You have a very one sided view of what true friendship is and how they are built. It's difficult to build stable and lasting friendships fully remotely without constant IRL interactions where you get to experience all sides of the person and the relationship, including the darker sides, which you might not like. Constant IRL interactions in both fun and in challenging situations help you see all sides of a person, the good and the bad, vs online where people have a much more curated and groomed presentation of themselves especially when not fully anonymized. Maybe your online buddy is some weirdo who stalks girls in his free time or scams old people of their money. IRL you have a much better chance of sniffing weirdos out from their general behavior and by observing how they interact with others, not just with you, which is how I dumped a lot of so called friends who despite treating me well personally, I realized they were scumbags in general to others who didn't deserve it. Online you can't really screen for this.

Just think about where the strongest life lasting bonds are made, school, university, military service, sometimes work, etc., places where you're constantly together sharing a common struggle through which you get to know people thoroughly and having each other's backs, along with a dose of willingness to self-sacrifice for a vulnerable friend in need. If your friends aren't willing to make themselves uncomfortable for you when in need, then they aren't your real friends. We all know "those people" who're great at having a good time and will always party with you, and keep saying you're "bros" but the moment you need some sort of help, they'll ghost you or make up excuses why they can't help. Those are just fun buddies, not friends. Same with your exclusively online gaming buddies, work colleagues, etc. are just that, gaming buddies and work colleagues, not friends. They'll have fun with you while things are good, but won't sacrifice anything IRL for you when things are bad for you like a true friend would. You need to make distinctions between fun buddies, and real friends which tends to be mostly formed IRL and will also be by your side when things are bad for you.

Saying people you know remotely are your friends is like saying the girl on tinder you've been chatting up for weeks is your girlfriend, when you haven't even met IRL.

Sure, in this day and age you can meet very interesting people online, on reddit, etc witch which you share many things in common and you can end up getting to know them well and share secrets and many intimate details of your life, and yet we still have a loneliness epidemic of epic proportions despite this. That's because once people with exclusivity remote friends switch off their laptop/phone and come back to the real world, they realize that despite all their so called friends, at the end of the day when they're vulnerable and in need, they're still 100% alone.