I’m not sure what to do

I want to make new friends, but I’m too different from everyone else to have a common experience/hobby. It feels like the people around me are a monolith of all the stereotypical, popular teenage things, which I don’t really enjoy. I don’t enjoy the same music/books/movies/TV shows/hobbies or have the same taste in clothes, as most of the people around me that I observe, and it would be nice to at least have that. But if anything, I’d like to have the sort of connection where friends have a shared goal or experience and form a connection, even a chosen family, through that. And I almost had it. I was in a group getting ready for a competition and we had united through that, but I let them down and am no longer part of that team.

I’m in lots of other groups, too. I try to be active in that respect, but it doesn’t seem to work because most of the time we just listen to the instructor and don’t really chat freely, and we only see each other at meetings anyway so I don’t think that is a useful way to connect with others.

People are nice to me and greet me when I see them, and I always politely return their greeting and ask them how they are, but it never really goes beyond that, and if I try to make it go beyond that, we never talk anyway. I wish they’d make an effort to chat with me a bit more when our groups aren’t meeting, maybe try to get to know me or spend time with me outside of designated meeting times, because I’m too afraid to do it myself because they might not actually like me, or we might be too different, or they may be busy in their daily life and any friendship would be shallow at best. I’d like to form a deep friendship with someone, but nobody seems interested in reciprocating a friendship or reaching out to me, and I don’t think I have anything in common with my peers, and the groups I’m in aren’t working very well at bringing meaningful friendships together. The last thing I might do is put myself in a situation, such as joining a group or going on a trip, where I am automatically with another person and we bond over our proximity and/or any common interests… but we aren’t doing trips and the groups aren’t working.

Is there something else I might do to put myself in proximity to or connect deeply and meaningfully with others? Could there be something in my mannerisms that makes people not really want to talk to me, for example, maybe I need to gain more self-confidence? I’m starting to worry I will never make any friends or that I’m not worthy of being accepted for who I am. I’m tired of being “unique”/a “lone wolf”, so to speak. I know that there are nearly eight billion people on the planet, but that doesn’t reassure me because how many of the eight billion do most people realistically meet? And even so, they likely will still live so far away you only see them once or twice anyway. How can I figure out what could draw people to me, and how do I develop those things? Most other people I know have friends they talk to and see regularly or at least occasionally, and I’d like to have that too and know that someone likes me for me. What do I need to do to have that, aside from what I’ve already tried?