Matters much more for strangers. It wears down over time and doesn't really matter all that much anymore with familiarisation. That's in-person. Fortunately with the internet and blockchain stuff happening now, the playing field is better right now, which reminds me of an excerpt:-

In the Information Society, no one who is truly able will be detained by the ill-formed opinions of others. It will not matter what most of the people on earth might think of your race, your looks, your age, your sexual proclivities, or the way you wear your hair. In the cybereconomy, they will never see you. The ugly, the fat, the old, the disabled will vie with the young and beautiful on equal terms in utterly color-blind anonymity on the new frontiers of cyberspace.