History Main / GIRL

* On the Internet; men are men, women are men, and children are cops

* A basic tactic used by internet police to single out and target potential pedophiles on the internet forums and chat rooms.

* In TheTeaser of an episode of ''The John Larroquette Show'' John goes to an internet lesbian chatroom pretending to be a woman.

Note that not everyone who's biologically male who presents as female online is trolling; see CrossPlayer, {{Transsexual}}. Leads to ''actual'' women on the Internet using male or neuter user names and fudging personal details specifically to avoid this trope.

This is often inverted on many female dominated forums, such as LiveJournal, where the default identity of new posters is assumed is female, and a guy, who acts normally but doesn't explicitly mention he is a guy, can go for a long time without anyone asking or realising, leading to "You're a guy??" moments 6 months down the track.

* In [[http://www.penny-arcade.com/comic/2006/2/10/ this]] ''{{Penny Arcade}}'' comic strip, Gabe explains to Tycho how he is being "paid to infiltrate forums and regurgitate press releases as a trusted source". He informs him that he is posing as Shelly Yu/Missfit<3, a "tween" who enjoys games, making friends and "just having fun" and trusted member of the IGN Boards.

* In the British sitcom ''MyFamily'' it's mentioned that this has happened to Nick, and most of the others think the same of his current online girlfriend. [[spoiler: A SubvertedTrope as she turns out to be a genuine... lesbian. Nick himself was the GIRL.]]

* ''FlashPoint'': A robber with an anti-capitalism bent is desperately lonely when he meets a sympathetic girl online -- she even sings a song for him. It turns out "she" is a teenage boy who really, really, ''really'' hates his stepfather and is using the robber to murder him by saying "she" is being abused (no one's being abused, he just hates his step dad that much).

* In the film ''{{Closer}}'', Dan tricks Larry into thinking he's a girl, and [[CrowningMomentOfFunny they have cybersex]].
* ''OutCold'' has two men who pretend to be lesbians meeting each other in a chatroom. [[GirlOnGirlIsHot Naturally]], they have cybersex.

* The somewhat well known ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' comic ''[[http://www.ubercharged.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/19fmedic.jpg 19/F/Medic]]''.

** Also inverted with the only ''real'' girl among them playing {{Daredevil}}.

** This happens to Kirito in the fifth light novel – officially, his VR equipment is supposed to scan the user's brainwaves to correctly determine gender, however Kirito apparently counts as "close enough" to female that the new game he was logging into registered him as one. He is understandably annoyed by this.

* ''LightNovel/{{Durarara}}'': Like any good {{troll}}, [[spoiler:Izaya]] poses as a girl on the internet.

** Discussed in vol 9 of the LightNovels between Bakyura and a new member, who's probably doing this, too: "she" is hinted to be [[spoiler:Aoba. The kid's really taking after Izaya...]]

* In ''Manga/GhostInTheShell 1.5'' Batou is net-dating a sexy young woman who's actually a ninety-year old man.

** This is used as a joke in [[VideoGame/HearthstoneHeroesOfWarcraft Hearthstone]] with the Master of Disguise card, which shows a female blood elf. The flavor text?
-> '''Master of Disguise''': She's actually a male tauren. People don't call him "Master of Disguise" for nothing.

[[FunWithAcronyms Acronym]] for '''Guy In Real Life'''.

* ''[[http://www.fullyramblomatic.com/features/trilbyghost.htm Trilby and the Ghost]]'', a short story by [[WebAnimation/ZeroPunctuation Yahtzee]] taking place in the ''ChzoMythos'' [[TheVerse 'verse]], involves Trilby discovering a ghost who can't pass on to other realms because he's never met his japanese girlfriend Nariko face-to-face. Predictably enough, 'Nariko' is actually a southern gentleman named Frank, which only makes Trilby's job more complicated.

* Football player [[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manti_Te%27o Manti Te'o]] had an online relationship with a G.I.R.L. posing as a (fictional) Stanford University student named Lennay Kekua; in real life, "Lennay" was a gay man named Ronaiah Tuiasosopo who could convincingly [[CrossdressingVoices imitate a female voice]].

