Real life

Real life is a phrase used originally in literature to distinguish between actual and fictional or idealized worlds, and in acting to distinguish between performers and the characters they portray. More recently it has become a popular term on the Internet to describe events, people, activities and interactions occurring offline, or otherwise, not primarily through the medium of the internet.

When used to distinguish from fictional worlds or universes against the consensus reality of the reader, the term has a long history:

Authors, as a rule, attempt to select and portray types rarely met with in their entirety, but these types are nevertheless more real than real life itself.

In her 1788 work, Original Stories from Real Life; with Conversations Calculated to Regulate the Affections, and Form the Mind to Truth and Goodness, author Mary Wollstonecraft employs the term in her title, representing the work's focus on a middle-class ethos which she viewed as superior to the court culture represented by fairy tales and the values of chance and luck found in chapbook stories for the poor. As phrased by Gary Kelly, writing about the work, "The phrase ‘real life’ strengthens ‘original’, excluding both the artificial and the fictional or imaginary."

Similarly, the phrase can be used to distinguish an actor from a character, e.g. "In real life, he has a British accent" or "In real life, he lives in Los Angeles."

There is a related but slightly distinct usage among role-players and historical reenactors, to distinguish the fantasy or historical context from the actual world and the role-player or actor from the character, e.g. "What do you do in real life?" or "Where do you live in real life?"

On the Internet, "real life" refers to life offline. Online, the acronym "IRL" stands for "in real life", with the meaning "not on the Internet". For example, while Internet users may speak of having "met" someone that they have contacted via online chat or in an online gaming context, to say that they met someone "in real life" is to say that they literally encountered them in a common physical location. Some, arguing that the Internet is part of real life, prefer to use "away from the keyboard" (), e.g. the documentary TPB AFK.

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