History Main / DateMyAvatar

* In ''BuffyTheVampireSlayer'', Willow once dated her nice charming chat-buddy Malcolm... who was actually a incorporeal murderous demon possessing the computer system.

* Inverted in one ''FiveSecondFilms'': A girl agrees to date a guy in WoW. When he shows up, he is the actual avatar (as in, he shows up as a ConspicuousCGI purple-skinned [[AllTrollsAreDifferent troll]]).

* Played with in Basshunter's 'Boten Anna' where the singer gets a crush on what he thinks is a IRC bot, only to be heartbroken to find out that it's actually a real life girl admin.

* The {{Dilbert}} character Wally [[http://dilbert.com/strips/comic/2012-04-08/ takes this one step further]]. When approached by an attractive real life female, he refuses - explaining that real people can never be as good as technology. He then proceeds to take her photo, so that he may photoshop it and date it online instead of dating the real her.

* A ''{{Cracked}}'' column imagines the world without the internet, including the appearance of women who crawl on the ground and those who hold portraits of celebrities over their faces all the time (Trick-photography and avatar substitutes respectively).

* ''Manga/{{Btooom}}'': Ryota's and [[spoiler: Himiko's]] Btooom! avatars are married [[spoiler: and it turns out they really are who they thought they were!]]

* A variation in ''HowIMetYourMother''; Ted meets a girl through World of Warcraft. She turns out to be completely crazy.

[[AC:Webcomics]]

* In ''Slave Jade'', the protagonist is a [[CasualKink sexually submissive]] woman who start spending online time with a sexually dominant man. She likes the things he writes to her about BDSM; she finds it insightful and sexy. However, the guy is a totally clueless social misfit who only manage to comes across as insightful and sexy by copy-pasting insightful and sexy things that ''other'' people have written and pretending that he wrote it himself. When he kidnaps her, the author portrays him as a total creep, averting the AbusivelySexy trope BastardBoyfriend. [[spoiler:She ends up shooting him, and after barely surviving the wound and blood loss from the bullet he ends up in jail. The book ends with her having recovered and decides to start looking for a new master - determined to find [[SafeSaneAndConsensual a good one]] this time, and concluding that giving up BDSM because of the bad experience with the creep would give him far more power over her life than he's worth.]]

* [[http://xkcd.com/903/ This]] {{xkcd}} strip demonstrates how the internet makes you appear smarter.

[[quoteright:350:http://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/DateMyAvatar_6871.jpg]]
[[caption-width-right:350:Yes, I'd date her]]

* A variation in ''HowIMetYourMother''; Ted meets a girl through World of Warcraft who turns out to be completely crazy.

* TheGuild's song "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urNyg1ftMIUDo You Wanna Date My Avatar]]" is all about this. See page quote.

* ''Manga/{{Btooom}}: Ryota's and [[spoiler: Himiko's]] Btooom! avatars are married [[spoiler: and it turns out they really are who they thought they were!]]

* ''EarthStarVoyager'' plays this trope straight, but in reverse chronological order from the usual one. [[SpaceshipGirl Priscilla]] is as physically unattractive as a person can get, being a cube-shaped box of plastics and metals. Thus, one of the male crewmen are simply annoyed when she fall in love with him. However, she later start using a photo of a human female to represent herself, and ''then'' he starts getting interested, associating the beautiful face with the computer personality. (It maybe does help that Priscilla was [[InterfaceWithAFamiliarFace named and molded after the woman in the picture]], but it doesn't change the fact that she still is, and always has been, a cube of plastics and metal.)

* "[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UE6iAjEv9dQ I'm So Much Cooler Online]]" by Brad Paisley is about a lonely guy who never even managed to get to "second base" and who want women to see him for who he is... online!

** The song is called "[[RefrainFromAssuming Online]]"

* ''EarthStarVoyager'' plays this trope straight, but in reverse chronological order from the usual one. [[SpaceshipGirl Priscilla]] is as physically unatracctive as a person can get, being a cube-shaped box of plastics and metals. Thus, one of the male crewmen are simply annoyed when she fall in love with him. However, she later start using a photo of a human female to represent herself, and ''then'' he starts getting interested, associating the beautiful face with the computer personality. (It maybe does help that Priscilla was [[InterfaceWithAFamiliarFace named and molded after the woman in the picture]], but it doesn't change the fact that she still is, and always has been, a cube of plastics and metal.)

