Seriously thoughtful Do avatar images influence your impression of personality?

[Sweetpea]

Originally Posted by Steve Jordan

Now, if I still happened to go by a nickname as I had in the past, I could see using that as a pseudonym and avatar. (On the other hand, "!*@!^#&$&@!! Why can't you fix dinner once in a while!?!!" might seem a bit long for a pseudonym...)

I'd rather not use the nicknames I was given in my youth...

And I chose this name for my hotmal address (it's a bit longer than Sweetpea though!) because my real name is way too short and easily spammable (I have an email address with my real name and I used to get spammed so much that I threw away about every single post I got until they installed an improved spamfilter. I never get spammed on my hotmail address)

[Ea]

Originally Posted by Katti's Cat

But I don't judge the person behind them based on name & avatar - unless it is very offensive and rude.

'Judging' doesn't necessarily mean something negative, it's forming an opinion. I would assume you do form an opinion of people

[Katti's Cat]

Originally Posted by Ea

'Judging' doesn't necessarily mean something negative, it's forming an opinion. I would assume you do form an opinion of people

Not really - I judge people by what they have to say and how they say it. Maybe because I have travelled so much in so many different places that I am a very unjudgmental person. Doesn't make me a better person.

Some have called me even names because of that. And not always nice ones.

But I have been in some nasty situations where help and support came from the most unlikely people and places. And also the other way round: people I thought where nice & trustworthy didn't turn out to be either.

[WT Sharpe]

Originally Posted by kennyc

... I prefer people use their real names so automatically discount any postings made under an assumed name. ...

Time to come clean. My real name is KarnakTheDestroyer0549.

Happy, now?

[jgaiser]

Originally Posted by Sweetpea

I generally use a cat avatar. And this cat was so easy to make pictures from! He was always asleep. He passed away 1.5 years ago.

I too use this cat avatar on a number of boards. My old man Jake passed away two years ago at the age of 17. One lucky shot.

And I also seem to see avatars before I see screen names. Love all the great ones on this board.

[Ea]

Originally Posted by Katti's Cat

Not really - I judge people by what they have to say and how they say it. Maybe because I have travelled so much in so many different places that I am a very unjudgmental person. Doesn't make me a better person.

You originally implied that all judging was negative - but I would say you can certainly judge both positively and negatively.

[Katti's Cat]

Originally Posted by Ea

You originally implied that all judging was negative - but I would say you can certainly judge both positively and negatively.

Sorry - must have been my tired brain. I didn't mean that judging is only negative.

But if the name is offensive and rude, then yes I probably would have a negative impression :-( maybe I do judge people by their avatars after all.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by WT Sharpe

Time to come clean. My real name is KarnakTheDestroyer0549.

Happy, now?

I knew it! I just knew it!!

[Elfwreck]

Originally Posted by kennyc

Yes avatars and pseudonyms. Some use the avatar to push their agenda -- those bother me. I also hate animated avatars because they are so distracting as I'm trying to read. I prefer people use their real names so automatically discount any postings made under an assumed name.

I don't mind animated avatars if they're not obnoxious. (My default LJ/IJ/DW icon is animated.) I don't care about "real names" vs user names, just about some level of integrity.

I'm elfwreck everywhere I am online (and so is my husband; elfwreck is an acronym of our legal names), except for Dreamwidth, where I'm just elf. There are forums I'm on where it's not safe to use my legal name; we don't live in a discrimination-free society, and it's never a good idea to talk about kids & family details freely with strangers. Having a username lets me put a layer of privacy between the web and my in-person life. Using the same username across multiple sites lets me establish some accountability.

I'm used to forums where people have non-legal usernames, and avatars are part of how they choose to identify themselves. I tend to think of them as comparable to "clothes"--not an essential part of the person, but which ones they choose do say something about how they want to be perceived, and what kinds of reactions they want.

Because of long experience with LiveJournal, I tend to assume everyone is female unless their username or chosen icon strongly indicates otherwise.

[kennyc]

Originally Posted by Elfwreck

...

Because of long experience with LiveJournal, I tend to assume everyone is female unless their username or chosen icon strongly indicates otherwise.

