This paper explores the general landscape of virtual communities and reflects upon their relevance to their agent community counterparts. It examines several disparate virtual communities in order to identify common threads and characteristics, which underpin social cohesion. Herein we explore how concepts such as awareness, social presence and embodied state constitute key parameters in the derivation of social models of trust, reliance and dependence. In turn, social realism is introduced, and the extent to which this can form the basis of a social scaffolding for the support of effective agent communities is reflected upon. The concept of agent chameleons is characterized together with how the capability of metamorphosis influences (positively and negatively) agent community interaction and the construction of models of trust, respect and regard is considered. Such evolution and the ability of the agent to invoke this process are, we contest, the ultimate manifestations of autonomy.