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I have only met a couple of people from TFP in RL, and once I went on a 'date' with a guy I met online, who was from around here.
The TFP people I have met has been great, nothing weird and it was fun to finally meet them. No regrets there.
The 'date' guy was a pretty big mistake. He tried to grope me during the date and spent the entire time talking about himself, and never once thought to ask me much. I was bored and felt zero chemistry. Online we had got on really well. Was strange. When I told him I wasn't interested he turned into an asshole and was really rude and childish.
I think meeting strangers or meeting internet friends is quite different. With strangers you have no expectations, and you couldn't care if you ever see them again, or if by some connection during the time you meet (through friends or out and about somewhere) you may become friends or more. Also if you meet them through friends you are a little more trusting because you know your friends chose to hang out with them so there must be something right about them. With internet friends, you are going to meet them specifically to see if you get on in RL. There is a degree of pressure. You don't want to reject the person who you have become close to but have never been in the physical presence of. You hope there won't be anything weird about them in RL.
I like to get to know people online before I meet them, it's very interesting - It just means any physical pre-conceptions you might have had about them if you'd met them before you 'knew' them go out the window. Like it or not, everyone makes judgments on people when they first meet. The internet puts a more even keel on things. Reading what someone wrote gives you an idea of their personality, sure, but it also is removed from its RL context which helps us all understand each other a lot better.
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Whether we write or speak or do but look
We are ever unapparent. What we are
Cannot be transfused into word or book.
Our soul from us is infinitely far.
However much we give our thoughts the will
To be our soul and gesture it abroad,
Our hearts are incommunicable still.
In what we show ourselves we are ignored.
The abyss from soul to soul cannot be bridged
By any skill of thought or trick of seeming.
Unto our very selves we are abridged
When we would utter to our thought our being.
We are our dreams of ourselves, souls by gleams,
And each to each other dreams of others' dreams.
Fernando Pessoa, 1918
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