110% this is the way.

I still have friends of nearly 20 years whom I met on the official Wizards of the Coast forums back when those still existed and I've managed to meet a handful in person once or twice. I've made friends through Discord, fanfic sites, even youtube whom I've also met IRL (usually at cons), even if I have been terrible at sticking around sometimes. I'm even making friends on here just by posting and generally being nice and being around, which tbh I wasn't expecting both because of the low traffic and because of the depersonalized nature of this inherited-from-reddit interface.