at the end of the day it's just making friends... start a conversation with someone whose writing you enjoy or whose online presence you think is fun! sometimes when i get a vibe that someone is cool and i want to be friendly with them i'll comment on their fic and then DM them about it to strike up a conversation... only once or twice has someone been standoffish, for the most part everyone is happy to hear kind words about their work and to start talking to the person who said them :) and most of my writer friends who approached me first did this the same way! it helps to have some of the same interests in common too -- pretty easy to gauge this from their online presence, and then to talk about those interests!

i also find online groups can be a good way to make a broader range of acquaintances which can sometimes turn into close friendships! YEARS ago a few writers i was friendly with made a little discord server with a handful of soogyu writers who were in kind of a dispersed web of friendships to bring all those people together, and for a solid year those people in that server became my absolute rocks... eventually people moved onto different things and that server no longer exists but i came out of that group with my two literal best friends in the entire world who i have talked to every single day since 2022 and also with a few more distant friends who i'm still so happy to talk to from time to time, and it's all because i said yes when asked if i was interested in joining a server. or reach out yourself when you see a group chat or server or something like that being mentioned online, you never know what people you'll meet!

i've been really lucky with my online friendships -- aside from the two i mentioned before i've also made a few really dear friends in this community who have become irls! like anything else, once you make that initial connection and start vibing, just be yourself and be willing to make real bonds! of course never be an idiot on the internet hahaha i'm careful with my real information until i feel like i'm close with someone but it's so untrue that internet friendships aren't real friendships, i often feel closer with my internet friends i've met through txt than with my real world friends who i've known for well over a decade lmao... good luck!