[Vent] About finding friendly persons

Excuse me if this is a bit fuzzy, it's late and I wanted to get this out in some form. I try to cut it shorter than I would, but knowing myself I have a hard time being terse so thanks for humoring me.

So for a while now I've been looking for friendly and likeminded people to play Dota with. A few related thoughts started to form over time. These may of course be specific in some ways to my experiences and what I'm looking for.

For one, there does not seem to exist a very good way to find people or put yourself out there. There are of course quite a few subreddits and forums, but the format here is built for discussion mostly, not for profiles. You end up posting and crossing your fingers hoping someone nice sees it in that likely very short timespan until it goes off the front page. Or if the place isn't active enough to have that issue, there likely aren't enough people to meet a variety of wishes. It's also very varied in what you see, everything from 'here's my profile, add me thanks' to multiple paragraphs long posts. There are sites like OkCupid and while they are made for meeting people it becomes quite apparent that the vast majority are looking for romantic relationships rather than friends. Chats, in-game and otherwise seem to me either dead, or so crowded I can't get a feel of who's who and what's going on with all the noise around. It gets to the point people are stating things for themselves more than discussing stuff together.

What I wish I guess is to find a 'dating' site for friends, in my case of the sort interested in gaming, but a general one would be great now wouldn't it? It would be nice to know even a bit of people ahead of investing effort into a friendship, at least for a introvert somewhat socially anxious person like myself.

Also as a related topic, I've been thinking a lot about the ease of initiating and messaging in group chats vs one on one, dunbar's number and group sizes and dynamics. There is not a lot, but quite interesting stuff to read about it around.

What ways have you found people to play with? Friends of friends, reddit? If you're more fastidious about your friends, I'm especially interested to hear from you. If you're too shy to post, that goes doubly so hahah :-)