Iris and the World

What I found interesting is that the flashy and cartoonish avatars that many of my classmates and I used were not so unique. There are at least 3 Meez, as many planet creations, a handful of south park and scott pilgrim characters, and other repeats I'm sure I haven't noticed. Strangely enough, the one that stuck out was the small avatar on Iris Rankin's blog, the picture of herself.

It's normal to see pictures of people on social networking sites... that's what they're there for. If you're anything like me, I dont want to see a cartoon character in a profile when I'm expecting to see a photo album. It just doesn't quite mesh with the exposure norm in facebook and the like. However, in anonymous forums or blogs it's still pretty uncommon to see someone's face next to their post.

I would assert that the partial reasoning as to why it is uncommon to see a face on blogs and forums is because we are conditioned to expect certain discourse in certain arenas. As Megan Farhat explains in her blog, drawing from Emily Apter's One Worldedness, Facebook's level of exposure requires a certain level of social tact in posts:

"Some people worry about how many friends they have or how good they look in their profile picture. Some other people may even strive to always have the cleverest statuses or things to say. It is in many ways a very narcissistic little society. It can make one feel paranoid in the sense that whatever they are putting out there is a representation of themselves to be interpreted by the unknown."

I would say that this is in large part due to the fact that we are forced to stand by our name and we come to expect this kind of behavior.

However, discourses that can maintain anonymity often do. I'm sure you've seen your fair share of "John54321"s in the comments section of youtube or your favorite blog, not uncommonly being purposely offensive. In that regard there are also many blogs that are purely anonymous, instead using names that sound almost like TV shows; "The Annoyed Librarian"; "Super Chef"; "Female Science Professor."

I again believe that this is because the purpose of these blogs is unique from social networking, in that they are often used as sounding boards for daily musings, aggravations, and the like, while not necessarily being what the author wants associated with his or her self. Of course this is not always the case, there are plenty of blogs with authors and pictures of themselves strewn throughout, but I would take a stab at guessing there are more blogs without pictures than with. Just look at some of the other students' sites.