Therein lies the issue

Irl - going places? Blergh. And I am very privileged to work from home. Do you make friends at like the grocery store? I am confused about this, genuinely

Online? Seeing people regularly? I don’t understand how people do this. I just kind of browse popular feed and pop in to what looks interesting. But even when I do look into communities more regularly I don’t like notice people. Do you? I’m seriously asking. Is there a platform where this makes more sense? Back when I used reddit I was more engrained to certain communities but there were so many users everyone felt anonymous. Here there are less users but still enough that people feel anonymous.

for the record I do have autism. I’m also a counselor, funny enough. When people ask me how to make friends I tell them things generally along your advice: to go to places where they can meet more people ideally along lines with common interests. If they really want to focus on this though I usually refer out as this clearly isn’t my strength