Do you associate people with their avatars?

I'm a visual learner, so I associate people with their avatar and username but also assume that their personality and appearance lines up with their avatar, which could be (and is most often) completely incorrect. I mean, my avatar is a Salamence head but that doesn't mean that I'm a literal Salamence head!

Of course, I'll get super confused if someone changes their avatar but I'll get even more confused if someone changes their username. Username changes throw me off the most, for sure.

 

Definitely not, as I have a friend who as a Alolan Vulpix as his avatar, but he is more of a hyperactive Pokémon.

 

Not necessarily. Never judge a book by their cover, they say, but the avatar and usernames do give me some idea as to what that particular person is like. Sometimes my assumptions aren't entirely correct, so I tend to ask questions just to make sure.

This is why we have a QnA, isn't it?

 

I hate to say it, but I do that all the time.. I judge people based on their pictures for Instagram, Facebook, Lake Valor, pretty much everything.

 

All the time. That's why I myself almost never change avatars anymore. I likely won't be doing that here.

 

Yeah, although I know avatars change and it doesn't show a person's real personality, it happens
@Wings That's a Salamance?? >n< I've been seeing it as a GROUDON for a while @n@

 

XD It's definitely a Salamence! I went back and checked my avatar, just to see if it looked a little like Groudon. Your avatar is nice too by the way, I love N!

 

@Wings thanks. It was the red parts of Salamence's wings and neck, it looks like Groudon's head from a side view (Ruby box art). Granted it was always seen that way on my laptop, smaller screen.

 

Oh, I see it now! Well, Groudon is equally cool, so I don't mind

 

If I don't know the person all that well, then yes, their avatar will come to mind before their username. I'm pretty good at remembering names though, so avatar changes only confuse me for a little while.

 

Admittedly, I do have this odd tendency to assume people's genders based on their avatars.

 

i do but to a really odd extent of literally basing their whole personality off of that alone. glad to know im not the only one who does this though haha

 

I always associate people with their avatars, and usually give them a voice that I read all their posts in based on what their avatar looks like. There are some people on here who just seem to change their avatars CONSTANTLY which is so annoying. I guess it's because I'm bad at remembering faces in real life, but it's so confusing to me. Then there are people like @TheIllusionFox who just changes his avatar from a Zorua to a different Zorua which isn't so bad.

Oh my gosh and I was just wondering why I haven't seen @Wings around in a while. I didn't realize the avatar was different until just now! I was so used to Lunala! This is exactly what I mean. And even the voice I read your posts in is different now, Lunala and Salamence sound nothing alike! I think, weirdly enough, the different voices I associate with the avatars is what really confuses me when they change.

I thought Riolu was something more of a neutral gender character appearance-wise, but a lot of people assume I'm male for some reason. I guess because it's blue? Or maybe just the gender ratio for Riolu, even though females are still possible.

 

I cannot speak for everyone but mine is in fact me. Indeed I am a shiny Goomy who wears a top hat and monocle.

Until otherwise shown how someone looks I do associate them with their specific avatar however I do not think their avatar is how they actually look.

 

I'm a definitely a kawaii Mewtwo.

I do associate people with their avatar sometimes. Their avatar sort of gives me an idea of their aesthetic or some of the things they like while their posts give them personality and from there I kinda get an idea of what a person is like.

A lot of the time I remember members more by an icon they have or once had more than their actual username! But that's because I have more of a photographic memory.

 

I will, most of the time, associate people's avatars with their personality. The avatar kind of primes you into thinking a certain thing. I have taken the abstract of
Priming and human memory systems by Tulving and Schacter, 1990 to give a more detailed explanation.

Priming is a nonconscious form of human memory, which is concerned with perceptual identification of words and objects and which has only recently been recognized as separate from other forms of memory or memory systems. It is currently under intense experimental scrutiny. Evidence is converging for the proposition that priming is an expression of a perceptual representation system that operates at a pre-semantic level; it emerges early in development, and access to it lacks the kind of flexibility characteristic of other cognitive memory systems. Conceptual priming, however, seems to be based on the operations of semantic memory.

Reference: Tulving E, Schacter DL. 1990. Priming and human memory systems. Science. 47(4940)01-306.

 

In a way I kind of associate people more with their signature image than their avatar picture. Many users have their username easily visible in their signature bar, and its a lot more noticeable while reading down through a thread. Your eyes can go down through a thread and see message, signature, message, signature, repeat; while avatars are off to the side.

That was a big part of the reason I used to just make slight variations of the signature I used to have: the same trainer pic but with a different background, sidekick Pokémon, and Latin phrase. I wanted that consistency of preception. Maybe I'll see if I can recover the .pdn and make a new version of it. I like Poison lately, maybe I could replace Steelix/Duskull with Crobat? It's an idea.

 

All the time. Always.

Which means currently I am the most beautiful of us all

 

Seeing as I switch between Discord and LV a lot I have started to not associate people with their avi's anymore, seeing it changes so often.