Meeting people is the easy part. Do this at:
Work
Hobbies and Organised Activities
Church or other Spiritual Communities
Online, both locally and long-distance.
Though after meeting people, phase two is the most difficult: actually convincing people to hang out and do stuff.
Then phase three is actually creating and maintaining the friendship, lol.
These all become exponentially harder if you need complete ideological purity from your friends and romantic partners.
Yes, 100%.
I'm glad this social expectation is dissipating, because it became insufferable in the late 2010s and early 2020s.