I started watching live stream on twitch of a specific category that interested me. The people who stream this category collaborate with one another and each have their own community of people who follow.
I watched some really small streams and chatted with people. I do mean small as well, probably originally most of these streams had something like 6 viewers. Over a long period of time you come to know people in a stream group - and then because of the collaboration you come to know more people. There is usually a discord server or some such where these people talk when there is no stream as well.
Now, 5 or more years later, I’m probably in something like 18 discord groups where I talk to a lot of people regularly, or DM with quite a lot. By proximity and a loose shared interest, we all now know quite intimate details of each others lives and talk about all kinds of anything and everything.
Friendship is not really a fast process, but you just have to find places to plant seeds and see what grows.
I would probably look at a few interesting years I am aware of, but after a while I figure it would devolve into “I dunno man, what the fuck was going on in 1111?”