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Yeah, keep telling yourself that.

Acronym for Guy In Real Life

Based on the belief that There Are No Girls on the Internet. 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 in the community. They display obvious Cam Whore traits and may even steal photos of attractive girls off Myspace or Facebook and claim that they are them.

In other cases they may copy photos of their sisters/daughters/nieces/female cousins off photo cd's or the like, especially if said females are of, or close to, the age of the online persona.

Female forum goers have a tendency to get a lot more attention, just by being girls, so many male attention whores use this to their advantage so that they get the attention they crave. They will play and flirt with the male members who may become tickled pink that a girl is talking to them this way. Sad, but true.

Will ultimately lead to a reveal where they show their true colors as blokes and laugh at the incensed regulars. Or, a Regular will wise up to his shenanigans and unmask him causing everyone to point and laugh at him as he slinks away with his tail between his legs. Could also be a practical joke played by a Regular to which everyone will simply have a good laugh. Most cases tend to end in the second case, which brings up the question of why such trolls even bother doing it since the risk of being exposed far outweighs the potential gain.

Naturally, any mention of online dating in the "Old Media" will end this way, whether played for laughs or for drama, because everyone knows the internet is solely the domain of perverts.

If you think this is bad, though, be grateful you're not dealing with a Mailer Daemon.

Note that not everyone who's biologically male who presents as female online is trolling; see Cross Player, Transgender. 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 and Pinterest, where the default identity of new posters is assumed to be 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 realizing, leading to "You're a guy??" moments 6 months down the track. Also, because in the majority of fandom spaces Most Fanfic Writers Are Girls, even for canon works directed towards males, fans assume every new fic writer is female unless they self-identify otherwise

See also Faux Yay.

Examples of GIRL include:

Anime and Manga

• Referenced in Welcome to The NHK where the beautiful Catgirl healer in the RPG Episode turns out to be Satou's neighbor Yamazaki, out to teach him a lesson.
• .hack//Sign completely inverts this as being the major "twist" of the series. As well as it being a case of amnesia (sort of).
  • Well, it's not really played as a twist—it's brought up early on, then rejected but only by the character in question saying "Of course I'm not a girl!" So when it's revealed that the initial theory was right all along it's not very surprising.
  • A better example is Saburou from Roots. She actively claims to be female and states that she simply acts like a boy because many boys act like girls in the game when called out on it due to her male name and male way of speech. The fact that she's on this page means of course, she is male in the real world. It's even pointed out on her character design for Link where her head band is adorned with the male symbol.
• Durarara!!: Like any good Troll, Izaya poses as a girl on the internet.
  • Inverted by Celty, who poses as a guy. This is subverted in the Light Novels in that everyone in the chat had caught on to the fact that "Setton" was actually a girl since pretty much day one, and just didn't think enough of it to point it out until she mentioned a male roommate. Celty's not a terribly good liar.
  • Discussed in vol 9 of the Light Novels between Bakyura and a new member, who's probably doing this, too: "she" is hinted to be Aoba. The kid's really taking after Izaya...
• Flunk Punk Rumble (aka Yankee Kun to Megane Chan) inverts this for comedic effect.
• 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. Hilarity Ensues when a goddess intervenes and suddenly, it's no longer just an act.

Comic Books

• In Ultimate X-Men Beast gets into a relationship with a girl on a chatroom...who is actually the Blob, one of Magneto's henchmen, pretending to be a girl for kicks (a mutant genius supermodel, no less). Then Henry accidentally blabs about how Xavier brainwashed Magneto. Oops.
• Also shows up in Runaways, where a guy cross-plays as Invisible Woman and The White Queen. Made rather obvious, since he was playing up the Stripperiffic costumes.
  • Also inverted with the only real girl among them playing Daredevil.

Film

• In the film Closer, Dan tricks Larry into thinking he's a girl, and they have cybersex.
• Out Cold has two men who pretend to be lesbians meeting each other in a chatroom. Naturally, they have cybersex.
• In Surrogates, the operator of the seductive female surrogate at the nightclub that got fried happens to be a man. The characters don't treat this "revelation" as unusual or noteworthy in any way.

Jokes

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

Literature

• Trilby and the Ghost, a short story by Yahtzee taking place in the Chzo Mythos '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.
• Inverted in Otherland, where Salome Fredericks pretends to be a guy online in order to avoid There Are No Girls on the Internet.

Live-Action TV

• Psych: Shawn and Gus pretend to be a woman in an online poker chatroom and arrange to meet one of the other players. The guy from the chatroom laments, "Man, all hot women on the Internet are guys! Only you're two guys, which is weird."
• In an episode of NCIS, McGee develops an online relationship with a girl who turns out to be DiNozzo playing a prank.
  • 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.
  • In a prior episode, DiNozzo admits to having cybersex with a person called HotJugs24. The name probably should have been his first clue.
• Subverted in the 1990s Jerry Springer parody Night Stand, where two straight guys met online pretending to be lesbians revealed themselves to each other... and decided to date anyway.
• In an early Buffy the Vampire Slayer episode, Xander expresses suspicions about Willow's new cyber-pal.

Xander: I mean, sure he says he's a high school student, but I can say I'm a high school student. Buffy: You are. Xander: Okay, but I can also say that I'm an elderly Dutch woman. Get me? I mean, who's to say I'm not if I'm in the elderly Dutch chat room?

