The article “Profiles from Alter Ego:  Avatars and their Creators” and Mark Stephen Meadows article “Auto Portraits” discuss avatars and the importance of their role in our society.  Meadows’s article compares avatars to the portraits of Royal families in Europe by saying that portraits are used to provide a large deal of information on a person and how they lived, which is similar to how an avatar reflects the personality of its creator.  This shows that the role of an avatar is to display the type of person that the creator wants to be viewed as.  The “Profiles from Alter Ego:  Avatars and their Creators” article shows this role because it displays an image of the creator next to that of their avatar, and then allows them to explain why they choose that avatar.  The main consensus from the three different creators featured in this article is that the creators want people to see them for the type of person they are and not what they physically look like. They use these avatars to escape the physical limitations that cause people to have a certain beliefs about a person before finding out what the person is like on the inside.  The avatar removes the barrier between how a person actually physically looks and focuses on how an individual acts such that you see the true person before you pass judgment.    Avatars would be useful in a classroom setting for those students that are timid, shy, or have a negative self image when assigning group projects.  The students’ avatars could be placed in a social setting and meet one another allowing them to explore each others personalities without the peer pressure of being chosen in group for how you physically look.  Avatars could play a major role in breaking down negative social barriers created by societies vision of the perfect person if the avatars are used in a positive way.