What the Avatar Represents

The claim to a more attractive personal appearance than one may truly have is a common theme in the online social interaction scene, so much so that it has actually become a cliche. It only makes sense, then, that when it is not only accepted , but encouraged to actually create a character to represent oneself with an almost infinite amount of physical traits to choose from, that a person would choose to create the avatar with all of the attributes they may wish they had.

Many people who decide to use the social interaction provided through gaming as their primary source of human contact are often unhappy with some aspect of their life, so it is only natural that when escaping to their world online they endow themselves with all of the traits they admire. This also explains why the more attractive avatars are treated better by the other players. The players have all placed value in certain traits such as height and beauty, so they not only desire to posses these characteristics, they also admire these things in others.

Part of the unique experience of gaming online is the freedom of all restraints from one's reality and the the entry into a new limitless reality available at the click of a mouse, complete with new friends. These exciting new worlds, however, are still ultimately populated by the human beings behind the screens, and many social issues that occur in society also occur in online societies. Thus, it is not so surprising that these online societies often put great power in physical appearance, just as we do in our own society offline.