How do you make friends on the internet?

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I'm trying to be more social, and I think the internet would probably be a good low-stress place to start...

So, how exactly do you make friends on the internet? And, what exactly do typical internet friends do?

This is pretty much new territory for me and I'm feeling kind of lost,
Thanks for your time.

Talk, common interests and what is going on in life. There's really nothing else to "do" unless you both have webcamming or gaming in common. I'd offer to be your friend but by your interests on your profile I doubt we'd have much in common, but you never know.

You want to avoid:

person A: sup
person B: nm u?
person A: same.

dead end.

I have had the best success making several long term friends by online role play gaming. It gives you permission to put on whatever act you like to start with for your character and then reveal a little of your real self at a time with those players you feel comfortable with. It also gives you a common interest to discuss and you can keep the conversation always superficial if you wish.

Most all of my online friends are people I met on forums. We used to have group chats on Yahoo messenger & we'd play Y-pool together but I lost that circle of friends years ago.

The way I've made friends IRL is just by slowly getting to know them by being around them all the time such as at school or at work. I really don't know how to make friends any other way. So it's hard for me to establish an online friendship. I have exchanged a pm or two with members who I find very interesting people but it never goes anywhere and I'm left wondering if I did anything wrong or if I'm just boring.

There are friendship threads on here, post in one, and PM others who have done so.

I play MMOs or post on forums relative to my hobbies (and here of course)

What I found more helpful was not trying to make friends but rather interacting with people I click with. Friendship to me could be anything, I think the most comforting friendship is when you've known that person online for good deal of time. It takes me a great deal of time to get an idea about someone. By far, I think friendship online has helped me a great deal. I am not as fast or as expressive with verbalizing than I am with typing. I use to think you should only find friends in real life but online you're also dealing with real people. There's going to be the same kind of pain and hurt you may experience online just as you do with real life friendships as long as you keep in contact with them. I think the best kind of friendship whether online or not is when you are comfortable enough to be yourself. I truly feel based on my experience that it is the value of a friendship, not how many you have.

Most (maybe all) of my 'online friends' were through message forums - there are some sites I've been on for a long, long time (one in particular, I registered on ten years ago tomorrow). Some I've talked to (skype / phone), some I've met in person...but it usually starts with me being established on a specific site..you get to know people just by spending a lot of time there (I also have 10k posts on that site...and probably 17-18k on another).

well if you want to meet someone online, you just start talking with someone if you think you have enough in common with them and enough interests and are nearby. Then if you seem to be connecting enough, try to meet irl. I met one person that way. Most people I usually meet in person from being in a club though initially.

Just say hi to someone, ask them how theyre doing, tell each other about yourself.

Well to be fair its quite a drag adding people to msn or just PM'ing someone out of the blue. You kinda come across as some kind of e-stalker at first. I find those moments so socially awkward

Plus those conversations on msn can be a bit weird suddenly some random e-mail add you never heard off pops up

"who are you?"
"oh im some random guy who added you from Wrong Planet"
"oh right, whats your username?"
"Yeah, im laz"
"Laz! God your a right nob why did you add me"

Then theres the PM's

PM'ing people out of the blue is just weird. Someone send me a message once about something i'd written on a thread awhile back making some kind of point to me. Why he choose to do this by pm and not just reply to thread i have no idea.

Saying that maybe if i get bored one day i'll start to randomly pm people just to see who i can strike up a conversation with. You have been warned