How can you make new friends via reddit?

The way Reddit is built makes it hard to make friends because it would require you to 'stalk' the comments of someone you have befriended. It'd be awkward. The way in which I unintentionally have made some kind of friend was by exchanging account information of in my case a http://criticker.com after having become active on the TrueFilm IRC chat (you could also join a very small subreddit), in which over time talk drifts towards personal rankings of films. Secondly I think you could take a bolder strategy (lol), and simply ask them something to the effect if they want to discuss things on a more longer-term basis via pm's (aka as a friend-like relationship). Even more specific: you could reply to an insightful comment of theirs by saying: 'Insightful comment, added you as a friend' (you have the ability to add them as a friend even though this doesn't really do anything other than marking their name in future threads and an ability to follow them). The last possibility I can imagine is to invite that person to become a moderator with you in an attempt to try and build a subreddit together. So I geuss the most effective 'trick' to make friends on Reddit is to lead redditors away towards another site which specifies in the interest you both share. This could be an academical site, a site for woodworking, steam or whatever.