Did try, did fail a few times, but also succeeded. The real problem is how to progress to an irl friendship when you don't live on the same continent.
People on here are often damaged in multiple ways, we generally don't make great friends. Filter early and hard for someone who shares something fundamental, like your sense of humor, and expect at least one if not multiple unpleasent suprises sooner or later, would be my advise.
Think the problem many of us struggle with us irl is that we are actively hiding who we really are. We obviously are forced to, in some ways. I once got interrogated by the bitch at the counter when I ordered a Charles Murray book at the book store. She must have found some article calling him a racist pseudo-scientist while looking him up and felt the need to ask me inappropriate questions about what I was reading about.
But in other ways we choose to hide out of fear and shame and because we otherwise would make ourselves vulnerable.
The problem being that if we all do that, we can never find other people like us anywhere except on here, where we can actually be ourselves and identify each other. In order to find friends irl, either you or your future friend has to take the risk of outwardly signaling something deeply personal about yourself.
I have this issue right now in group therapy. There is at least one more autist in the group, who might share enough with me to have potential as a friend, but I feel too scared to present myself honestly in front of everyone.
"So, I'm actually a socially-isolated virgin with a set of exceptionally heretical opinions and very little to offer outside of my thoughts and supportive nature." Who's gonna say that in front of a group of dudes, many of them much younger and much more successful than me, probably all of them completly bluepilled. Even if I don't instantly become an outcast, the advice I will get will be infuriating to hear and only make me dislike the ones giving me the advice, which they might notice. At which point they will consider me ungrateful and arrogant and opinonated.
So, it's not easy, but I suspect to honestly present one of the parts of us that make us the most vulnerable to others will be necessary for many of us to find friends.
Makes me wonder what is the safest thing that we could openly display for others to see but which would also allow us to identify each other as one of the same kind.
Considering how racism is a deadly sin where I'm at, but being a sexless loser is only a shameful failure, it would probably be less risky to talk about my struggle with women, as long as I remain polite about it and don't inject too many blackpilled ideas. Some of those will have to be in there, otherwise the whole thing can't fullfill its purpose (signaling my group affiliation).
But I feel much more ashamed of those and not at all ashamed of my "racist" believes. And, even if I am actually showing who I am to the world openly, others will have to take the risk of approaching me, which I suspect many won't, because I wouldn't. I would at least be very hesitant.
