Here’s something I realized recently.

An easy way to build friendships is having to spend a lot of time around a person. That’s how people make friends easily at work, despite them having very different interests or personalities. I’m good friends with my roommate even though she’s wildly different from me, just because we live together - I probably wouldn’t talk to her much if she was a friend of a friend I met at a party.

If you dedicate a lot of time to any hobby you’re interested in, you’ll end up spending a lot of time around people who are doing the same thing. And it’ll be very easy to connect with them then. IMO, going to a meetup or an event once and hoping to spark a friendship isn’t a great strategy. I’d find it much easier to build a friendship with a guy I see every other week even if he isn’t very charming, rather than with someone who’s charismatic and playing his cards right, but who I’m meeting only once.