I can count 25 or so people I've met via Mudcat and in each case the experience has been positive, constructive and life-affirming - at least it has for me. I have had the occasional '...you're nothing like your on-line persona...' but I don't come here for social chit-chat, rather to expound polemically on weighty concerns of mutual concern which is something I tend not to do in real life, not much anyway, prefering to eat, drink and be merry - and talk about stuff that really matters (such recent developments on EastEnders, the delights of The Trafford Centre, AVP, and the new Sherlock Holmes) than the finer points of the Green Man, the Folk Process and the 1954 Definition. On Mudcat these things matter (at least they used to!) but in real life they don't amount to a hill of beans. People are the most important thing; in Folk it's the Folk that make it real which is one of the benefits of Mudcat.