Okay, so just to be perfectly clear. I AM NOT female.

[pshrynk]

I tend to change avatars a lot, mostly when I'm doing a story in the Writer's Corner or when I try something zany in the llounge. For a while, i was all pandas, which where the pandalol () comes from. Then llamas, which is where the llounge spelling comes from. The thing about avatars that I like in changing them, is that they puctuate the mood I am playing with.

As for my name, Isaac Asimov wrote some stories about his home life in which he tagged his wife, a psychologist as a pshrink. As an homage, when I was on Compuserve SF SIG, I came up with pshrynk, since I'm a psychiatrist and there had to be some difference there. It has been my handle since around 1989.

As for my real identitiy, anyone with a few moments to waste can look up all the pshrynks in La Crosse and make a pretty good guess at that...

[Sparrow]

Original post removed - forgot it was a Thoughtful thread.

[polyfragmentiert]

Interesting thread, this.

I definitely get a certain impression from some avatars. This might include gender, too. For some weird reason cat pictures unconsciously make me assume the user is female. This thread proved my unconscious wrong already, haha.

I have to say that it's not only the visual representation which creates the outline of a user for me here, it's both the avatar and what the person writes. Sometimes it fits perfectly, sometimes there seems to be a certain divergence.

As far as my own avatar goes, I started out here a short while ago using a drawn version of my portrait. Then I got me this Munchkin expansion (it's a funny satirical card game) called "Munchkin Cthulhu". I scanned through the cards and instantly fell in love with Lloyd Lloigor - which is my current avatar. I don't think it represents any character traits.. my tongue isn't that long either! In this particular case, it reflects what I like at the moment and I hope others might find the drawing as cute as I do.

[GraceKrispy]

Gracekrispy is a nickname I had once. I tend not to mention any other names of my family on boards bc it's a small world and if you know generally where I am and what I do.... Well, I don't trust a ton of people. My real first name is in my user name, but that's as far as I'm going.

I change avatars like I change clothes-- fairly frequently . It's always a penguin, just like it's always me in my clothes. That's enough consistency for me. On my other board, I change to random (sometimes wild) avatars, but my name is well-known there, so it's all ok.

My name is a constant, but my "appearance" (avatar) does change.

[Stitchawl]

Using your real name on a public forum is fine... right up to the point where a couple of cyber-stalkers latch on to it and make thousands of posts in your name, make websites in your name, and follow you around the Internet corrupting everything you say in every group you say it in.

I've seen two very nice, very helpful people, both National Geographic photographers, hounded off Internet photography forums (one was the author of the "NatGeo Guidebook to Photography") by these crazies. It was a loss to all photographers in those forums, and now there are hundreds of posts about these people filled with false information that, because of the shear volumes posted by the stalkers, shows up on the first page of a Google search when you type in their names. Reputations ruined!

Another fellow, an ophthalmologist from the US had so much personal information publicly posted about him by cyber-stalkers (including his tax returns, employment history, college grades, military and police records, fake newspaper articles, etc.,) that the HMO that employed him let him go because they didn't want the publicity, his wife left him, and he finally committed suicide!Nothing could be done to stop the stalkers as they were posting behind double-blind anonymous ISPs.

I'm just one person but I've already personally seen the very serious effects on three different people, and the not-so-serious effects on dozens of others who have been hounded off Usenet sites. I have a feeling that most folks have experienced Usenet at some point, which is why many of us here now prefer moderated groups.

$50 to an Internet Net Detective site will get you all that information in a few days, and anyone with the $50 can have it... about you. After going through all the legal channels, I've discovered that there is no way to stop this sort of action. Unless you can prove that a particular person was actually sitting at the keyboard at the time of the posting, there is no way (according to the FBI and the various Internet protection groups,) of getting any legal action to stop these people. Look at what is involved in getting illegally used copyrighted material removed from a free hosting site like Tripod. It's almost an impossibility to get Google to remove slanderous material, even if you're the president of a country! Facebook? Blogs?

Use your own name with care. Being stalked is not fun.


Stitchawl