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But the court rejected the argument, saying that if an avatar was widely recognised to represent someone real, then attacks on the avatar also extended to the real person.

Its avatar is a cartoon man standing in front of a wall of dollar bills.

He told the court: "I felt he was able to get away with a lot of his activities because he was almost like a Twitter avatar floating around with no real connection to the earth."

And Hanks himself, that paragon of niceness, has only become a bigger avatar of American identity.

As part of the VR fashion design process, Ms New draws over 3D avatars of her subjects in the digital space.