Ask Lemmy

I forgot.

Avatars are a psychological trick useful for building up sunk cost fallacy and making a user more likely to personally identify with a product. I don't have social media avatars for the same reason I don't have "nabisco" tattooed on my asscheek.

why would I set a custom avatar?

When I first set up my account I could not find where to add an avatar (I didn't really look that hard) I figured I would get back to it later and only remembered about it from this post.

I find both avatars and display names annoying and distracting. If they're enabled by default, I turn them off.

because it doesn't matter at all

On Voyager I can't even see avatars or custom usernames

I don't see avatars in my app and I don't really care to. Never had them in early reddit and that's what I'm trying to replicate.

Even though I tend to comment somewhat frequently, I prefer to be just "another voice in the crowd" I don't really want to be more easily recognized lol

There are avatars?

Lemmy has avatars?

My reader doesn't even show avatars

My what?

Almost every app for Lemmy I have tried does not even have them visible by default and require you to manually turn them on. If their only experience is using an app, they might not even know you can have an avatar.

Lemmy is a place I prefer to be as anonymous as I can while still participating so I don’t set one for myself and I use voyager the vast majority of the time so I don’t see anyone else’s. I personally don’t find profile pictures/avatars add anything to the experience for me.

In voyager your can’t see avatars. A lot of people use voyager.

I think many use apps that don't show avatars. I usually browse lemmy with Eternity and sometimes forget they even exist.

I don't care about mine or anybody elses avatar, also profiles with avatar usually are: selling something (OF) or company profiles or bot accounts, so any account with an avatar is kinda sus to me.

One of the harsh lessons in software is learning that users sometimes have different wants and expectations than the developer. Gold-plating is a constant temptation, and it usually leads to frustration and resentment.

At the end of the day, if 60-70% of people don't care, either do it for the 30-40%, or do it for your own enjoyment, or put your efforts elsewhere. In any case, don't fall into a pit of resentment just because lots of users are approaching a platform differently than you.

Why do you bother with an avatar for your Lemmy account?

I think this platform is less about people and more about commenting. That's also why we can't even subscribe to people on Lemmy, just communities. So naturally, your profile ends up being less important. And I have close to no incentive to care about avatars. This place is more or less just about the text content and the links. And I don't even want my real face to show up next to my stupid comments.

I mean developers add avatar to all kinds of things, whether that's useful or not. I myself don't need one in Spotify or the fitness tracker app or my computer user account. They're there nonetheless, and once you implement them, you have to deal with the UX representation. I think some users like to customize stuff so it get's implemented. But it might be meaningless to most of us.

There are avatars?

We can set avatars for profiles? I don't even see avatars.

Most clients dont show them

Because it's stupid and pointless

Avatars aren't info. They just clutter the screen. They very, very rarely are interesting. At worst, they show something inappropriate. They require moderation. They don't match any aesthetic of the site.

I literally didn't know they were supported and never see them anyway.

I didn't even know there were user avatars. Most common apps don't show them.

Because I don't care about it and it makes no difference. They only show in your profile and I don't look at my profile. The only people that do look at your profile are the people going there to try and find something to use against you.

Neither the apps I've used or the web-end I use on my PC seems to make use of avatars at all.

I'd set one if there was a point, but there isn't.

I don't care enough

I would first need a personality to express.

Heck, I was salty when the old site added avatars. I already ignored names and was weirded out by "popular redditors" culture before avatars, and it was annoying to see a logo next to a name coloring my perception of the comment. I'm here to read comments, not to look at avatars

I disable avatar display on all my clients. Reddit and it's siblings like Lemmy have historically been less person-focused than other websites, and many of us like to keep it that way. While it can be neat to recognise people, I only need their user handle to do so and I only check if necessary. It's nice to take a comment at it's value without regard for who said it. Reddit's push towards personifying their users is part of why I left.

I hid them to keep the comment section clean looking