Do you judge people on their avatars?

Or it could be that a person without an avatar is refusing to partake in the irony of using someone else's art to express their own identity and individuality.

 

In my perception, avatars do help me remember who a poster is. I am more likely to remember the avatar and then connect to the name than I am to just connect to a name. I am rather unlikely to connect someone who does not have an avatar to prior posts unless they have a distinct writing voice. Like others above, I too tend to think of people who have the default avatar as "new".


As for the contents of the avatar, I generally feel like a company logo, a basic image, or a simple picture of a person are all fairly equal on the Unity forums. I expect to see characters from cartoons, video games, and who knows what else as well, because people either identify with those characters or with the emotions those characters evoke.


On the other hand, I would expect someone who was posting purely as a representative of their company to stick with the company logo or a professional looking avatar, but that is because I tend to be conservative when it comes to thinking of "pure business". (I'm referring to someone who is here purely to represent their business, like the Speed Tree community manager who posted recently, not just someone who is a game or asset designer and also posting as part of their social interaction on the forum.) Someone like that having a random cartoon character for their avatar, for example, would not stop me from buying their product, but it would seem as odd to me as someone making a sales pitch to me while wearing a cartoon on their shirt instead of something at least more "office casual".


When I judge someone negatively by their avatar is when the avatar itself is offensive or obnoxious. I don't normally see that around the Unity forums, but I do see that other places. I react the same way if I see someone's forum name is offensive or obnoxious as well. It may be unwise to judge a book by its cover, but when you choose to create a "cover" for yourself that evokes negative emotions, you're pretty much asking to be ignored.


I also really dislike animated avatars. Those annoy the heck out of me and distract from attempting to read the text. I definitely won't take your posts seriously if you do that.



As for the avatar I chose here, it's a company logo, though technically from a fictional company. I designed it for an RPG I used to play. When I created my Unity account, for work-related reasons I had to create an identity unconnected from my normal internet personas, so I chose a name that was totally new to me, and later connected in an image out of a game I have fond memories of. If I ever actually release a game into the wild totally independently, I will probably use this avatar logo as a basis for my company logo.

 

BRONCOS!!!!

 

The whole point of avatars is to give people a visual point of reference. You can make quick judgements based on visual clues. Is someone male or female? What is their race? Are they trying to sell something? Are they trying to shock? Are they trying to give as little information as possible.

Ultimately this is not that great a reference, but it gives us a starting place. Same as nick names.

After a while you associate the picture with the type of content. I see a penguin or a dark haired women in front of a flag and I trust their experiance. A tetonic knight is the eager but inexperienced guy. A rat is the guy that constantly jumps on me every time I tell a beginner to use C#. The dragon lady works for unity. And so forth.

Sometimes these assumptions work out okay. Most people with scantily clad female avatars are single guys. Occasionally they fail spectacularly, I though for a long time a certain user was male because of constant references to working with the 'wife' in posts.

 

I did meet someone in real life who saw my avatar and they were disappointed that I did not have tattoos. Go figure.

My avatar is representative of a character I "played" while working on another game. She was the queen of a matriarchal race of forest people. One of the game followers made this for me. The name Teila comes from the same character.

I am not the queen of anything. I live in a subdivision rather than a forest, although I wish I lived in a forest. My name is not Teila.

I do not judge based on people's avatar unless it is insulting to others, crude, rude or otherwise disgusting. I love the ones like BoredMormon that show his child. Very sweet. Makes me think he must be a loving dad. So I guess I do judge but mostly on the side of good.

 

I like Avatar.

 

Life's too short not to have some fun with a avatar or nickname or two. I guess I am used to people having "handles" hanging out on irc for much of the 90's so it seems weird when someone online doesn't have a strange nickname or avatar even if they are total boring IT guy in real life(like me).

 

I just grabbed a random picture of some chick from Google. I hope she doesn't mind.

 

It helps you to differentiate users on forums. Regardless of how active they are it will be difficult to remember that user.

 

Is she? Gosh, that's so awesome

 

Actually, you are right, I change my mind

 

Not that Avatars are a big deal, or that you should judge a person entirely by it... but I think they tell you just a little bit about the person who's posting. I mean there's always a reason behind everything, including why a person choose certain avatar. Their personality could have something to do if they choose something funny, or something serious, or just random, or something personal, a real photo of themselves or just a cartoon, etc.

 

@Asvarduil,

Can I ask -
Can you change back to your Cat Space Marine avatar? it looks much better and feels like you.


EDIT: ignore. you changed your avatar back.

 

You can be original by growing your moustache upside down.

