We put a lot of thought into parasocial interactions. It's honestly creepy how much they affect our brain. Some of our main social circles are webfiction discord servers, and we're always super conscious that some part of our brain goes "notice me, senpai!" towards authors (and youtubers, streamers, etc.). It can be hard to just act normal when we look up to them and know they probably gotta deal with a lot of unwanted attention.
It's also the case here: a part of our brain lit up and went "jae noticed us!". But we're not trying to get your attention. You are just Some Guy and we think we have some useful advice / experiences we can share (we hope we aren't overstepping. And sorry for this long-ass comment!).
It is deeply ironic, but you might have an easier time connecting to other beings outside of Cohost. Somewhere you don't have to worry about running the place and keeping up a "customer service" public face. You might also find it easier to make friends in physical spaces if those are accessible to you. We saw plenty of folks giving advice here on how to go about that ^^
A lot of our friends we've made through small, private friend/family/polycule chats, or when a friend explicitly invites us to meet one of their friends. If no one you already know wants to play Lancer with you, you can always ask those beings to ask their friends. Heck, you can always tell your loved ones that you wanna make new friends, and ask if they'll present you their friends. We don't know anything about you; maybe you already know all their friends. But, the point we want to highlight is, the people who care about you think you are great, so they would probably be more than happy to present to you the other people they care about.
We were pretty bad at making friends in school and college; most of our friends approached us, or were groupmates for some project. We've always felt a bit like the stray that people take home and adopt. Grew up isolated, bullied, so fragile, and we were always just so different to everyone else. Heck we haven't made any local friends because we're too afraid to leave our house.
Despite all that though, we've had plenty of opportunity to grow. And, well, meeting someone, be it online or offline, building a bond, any kind of bond, is nothing more than a dance (...we've never danced with anyone). Maybe you ask them out to dance, maybe they ask you. You figure out how each other moves, figure out boundaries, make missteps, correct and adjust to each other's needs, and simply try to have a good time. There is no need to have everything figured out from the get-go. Just, if someone catches your interest, don't fret over it and give them a hello ^^ If there's some perceived power imbalance at play, you can mutually figure it out, later. If things remain uncomfy or unhealthy, that's okay. Not every connection is meant to last. That doesn't make that connection a failure, it's okay to not be friends with someone and still appreciate what they brought into your life.
Ahm. As a last comment, we understand that the staff might want to be accessible and reachable for the Cohost userbase. We understand that in such a small team, everyone is effectively a spokesbeing for the project. But there's no need to put yourself in that list of people to follow if it makes you feel uneasy. Heck, maybe that list has outlived its stay and it'd be better for everyone to instead put a list of some of the most prominent tags. After all, tags are one of the main discoverability mechanisms, and the one folks migrating might struggle with most.