To be fair, the friend/mentor in question started out as a dude on a small private forum I used to frequent. The forum had an AIM chatroom and he made fun of me

To be fair, the friend/mentor in question started out as a dude on a small private forum I used to frequent. The forum had an AIM chatroom and he made fun of me mercilessly me for years for making stupid decisions. Go to meetups and lurk IRL IMO. Just start small conversations. Say hi, ask what someone's working on, what the program is they have open, if they read HN or Reddit or whatever. Let them know you admire their work and ask for help.