 

I can confirm that none of MK characters use Unity

 

I was in the shower 23 minutes ago. What happened to my avatar, exactly?

 

Hot and with pet dragons...

Which nation is this? I feel that dating opportunities in North America pale in comparison to this.

 

Westeros. I think it's in Sweden.

 

No I did not take this avatar because of this thread it was on my schedule for a long time now. It's kind of like the same problem when I'm in a supermarket while I'm craving something, no way on earth that I can make a choice what to take... Lucky for me the supermarkets in this country don't have too much choice

 

Darn it. And I thought I was getting somewhere with my plan to run your avatar through FBI facial recognition software. Back to square one.

 

I guess I must be terribly boring ;-) ... I do appreciate creative avatars and think it's kind of funny that the term is used for this purpose. Originally, Avatar kind of means star from an upper world ... female would be Avatara. They're really fairly rare so there's irony in almost every one having their own these days. And usually they'd rather not be used to create yet another religion but sometimes that does happen ;-)

I'm not aware of judging people by their avatar but I do notice that I like Avatar-Art and dislike when different people use the same picture

Oh, and on platforms like Twitter, Google+ or Ello or that other social network I very much appreciate people using the Unity logo as part of the image (or other logos if they're also interested in Bitcoin, for example) because that makes it a lot easier for me to figure out what the connection(s) is/are ;-)

 

All definitions I can find say it's an incarnation/manifestation of some deity. It seems the Sanskrit word avatara means exactly the same (-a ending not necessarily implying female in those languages, I guess).

(Dagon in my case)

Yes, zero that I've found

 

Amateur, I can't believe you don't have her adress yet...

 

I wish I could do that to my face.

I wish that voice actor got more work. He was very fitting for the awkward motion of that character.

 

All he has to do is ask. I've never been anything less than totally forthcoming with my answers. ahem.

 

Just give him Pizza Hut's address/phone number. It's what I do with the obviously-crazy girls, when it becomes clear that a getaway without traceability is needed.

 

I can say the same about Texas.

 

... There's some pretty parts....... somewhere...

 

Texas is said to be a madhouse, and Austin is outside the asylum.

 

I liked the people. A little too gun obsessed for my taste, but that goes for most of America.

As to pretty parts I found it too flat for my liking. Not having a visible horizon was disconcerting. While I don't like going up and down hills, apparently I need to know they are there.

 

Austin has most of the hilly parts, its kinda gorgeous out there. Some smaller towns near lakes can be hilly too.

But yeah its basically a pancake.

 

I actually do look like this.

If people think of me as a blue-haired, hat-wearing, moustache man, they will recognise me if they meet me.

 

Mine has a big smile. I hope people judge me accordingly. And yes, people judge you by your avatar, what you can't control is what they conclude when they see it. That's human nature.

Gigi

 

i dont have avatar, mean what?

 

Means you're a newb with no experience or commitment to the community. I would suggest getting an avatar. Its not hard to upload a photo or pinch a picture off of google.

 

It doesn't mean that. You're free not to have an avatar if you don't want one.

--Eric

 

It means you are a ninja or an old-school vampire. Neither can be photographed.

 

It means you're Edward Snowden.

 

Nah, he uses Citizenfour. Always. For everything. JK ;-)

 

No, I do not. Unless the avatar is particularly crappy-looking, or otherwise ugly/stupid, in which case I simply wonder why the poster is using such an avatar.

I judge people by the content of their posts. I remember posters mainly with the name, although the avatar sometimes helps me recall quicker.

If you feel that someone's lack of an avatar detracts from the quality of their contributions to a community, perhaps they are not the one who has an issue.

 

I hope not, or I wouldn't be very pretty.

But they are very useful to me, I have them on the topic list and easily identify some people from the community.

 

Of course not!

 

it kind of does though.

If someone really wants to make a statement about privacy or be anonymous, they could easily upload a blank image as their avatar, or even a picture of text "No Avatar"

to just leave it as default is a very strong implication that you haven't looked at the feature, and either don't care or aren;t aware of its existence.

 

No, not really.

It's just an indication that the user isn't really interested in avatars, which is fine. The only reason I have an avatar is because the new forum picked it up from Gravatar automatically. Otherwise I would continue to have no avatar like I did on the old forum.

--Eric

 

yeah i generally dont give a damn to have an avatar, its like whatever

eh, i wanna be a badass with this Unity majigger so i went badass lookin ..

 

I don't. But this thread made me upload an avatar...

 

That's what you want us to think... but secretly your avatar was the no avatar, avatar.

 

Aha, you're onto me...it was like the emperor's new clothes: my claim was that only the really cool people could see it.

--Eric