What Does Your Avatar Mean? Solving The Userpic Code - Society

Anonymity is one of the features of online communication. In real life, it is impossible to hide behind a mask, introduce yourself by another name, unless you are participating in the carnival. Nobody knows who is hiding behind the nickname "Naughty Girl". It may well be a modest retiree or even a brutal rocker. Each avatar owner seeks to fill it with his own content, often understandable to him alone. But is everything so mysterious in the virtual world? Or can you guess by the avatar what your counterpart is hiding?

What prevents us from simply using our real name and photo on the Internet? Why do we prefer to hide from other users behind an avatar?

• We are so defending ourselves. From trolling, moral damage - how our primitive ancestors with the help of masks protected themselves from dark otherworldly forces.
• We "sell" ourselves to society. We are trying to introduce ourselves in the best possible way for completely different purposes: from direct advertising of our activities to the desire to find a life partner. We try to reveal the best features, show the depth of personality, abilities, skills and hide what we don't like about ourselves.
• We can safely realize aggression for ourselves - troll, swear and take out anger, without fear of being recognized.

An avatar (or userpic) is a carnival mask that helps to keep your personality intact, to be what you have never been, to give free rein to your most secret desires, without fear of consequences. That is why anonymous Internet communication is a territory of deception, because no one seeks to reflect in their virtual personality such qualities as bitchiness, irascibility, excessive suspiciousness and everything else that prevents us from enjoying life.

However, there is good news. Avatars are usually not taken from the ceiling, but reflect some aspects of their owner's life. They are often so secret that he himself may not be aware of them. So you can still learn something about a person from microscopic pictures? Can. If you take them as indirect, paradoxical messages.

Avatar (avatar, userpic) comes from the Indian word "avatar". According to the encyclopedic dictionary of Brockhaus and Efron (published 1890-1907), translated from Sanskrit it means "descent". In modern usage, this word appeared in the mid-1980s, when computer game developers began to use it to refer to heroes. With the advent of Internet forums, the word "avatar" began to be used to mean the "embodiment" of real people in the Internet environment

Here are one and a half dozen common images for avatars on the Web. What can they tell us about their owners? Attention! Everything that you read below is the solely personal opinion of the author, which he does not impose on anyone.

• Kitties: Perhaps the owner of such an avatar feels inner loneliness and the need for care.
• Dogs: The need to care for others, by the way, is often also linked to a strong sense of loneliness.
• Angry animals: the perception of the world as an aggressive environment and the need to defend against it, sometimes deeply hidden.
• Cartoon characters can talk about the excessive, often forced seriousness that the inner child suffers from if he is not allowed to get creative, relax and just play.
• Anime: Narcissistic Search for the Ideal. The personal message of such a person is “this world is imperfect”. This, by the way, often includes members of depressive and suicidal adolescent communities.
• Own children's, youthful photographs can speak of a deep rejection of oneself, which is expressed in a refusal to accept one's true age.
• Strange or unpleasant characters - the Joker, Darth Vader, the Green Goblin, the captain of the Flying Dutchman Davey Jones - most likely say that a teenager or a person stuck in adolescence is hiding behind the avatar. With all that it implies: resentment against the injustice of the world, harsh judgments, narcissism and teenage rebellion.
• Military: it is quite possible that this is a military man or a former military man. If not, then most likely this is a person who has clearly understood what a "real man" should do.
• Superheroes: striving to protect the weak and at the same time often giving up their own interests, desires, needs.
• USSR symbols: be careful! Perhaps before you is a person who loves to “fight with the TV” and refuses responsibility for his life.
• Children's plush toys, dolls often testify to spiritual subtlety, vulnerability, the search for aesthetics in everyday life (sometimes even where there is none).
• Celebrities (Einstein, Kirkorov, etc.): obviously - fans, fans. Not so obvious - inadequately high expectations from oneself.
• Heroes of widespread plots known to the whole world: "Beauty and the Beast", "The Little Mermaid", "Snow White and the Dwarfs", "Star Wars", etc. Well, this is the simplest thing! As in folklore: one character reflects one character trait. Therefore, we watch a movie and read such an avatar, like a book.
• Your own studio photo session or a photo of your body parts can say that a person is looking for (often an ideal partner). But that doesn't necessarily mean he is ready for a more personal relationship with an internet partner.
• The absence of a photograph or picture may indicate secrecy as a character trait. But provocativeness, misanthropy, manipulativeness are not excluded. "I use you all - I recognize you, but I won't show myself."

You shouldn't bother too much about solving avatars, because they are just messages that their owners want to convey to us. What they want to tell us, and not what we can see in a real meeting. The part of the personality reflected in the avatar, although its owner has it, may not be its leading feature. And sometimes it is even difficult to find it, since it hardly manifests itself in reality at all.