Yeah, my IRL experience of the folk community isn't too much different from here in the Mudcat.

At FSGW events I feel very welcome, and even nurtured (the first Getaway I attended, one of the long time members hunted up another squeezebox player for me to play music with... still, to my mind, an incredibly kind and gracious thing to do). On the other hand, some of the jam sessions I've attended in other contexts have been rife with backbiting and weird ego politics. I stopped attending one long-running weekly jam session that I had been going to regularly for a couple of years because of the unpleasant atmosphere.

Just as with here in the Mudcat... there's both positive and negative. Just like in the rest of the 3D world, too.