Online, the initialism 'IRL' stands for 'in real life', with the meaning 'not on the Internet'. On the Internet, 'real life' refers to life offline. 'What do you do in real life?' or 'Where do you live in real life?' 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. While this interpretation of real life stays within the bounds of the piece of media itself, it provides an opportunity for juxtaposition of the two worlds and their distinct characters.

'In real life, he has a British accent' or 'In real life, he lives in Los Angeles.'Ī common trope in media is to have characters from an existing fiction property visit 'the real world'. Similarly, the phrase can be used to distinguish an actor from a character, e.g.

As phrased by Gary Kelly, writing about the work, 'The phrase 'real life' strengthens 'original', excluding both the artificial and the fictional or imaginary.'

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. Fyodor Dostoyevsky, The Idiot (1868–69)

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