Does physical appearance affect your opinion of...

[Patchisou Yutohru]

online friends? After speaking to someone for nearly two years, they post a picture of themselves and they're not at all what you were expecting.

Does that shocking change in appearance that differs so much from how you pictured them affect your opinion of them, or how you think of them?

[Antemortem]

This has actually become fairly common as of recent, as I see people I've known for months online start posting pictures all of a sudden or I stumble upon ones they posted ages ago, and they're nothing I thought they looked like. I tend to staple the picture onto their username after the first time I see it, but it's not like it affects my feelings towards them in any way. What's the face behind the pixels matter when I didn't befriend the face, but rather the personality/quirks/traits, etc in the first place?

[von Weltschmerz]

Nah. I don't even do that with friends in real life. I'm nowhere near that shallow. I wasn't their friend because how they looked, I was their friend because I thought there was a cool person. That would be true regardless of how they looked. Now... if they lied to me and pretended they were some other person, I will get a little mad that they lied to me, but you know.... that doesn't mean I didn't enjoy talking to them, so we're still gonna be friends...

[Pinkie-Dawn]

Their actual appearances do shock me, because I usually imagine their appearance based on their avatar or signature. I've want to join the bandwagon of showing pictures of you irl, but I don't have any image accounts.

[Kura]

Yes, it changes what I think of them if they've lied to me about something.. because then it feels like.. well then how can I trust you now if you don't value trusting me either?
Had a friend I was extremely close with and I found out he was not a he. That was shocking to me. Same would be the case with age.

[Sylphiel]

I don't have a lot of people show me what they look like, but whenever they do...yeah, I'll admit to being a little shocked/weirded out at first because of the whole "you're not quite what I thought" deal. That and with how my mind tends to separate "online" from "offline", mixing the two in any way is...jarring, I suppose.

Doesn't tend to change my opinion of them, though. It wasn't their looks that got me friended with them in the first place, so seeing them really don't change much.

[Sassy Milkshake]

Originally Posted by Sylphiel

Doesn't tend to change my opinion of them, though. It wasn't their looks that got me friended with them in the first place, so seeing them really don't change much.

Pretty much this.

I'll be shocked, most definitely, since I imagine people as their icons haha. But assuming they don't change their personality or the way they go about talking to me, I don't have any reason to change my opinion on them.

[Shiny Celebi]

I honestly try not to even imagine what online people look like, they never look like you picture really. But no it dosent change my opinion, because their personalty is still the same, and that's what you get to know them by.

[Leaf Storm]

Not at all! At first I'd feel a bit...odd about it, but they're my friend and I wouldn't think twice about them based on their appearance irl.

[⊗Slenderman⊗]

I try not to let it, but yes. This happened after I ended up finding out that my friend looks much different than I expected. I don't know if it would really change our friendship at all, considering I was banned from that website.

[Laugh]

Definitely no. I don't care at all about a person's appearance.

[Tetrakeet]

Originally Posted by Laugh

Definitely no. I don't care at all about a person's appearance.

^ This here. I don't care what people look like and I don't ask for pictures. Now if I was meeting someone online in real life, (extremely low chance of that) then I'd need a picture to identify them at the meeting place.. ; Otherwise, I just stick to the avatars.

[Insomniac]

Normally I don't even have a mental image of what my friends look like until I see them.. I do get surprised when they eventually skype me and their voice is much different than expected, though. I like to read VMs in voices I think suit their personality, haha.

[Shining Raichu]

It does affect my opinion of them. Not negatively though! I imagine them to look a certain way because I create a picture of them in my head based on their personality. Then I see that they're an actual person and they look nothing like I imagined and suddenly I'm like "whoa" and it's hard for a few days to reconcile them with their picture.

Then I get over it and it's business as usual