@kirby what seems to work for me offline is to find groups. for example, in college I met several people i would consider friends through the Linux users group. more recently, i've been going to a local nb meet up and i'm starting to make friends through that. i'm usually super shy at first, but after a few meetings to get comfortable around people it's easier to open up.
@kirby of course, there's a big leap from knowing someone in a group to saying, "hey, you're cool, let's do something together outside the group". I'm really bad at it and it's something a want to work on. BUT in the meantime, just attending social groups like that fulfills a lot of my socialization needs. and it feels a lot better than twitter.
@magical You first! 😆
(In all seriousness: I just… find it easy to talk to people online? I don't know why… and finding cool people online is super easy, imo. Plenty of cool people here on Mastodon, and on IRC, and even on centralized platforms. And they I just reply to something they post, and we talk a bit, and then I say "want to be my best friend forever" but I don't actually type that… 🤷 )