mini meta fest: userpics

[isiscolo]

Originally I wasn't going to participate in

Comments

[mswalter]

Huh. I never thought of myself as an oddball when it comes to userpic choices, but I totally am! I have three primary online presences: LJ (which I guess I'd call my fannish presence, though I don't really post fannish stuff much anymore so I don't think of it that way); Facebook; and a triathlon website. At the tri website I use a picture of myself from a race -- and you're right, that's the standard there, just like with RW

[isiscolo]

I didn't actually divide "representations of self" by gender, and I would have classified yours (a cartoony pictures with username, uniquely used by you) as "representation of self" as opposed to "other, opposite" (if you had posted while I was gathering data, which I totally don't remember if you did). I don't think anybody else who I noticed uses an opposite gendered representation, though (although many use actual people/actors who are of opposite gender as default icons). I counted text icons of usernames as "representation of self," for example, which are totally ungendered.

And, I would only have been discomfited if I had encountered you in nonfannish context (and even though our interactions have been nonfannish, this journal is a fannish context for me).

I kind of think of you as being the equal and opposite of mrs260, who always has to explain that he is a guy.

[keerawa]

So is my icon a 'representation of self', or would you count it as an 'other animal'? Enquiring minds want to know.

Other than that, your observations agree with what I've seen.

[isiscolo]

I don't remember what I chose if yours was one of the postings I counted (I did this a couple of weeks ago and only now have got around to writing it up). I suspect I chose 'other animal' because it's not so much a portrait as it is a picture, if you know what I mean.

[lamentables]

All my icons everywhere are self-portraits. All of them show my feet. That was never planned.

I hate the practice of having a large number of icons and changing them from post to post, because my visual brain identifies users by pictures first (and then text, but only if I'm confused). My biggest confusion occurs when more than one user habitually uses the same icon.

[lamentables]

Yup, been there, done that.

[isiscolo]

I consider your feet to be a representation of self, rather than self, because they are you but not a shot recognizable to those who know you (other than perhaps abrinsky)

And oh, yes, I agree with your last point - but I decided that I have mentioned it enough and it seems so obvious that I chose to write something else about icons, instead. I won't use shared icons for this reason.

I do have a bazillion icons but I almost never use most of them for posting, just for commenting.

[isiscolo]

Oddly, I think I classified Asterix as "other, opposite" but the Count as "representation of self." I think it's because I recognize Asterix (and know he is not you) but the Count is just a Count, who I associate with you.

Which points up the extremely arbitrary nature of this analysis, I guess. What means "me" to one person might not mean "me" to someone else (as see

[starfishchick]

On FB, my user pic is me.

On LJ, it rarely is. (Though I do have one real photograph of myself and one cartoonified version of me.)

But my icons are mostly fandom-related, and probably mostly men. Hmmm.

[isiscolo]

I had been operating under the assumption that most people on my fandom flist had mostly fandom-related icons of men. I was surprised that this was less of an overwhelming majority than I had expected.