Do you let avatars make you like a person?

Sometimes people use inanimate objects or here on fluther, gender neutral jellyfish as avatars. Other people use their pictures (usually the good-looking folks, but not always). Then there are the people who use drawings.

Now, these drawings may or may not be reflective of the person, but, for what it’s worth, if it’s a picture of a pretty girl, it draws my eye, and makes me predisposed to like the person. Actually, I’ve seen men use pictures of pretty girls as avatars, probably for that very reason.

I feel reasonably certain that I’m not the only person with this predisposition to imagine that if the avatar is attractive, then the person behind it is attractive. Clearly this is at best, a shaky assumption. But the “trick”—if you want to call it a “trick”—seems to work.

So, do you get influenced by avatars like this? Do you try to fight being influenced, knowing it does not necessarily reflect the real person? Does it bother you that you are prejudiced towards attractive faces? Or, do you not think about any of these things at all?