I used to move around a lot, and would finally meet up with other folkies shortly before I left an area. That changed with the internet. I had contact with people before I moved there.

With regard to folkies in general, we have a lot of suspicion towards mass-marketed anything. An attempt to get us interested in anything simply because a lot of people like it, will often have the opposite effect. People know what they like, and others are better off leaving them alone to like it. Forget categories as big as "folk" and "pop." I have friends who hate parodies. I have friends who think women have no business singing sea shanties. I have friends who won't go near any song with a known author. We're still friends, because we don't try to shove our opinions down one another's throats. We're pretty good at "live and let live" as long as no one tries to push their ideas on us and tell us we HAVE to like what they like. That's why the pop fans can get a lot of flak from us, IMO. They sometimes push.

People would be surprised at how many folkies they would find if they looked. I've found big enough groups for a jam on military bases. There was an on-going Irish session in Seoul, South Korea. (Never made it to that session, though.) Somebody puts an ad in the local paper, a notice on the internet, a poster in a local shop, and people come out of the woodwork. The only place I had real difficulty finding anyone to play/sing with was in Indiana. Three and a half years of no-session hell...