And Ye Shall Know Me by Thine Avatar (or not . . .)
This maybe off topic of the readings, but I reckon the board will eventually become a free-for-all of new media stuff, and I’m simply fascinating by something. Born sometime before the death of disco and old enough to have bought an original Atari and Commodore 64 off the shelves (or, at least, by parents did for me), I’ve lead a fairly tech-heavy existence. And with a long history of fan boy/geekdom I’ve been in my fair share of internet bulletin boards and community posty-type places.
And here’s another one that we’re all in, the official New Media class board. And one of my favorite initial observations in a place like this is to see the avatar pictures that people choose to accompany their posts. Here’s the interesting part to me (and the reason for setting the history), in all the bulletin board, drupal, fan-site type places I’ve ever been part of, I’ve never seen people use an actual picture of themselves for their avatar. Never! Never ever. Really. Until now, as there are a few people in this group doing so.
Now, my point is not to call these people out or criticize, far from it (not to mention that being a really dumb thing to criticize), cause there are obviously no universal rules in matters like these. I just find it fascinating, because from my point-of-view history it stood out like a sore thumb and really struck me. I have no grand point, no assertion, I just find it interesting.
Although I lack a point, I am fascinating by the concept of online avatars, so this is related to new media, and if anyone wants to bite, there is now this thread to discuss such matters if anyone’s interested.
Sidenote: one semi-exception. Last semester a female student used a picture of someone else in the class as their avatar (a male) on the course bulletin board (visual rhetoric, a few of you will know what I’m talking about). Now that was fascinating. The first thing I’d see was the picture. And since he was in the class, my mind would get to thinking they were his words. But they weren’t his words, they were hers. Even though I knew what was going on, I’d still get thrown every single time I read one of her posts.
Comments
I wanna be spiderman!
I hope that the course site becomes a place for all things New Media! I personally always choose an avatar that reflects me in some way. Damn! I wish I had the Spiderman avatar now! My avatar is sitting a room that looks much like my game room and the only other option for gaming was to make your avatar stand with a handheld machine. And while I have an assortment of handheld machines I am a bit too lazy to stand for that long so I went with computer gaming.
As for using a real picture of myself...I hate taking pictures so I would like to avoid that at all costs! ;-P
Who the hell is Spiderman?
How could I not comment on your (non)point, Mark, given that I'm one of the people using an actual picture of myself. Could you say seeing a picture of an actual person made your spidey senses tingle or was it just me?
While I was reading your post, I had to ask myself why I chose to post an image of myself rather than an image of something else. I think one thing people do is use their avatars to construct an online identity that captures who they want to be or rather a certain characteristic of themselves. It doesn't even have to be an image. A relative of mine who loves heavy metal, horror movies, and dungeons and dragons always uses the id deth3327. That's how people shall know him. and i suppose it may say more about him than "mike."
By that logic, I'm probably just a narcissist. But I would also argue that folks could select (see manovich) an avatar from a preconstructed list long before they could import images. In addition, once you could import images, it was still much easier to rip one from google rather than photographing, importing, cropping, and uploading an image of oneself.
Now, even that's changing. My laptop has a built in camera and a simple image editing program that makes it just as easy to use my own photo. Like we discussed last week, the technology has collapsed the time from conception (not the process of becoming pregnant involving fertilization or implantation) to publication.
Finally, I also use pictures to get to know my students names. If we didn't have the actual meeting space and time (i.e. this course existed only online) I might actually be less inclined to use my own. I often try to figure out who is saying what on a bulletin board by looking at their login ids. The avatars don't help because their significance is often only apparent to the person who chose it.
And a Fetching Picture of You Too!
The whole time I was writing this post, I was thinking "Tom Sura is going to think I'm calling him out . . . and then I might have to face his wrath." Your linking of avatar choice partially to ease of accomplishment is really interesting, I'd never considered it that way before (but don't tell the kids there was a time when you couldn't upload things to the net . . . it might blow their minds). Not having one of those fancy built in cameras in my laptop, the idea that actually using a photo of ones self can be accomplished quite quickly never crossed my mind either.
I agree that using actual photos of yourself can be very useful on a 106 bulliten board or in a situation where you want people to get to know each other. However, I'm not sure I could ever personally mandate that choice, cause I'd feel like I was robbing them of avatar play (for lack of a better term). The only place I disagree is the idea that avatars only have significance to the people who chose them. They do, of course, and part of what's interesting is imagining what someone means to signify by their choice. However, in the process of pondering what someone means by their avatar choice, you will make assumptions, pontifications, and likely settle on some kind of idea. The idea you settle on may not match exactly what the avatar chooser meant, but that doesn't mean you haven't given it legitimate significance. To say otherwise is akin to suggesting only Hemingway could ever tell us what The Old Man and the Sea is really about.
The Hoff says...
Mark,
In Minority Rhetorics, I used the only good picture in the world that exists of me as my avatar and at least five or six people commented on it. I didn't have a lot of experience with avatars, so I was perplexed. Why would people use anything other than themselves to represent themselves on the community board? Now that I'm more accustomed to using avatars, you'll notice that I do not, in fact, have a real picture of myself as my avatar. I can't really explain the change, although I sense it would be a pretty interesting thing to analyze the crap out of. I also have used H. Allen Brizee's smiling face as my avatar, but never since my first experience with Minority Rhetorics have I used my own face.
For bulletin boards like this one, I'm wondering if part of it is that no one wants to be accused of taking either him/herself or the bulletin board too seriously. It's the same reason why I would feel awkward using the same formal language in my blog posts that I use in my response papers. Importantly, it isn't just that I feel I can write more informally in these posts, but that I feel I actually should write less formally than I do in papers. Similarly, a traditional picture of myself grinning at the camera would feel too stiff, too formal for this type of venue. My avatar, a bare-chested David Hasselhoff, reveals that I'm coming to the community bulletin board with a sense of playfulness. Of course, this is also a defensive move: if my posts sound dumb, I misspell something (perhaps misspell? I can never remember how many s's are in it...), or I get confused about the reading, it's not because I'm incapable of academic writing or thinking, but because this is a more relaxed venue and I'm really just having a conversation here, just putting stuff out there, playing with ideas, rather than laying down any formal academic arguments.
As for the gender issue in avatars, I'm wondering again how it relates to humor. Both of the joke avatars that I've used (the Hoff or a goofy picture of Allen) are men. Of course, we could construct all sorts of theories about women taking on a male identify to feel more comfortable in the blog setting, and I think many of those theories could be valid. However, when we consider that many avatars are used to create the playfulness that I talked about above, I wonder if women's choice of male avatars has to do with the role gender plays in humor. In other words, when people choose avatars for boards like this one, they're often trying to be funny. And it's often easier to be accepted as funny if you're a dude.
Jaci
Thanks
Nothing to add Jaci, just thought this was a really interesting and insightful reply. Cool!