There's still avenues for connections - I am making "friends" as we speak on reddit with like minded people (specifically politics, people who are sitting roughly in the same point in the spectrum as me)

I've noticed that the demise of twitter has impacted my ability to connect with like minded people - I gave up on mastodon because the ability to stumble upon other people with similar tastes wasn't nearly what I wanted it to be.

Here (HN) I have mostly found wonks and trolls replying directly to me, but I do see a lot of interesting discourse (which is what I'm looking for... right) which will likely lead to connections (eventually)