but the joy of sharing some common interest.

Do a activity with others, like a game with voice chat. Meet people!

I think anyone who asks any 'how to' on making friends, isn't trying enough. You're not going to make friends that way. Friends are meant to be attracted to via personality and what you bring to the table, additionally, being yourself.

There's no step by step method in how to get friends.

participate regularly in a community around a topic you care about. You'll start recognizing the people there, and you'll aready have common ground. Just talk to folks.

Contrary to the memes and the "elite pvp" reputation of eve online, the people in the communities are very welcoming and you can make some long term friends there.

You still need to sort of enjoy the game itself I suppose. That is relatively easy with friends though.

Do you actually want to? My ability to maintain online friends or even a desire to bother faded with age.

I hate to say Discord but...Discord. If I wanted to make online friends I'd jump in a local over 30's channel in my own city, or a wider net via a co-op game group seeking channel. Emulation communities were my past haunts. Use your imagination from there I'm sure there's someone catering to your specific online hobbies out there.

I still occasionally talk to the small community chat members on https://goontu.be/ which is run by some SomethingAwful forum members. People submit videos and it's a watch party. It could turn into something more, I see the opportunities, I just don't want to anymore but my point is you could.

Tldr: seek out small tribes. Too much noise on corpa social media. Too big.

What type of community or fandom are you looking for?

I was interested in the discord for lemmy for this purpose (as mentioned in the sidebar) but the link doesn't really work right now.

If it's for meeting real life people, volunteer at some organisation or take part in a tighter-knit gym which does group workouts - one near me does outdoor bootcamps at the basketball court of our local park and does a pilates, yoga and "boxercise" club.

For volunteering, there's lots of interesting organisations you probably wouldn't know you can volunteer at; museums, art galleries, hospitals. Social Clubs, Libraries, community farms.

Idk what do you do for fun and are you interesting to be around ? I enjoy chatting with ransoms !

I think reddit is too big to be able to foster long term connections with other people, unless the communities you are in a small/niche enough. It might actually be easier here on lemmy/piefed/mbin because of the smaller population. I can identify users by their usernames in some of the communities I’m active in and interactions aren’t a one time thing.

Hate to say it, but Discord is pretty effective at being able to make long term connections, depending on the group of course.

Same as in-person relationships, I think the best way is to find online communities about your hobbies and interests, and look for smaller spaces, whether it be a group chat, a forum community, or even a microblogging platform.

Hobbyist forums are still tried and true, especially niche hobbies. I suppose you need a niche hobby first though?

I'm not an authority on the matter as I have no friends but have you considered one of the many penpal sites? It seems perfectly suited for the type of relationship you're looking for.

No affiliation but I've ended up on this front page more than once: https://www.penpalworld.com/

No-life an MMO, join a big guild, get to talking more with folks who have similar interests as you.