* [[http://hotdiggedydemon.newgrounds.com/ HotDiggedyDemon]], the guy behind {{Jerry}}, quotes [[GamerChick Ju]][[SoapboxSadie ne]] from [[WackyGameJokez4Kidz another series of his]] on his {{Newgrounds}} bio, giving off this impression.

** A ''hot'' girl. Who looks ''exactly'' like her online character. ''And wants to play.''

* ''WebVideo/YuGiOhTheAbridgedSeries'' - Tricking people into cybersex by pretending to be a girl is one of Yami Bakura / Florence's hobbies. Then he ends up doing it with Marik completely by accident.

* A quick scene in episode 1 of LightNovel/SwordArtOnline has a Mirror item reformatting all of the player's VR avatars to reflect their actual selves from Real Life. One quick scene shows a crowd of girls suddenly revealed to be mostly men using female avatars, and there is a minor RunningGag of a specific couple composed of a cute girl revealed to be a skinny man and a lean boy revealed to be a pudgy man who remain friends despite the shocking reveal, and later reunite after the end of the Incident in real Life as friends.

* ''ReadyPlayerOne'' inverts this with [[spoiler:Aech, who is in reality a SassyBlackWoman.]]
* A variant: In ''{{Animorphs}},'' a mission requires hacking the identities of people on an apparent anti-[[PuppeteerParasite Yeerk]] website. While doing so, [[TheStrategist Marco]] takes an extra moment to look up his online girlfriend, who is naturally a seventy-three-year-old retired postal worker. (He doesn't mention gender, so presumably still a girl, though.)

** [[spoiler:At the end of the episode, Ziva tells [=McGee=] the truth, but since Tony had grown sick of the prank, [=McGee=] takes revenge by playing along just to mess with [=DiNozzo=].]]

* ''FlashPoint'': [[spoiler: A robber with an anti-capitalism bent is desperately lonely when he meets a sympathetic girl online -- she even sings a song for him. It turns out "she" is a teenage boy who really, really, ''really'' hates his stepfather and is using the robber to murder him by saying "she" is being abused (no one's being abused, he just hates his step dad that much).]]

* Before the first ''VideoGame/TombRaider'' game came out, the main developer gave that as the reason why the main character was made female. Of course, he's British, so he said 'bum' instead of 'ass,' but that's what happened.

* Don't know if this should go under Webcomics or Video Games, but here is the somewhat well known ''VideoGame/TeamFortress2'' comic ''[[http://www.ubercharged.net/wp-content/uploads/2008/03/19fmedic.jpg 19/F/Medic]]''.

* At the beginning of ''{{Nyotai-ka}}'', protagonist Manaka Makoto is a ''nekama'', a young man who, frustrated by his inability to attract the interest of women, masquerades as one on online dating sites for amusement. HilarityEnsues when a goddess intervenes and suddenly, [[GenderBender it's no longer just an act]].

Based on the belief that ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet. Some forums, particularly male-dominated ones, will be the victim of a special breed of {{Troll}} who will pretend to be a girl just to rile up the boy [[{{Nerds}} nerds]] in the community. They display obvious CamWhore traits and may even steal photos of attractive girls off MySpace or {{Facebook}} and claim that they are them.

* Inverted in ''{{Otherland}}'', where Salome Fredericks pretends to be a guy online in order to avoid ThereAreNoGirlsOnTheInternet.

** Although this seems like a ''major'' JerkAss move, it also helped those women to move on, rather than pine for a relationship that could never be. Some of them had been waiting for ''years'' for Branwen's male persona to return.

* Got a nod in the joint ThatGuyWithTheGlasses[=/=]Mystery Science Theater 4000 riffing of the Chinese ''DragonBall'' movie. "[[{{Expy}} Oolong]]" shapeshifts into "Bulma" to get the "Dragon Pearl" from "Roshi"; the riff is "You know, this is an accurate depiction of most Internet relationships: one's really a guy, one's really a really old guy."