• On the Israeli sitcom Shemesh, the titular character, having recently discovered the internet, pretends to be a woman on a women only chatroom, mostly for the thrill; he stays there for the more honest intention of learning how to relate to women. Hilarity Ensues.
• An episode of Scrubs had an intern talking to a girl online only to find out it was a man. In response, he created a new account, pretended to be a girl, and got him to arrive at the hospital.
• In The Big Bang Theory, Wolowitz meets a slutty troll in an MMORPG. It's the creepy janitor at the University.
• An episode of Malcolm in the Middle has Craig give Francis a tip for free travel. Pretend to be a girl in a chatroom, flirt with a random guy from the location they want to go and then ask him to pay for a plane ticket so they can meet up. The last scene of the episode shows Francis getting off a plane and saying "Thanks" to a guy holding a flower and a card saying 'Debbie'.
• In the British sitcom My Family it's mentioned that this has happened to Nick, and most of the others think the same of his current online girlfriend. A Subverted Trope as she turns out to be a genuine... lesbian. Nick himself was the GIRL.
• In The Teaser of an episode of The John Larroquette Show John goes to an internet lesbian chatroom pretending to be a woman.

John (typing): What are you talking about? Girl 1: [something mundane] John: Sounds hot. Assorted girls: MAN IN THE FORUM! LOG OFF!! LOG OFF!!

• 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).

Music

• This is the idea behind Frogg Marlowe's song "Ain't No Women":

I got the "ain't no women in Second Life" blues.

• After setting up a date with a girl he met online, the protagonist of the song "On My Knees" by Heavens Gate finds out she's actually a man.

Hello champ, my name is Jack!

• In the song "Chiksilog" by the Filipino band Kamikazee, one male Ragnarok Online player was distraught when he discovered that the "girl" he met online turned out to be Camp Gay.

Videogames

• Overheard in a city chat on World of Warcraft: "Welcome to the internet, where the men are men, the women are men, and the children are FBI agents."
  • A study from the Daedalus Project shows 45% of female WoW characters are actually played by females.
• Any player of any online RPG may cite that their acronym aptly describes their population: Mostly Men Online Role Playing Girls.
  • These days this has been somewhat muddled, as close to 50% of the MMORPG players are starting to be women (apparently they are among the most popular "real" video games among the female populace), but often play as men due to either sexist character designs or horny teenagers hitting on them.
• Played straight and subverted in one of its oldest forms. On the Original TinyMUD, back in 1989 there were only male characters. Then within about 3 weeks, a bunch of women showed up. about half of them was a single, actual teenage girl, Claire. Almost all the rest were played by guys.

Web Comics

• In 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.
  • There was also one strip in which Gabe where he warns against "roleplaying" with others to Tycho's niece, mentioning that he'd done some odd things with night-elf ears during such.
• Francis from PvP plays a female character named Catfight in City of Heroes. When asked why, he says "If I'm going to be staring at an ass in tights all day, it might as well be a nice ass."
  • Much earlier in the story, Francis also pretends to be a girl called Sasha online.
• Before the first Tomb Raider 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.
  • Interestingly enough, Brian Clevenger from Eight Bit Theater also once said the same thing in regards to the same game almost word for word.
• In Megatokyo, this is used - in a rather twisted fashion - during a flashback. Piro plays an MMO with a male character, starts chatting with him outside the game, and eventually starts to wonder if 'he' isn't actually a girl... eventually, he seizes on an opportunity to ask him for a picture. He gets it, and sure enough, 'he' is a cute girl, whom he starts to fall in love with. Then she dumps him by revealing that she's actually a guy, the picture was fake, and she was just playing with him for kicks. The twist? The picture was real, and she really IS a girl. Exactly why she pretended to be a GIRL is, as yet, unknown, but Piro is still pissed at her for pulling that stunt...
  • Also, Piro himself is cross playing, and out of the flashbacks, Miho tells him that she sometimes believed he was really a girl.
• Both inverted and played straight in Something*Positive. Branwen manages to convince an entire forum that she's a man, causing all the female forum-goers to fall in love with her. Upon learning of this, Davan decides to further troll the forum by pretending to be female and posing as Branwen's male persona's lover.
• This strip in The Noob has quite a few of them.
• in Goblins, Drowbabe is one according to Minmax.
  • Which, considering how "she" is role-played, should be obvious to any reader who has ever made contact with a female of their own species.
  • Also according to Minmax, Forgath is an inversion.
• In Sequential Art, Art tells Pip the girl he met on his fave MMO can't possibly be a real girl, because There Are No Girls on the Internet, see? It's lampshaded in that "Fern" actually is a girl.
  • A hot girl. Who looks exactly like her online character. And wants to play.
• Don't know if this should go under Webcomics or Video Games, but here is the somewhat well known Team Fortress 2 comic 19/F/Medic.
• From Plus EV: Corbin knows this trope. See here.

Web Originals

• Got a nod in the joint That Guy With The Glasses/Mystery Science Theater 4000 riffing of the Chinese Dragon Ball movie. The Oolong Expy shapeshifts into the Bulma Expy to get the "Dragon Pearl" from the Roshi Expy; the riff is "You know, this is an accurate depiction of most Internet relationships: one's a guy, one's a really old guy."
• HotDiggedyDemon, the guy behind Jerry, quotes June from another series of his on his Newgrounds bio, giving off this impression.
• Yu-Gi-Oh the Abridged Series - 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.
• The Jason Fortuny prank on Craigslist. In September 2006, Jason Fortuny posted a personal ad pretending to be a woman seeking sexual domination. He then published more than 150 of the replies, complete with explicit photos and personally identifying info, to Encyclopedia Dramatica. One of his victims sued, obtaining a $74,252.60 default judgement.