* ''EarthStarVoyager'' plays this trope straight, but in reverse chronological order from the usual one. [[SpaceshipGirl Priscilla]] is as physically unatracctive as a person can get, being a cube-shapd box of plastics and metals. Thus, one of the male crewmen are simply annoyed when she fall in love with him. However, she later start using a photo of a human female to represent herself, and ''then'' he starts getting interested, associating the beautiful face with the computer personality. (It maybe does help that Priscilla was [[InterfaceWithAFamiliarFace named and molded after the woman in the picture]], but it doesn't change the fact that she still is, and always has been, a cube of plastics and metal.)

->''Do you wanna date my avatar? She's a star, and she's hotter than reality by far...''
-->'''TheGuild''', ''[[http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=urNyg1ftMIU Do you wanna date my avatar]]''

->''You know, actually it's kind of funny. Because every time I would mention some obscure singer or band, you knew so much about them. But not right away. It was, like, a few minutes later. Maybe to give you enough time to look them up on the web? Jeff... you used the same phrases about Goldfrapp as they do on Amazon.Com. Busted. By the way, I fucking hate... Goldfrapp.''
-->HardCandy

* In .Hack//Sign, Tsukasa and Subaru start a relationship while Tsukasa's consciousness is stuck in the virtual reality game called "TheWorld". As it turns out, [[spoiler: Tsukasa ends up being a girl in the real world, instead of the boy her avatar was. Luckily, Subaru doesn't mind and after the anime, when Tsukasa is freed from the game, they get together in the real world]].

* In Film/{{Avatar}}, Neytiri would never have started dating Jake if he had been in his real body. Eventually resolved by [[spoiler:him BecomingTheMask]].
* In HardCandy, this goes both ways. We have this charming guy and this sweet young girl, and they have so much in common. But they are both faking it. They are really predators, trying to lure each other into a trap.
* In Film/{{Chatroom}}, the female lead starts falling for the male lead, based only on how he has presented himself online. The reality is for darker then she is willing to see.
* EarthStarVoyager plays this trope straight, but in reverse chronological order from the usual one. [[SpaceshipGirl Priscilla]] is as physically unatracctive as a person can get, being a cube-shapd box of plstics and metals. Thus, one of the male crewmen are simply annoyed when she fall in love with him. However, she later start using a photo of a human female to represen herself, and ''then'' he starts getting interested, associating the beautiful face with the computer personality. (It mayhaps does help that Priscilla was named an molded after the woman on the picture, but i doesn' change the fact that she still is, and always have been, a cube of plastics and metal.)

* In Slave Jade, the protagonist is a [[CasualKink sexually submissive]] woman who start spending online time with a sexually dominant man. She likes the things he write to her about BDSM, she find it insightful and sexy. However, the guy is a totally clueless social misfit who only manage to come across as insightful and sexy by copy-paste insightful and sexy things that ''other'' people have written and pretend that he wrote it himself. When he kidnaps her, the author portray him as a total creep, averting the AbusivelySexy trope BastardBoyfriend. [[spoiler:She ends up shooting him, and after barely surviving the wound and blood loss from the bullet he ends up in jail. The book end with her having recovered and decides to start looking for a new master - determined to find [[SafeSaneAndConsensual a good one]] this time, and concluding that giving up BDSM because of the bad experience with the creep would hive him far more power over her life than he's worth.]]

* In BuffyTheVampireSlayer, Willow once dated her nice charming chat-buddy Malcolm... who was actually a incorporeal murderous demon possessing the computer system.

* Inverted in one FiveSecondFilms: A girl agrees to date a guy in WoW. When he shows up, he is the actual avatar (as in, he shows up as a ConspicuousCGI purple-skinned [[AllTrollsAreDifferent troll]]).
* A {{Cracked}} column imagines the world without the internet, including the appearance of women who crawl on the ground and those who hold portraits of celebrities over their faces all the time (Trick-photography and avatar substitutes respectively).

->''Do you wanna date my avatar? She's a star, and she's hotter then reality by far...''