Real people and their avatars

Looks like a few city of heroes people in there.

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Is it bad that the first thing I notice about this project is that the opening entries are a fat, white kid and an Asian? I don't think he could have gotten any more stereotypical than that.

Interesting that the poor kid with the breathing mask has an avatar that also wears a full mask.

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Loose --> not tight.
Lose --> Did not win, misplace, cannot find, subtract.
One extra 'o' makes a big difference.

some of those were posted a long time ago, they had little bio things too. the mask guy's story was kind of cool, and the one woman is a korean music star. i do like how much coh is represented as a habitual brain picker, how people represent themselves when given a blank slate to do so always interest me, and when given a system with comparably fewer restrictions some people do some very interesting things to improve or alter the reality.

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Well actually, after waiting for all the images to load, they seemed like a pretty diverse lot to me. Which is good.

But in reference to Rian's musings about what appearance people choose. I choose robots and aliens, every time. What does that say about me? Tired of being human I think--misanthropically.

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"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them."

What does it mean if I try to make my toons look as close to me as I possibly can? Well aside from Knight Widow......... shes a hawt ninja assassin chick.......... haha.

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Psynder LVL 51 Fire/Fire/Scorpion Blaster
KnightWidow LVL 51 NightWidow
Shiver LVL 50 Ice X3 Dominator
Knight'Shade LVL 47 DP/Dark/NRG Corrupter
Currently Marking Out For: Chris Sabin, Player Dos, Daniel Bryan, Portia Perez, CM Punk

I can't make my avatar in coh fat enough.

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I like it. Someone should start a page like that for CoH players. I might contribute.

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@Joshua.

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The pics are a selection from the book Alter Ego: Avatars and their creators.

http://www.amazon.com/Alter-Ego-Avat...dp/1905712022/

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You have to wonder though how many of those "avatars" were chosen by the photographer and producers on the book. I personally have one toon that I tried to make look like me and I don't think it worked too well. Other than that I have a huge mix of characters. I purposely try to use a variety of races, sexes and species. Usually if I make a toon that is too similar to another I've had then it gets deleted pretty quickly. I don't know that I could ever have one toon that I would say is "me" in the internet/gaming world. I know others are different but that's just me.

That being said I still think this was a cool project. I work in the commercial photography field and love new ideas and concepts like this. I may even check out the book...

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On the subject of stereotypes--

Well, maybe they had a few pictures on that page that could have been dismissed as pandering to such stereotypes but I don't think that's fair. They had other photos of other people who seemed entirely ordinary or seemed as good proof of the diversity of the people who do play MMOs. That was the point, they wanted to show us diversity. Diversity means there are going to be some people in the photos who might seem, on naive viewing, to be just what the stereotype expects.

This was something I was rather surprised to learn myself a few years ago. I myself, based on my own biased experiences, was functioning under the delusion of similar stereotypes. I thought this hobby was mostly full of bored, male shut-ins. But people started tell me their stories.

I'm not really just talking about women doing this stuff. That one was never really that surprising to me either. My thinking in years past was, "Well yes, there are bored, female shut-ins too."

But what really surprised me was that people in bars--real bars!--do this stuff. People with actual social lives do this stuff. Gas station attendants, hardcore sports fans, even business owners do this stuff. People I wouldn't associate with the typical nerd subculture. People you may not expect do this stuff. And I think that's what this book was trying to get it.

So I guess this book detailing people in real life versus their favorite game avatars is trying to tell us that. We need to transcend the stereotypes, not merely the ones people impose on us but especially the ones we internalize. This hobby is now mainstream.

In real life, I'm your average, bald, bike-riding, middle aged white guy working in tech support and web design in Seattle. I make reasonable money. I pay taxes and rent my own apartment. I'm a functioning adult. I have a social life outside of this game. I have many other hobbies.

My life is certainly not awful enough that I need to escape reality to stay sane. My real life is actually just fine, but we all need a little Walter Mitty moment every once and a while, right? Ain't nothing wrong that. People have to have hobbies, this one is one mine.

So here is one person defying stereotypes and I know all of you out there are defying the stereotypes too. Extra power to you!

Anyway enough insomnia driven pontificating. Have fun!

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"Civilization advances by extending the number of important operations which we can perform without thinking of them."