I got one from here, not because we were looking for friendship, it was kind of random. They asked for help/knowledge and I gave some insights and then the thread just grew and grew and we agreed to move out off Lemmy to chat in private. But we are internet friend, we live pretty far from each other and I think it is nice to have those kinds of friendships too.

I am unsure how many actually remember the username of others so having bigger discussions do I think helps a lot. But I have also seen ppl giving a backstory and then just asking to join groups or asked how to find groups, like a dnd group and a lot of ppl invite the person to join them.