Why did you set an avatar for your profile?

I still have yet to see any of these avatars you guys are talking about. 🤷🏻‍♂️
- Do you use Voyager? Or perhaps another client? Nothing about the user profile is surfaced in Voyager. You have to go to the native webview and open a user's profile to see all that. I set a brief bio there, but until it's exposed in my primary client I don't really see any reason to worry about all that.
  I do sometimes check on nsfw boards so can flag users as OF creators vs. amateurs because I have more appreciation for folks doing that for fun than as a hustle. Other than that, it's too much hassle to go checking everyone's profile when maybe 10% of people set anything at all.
  
  I wish voyager showed profile pics
  
  I use Boost, I figure it's a similar situation.
- Tesseract and other clients kinda do:

So that everyone on the internet can know I am a dog.
- Sup dog

Because I'm not an anonymous person. This is my default username for most of my public stuff, and it's how friends and family find me online. I try to be genuine online; I don't care to hide behind an anonymous profile.
I firmly believe in being a decent, respectable person toward everyone, even when I'm anonymous and don't need to be. Every time I've created an anonymous account, it's just ended up turning into my regular public profile, so why hide under a different username?
The profile pic just helps me stand out a bit more for others who know me here, and friends/family trying to find me. I regularly write video game reviews to post to !games@lemmy.world, so it helps me to be more recognized in the wild. My profile pic is my semi-anonymous profile pic that I use on other platforms when I don't want to broadcast my face to everyone.

I just think it's cute lol

iirc @Instantnudel@feddit.org bullied me into it.
- Und womit? MIT RECHT!

Why not? The avatar feature is there to be used, and it's not like I'm giving out my personal address.

I come from the forum era and old habits die hard

- Yeah. You can get a lil picture next to your name

ImageAI had a fun post where you input your username as a prompt and see what comes of it. Tadaa, perfect profile picture
- We should totally do that again. Fun for the people generating them with different LLMs, fun to see the crazy stuff that shows up, and some people wind up with an avatar that they like.
  @Thelsim@sh.itjust.works
  I remember that "blank face" image being generated, too.
  Also an interesting way to compare different LLMs, because you can see what they're spitting out for the same input.
  EDIT: Found that thread:
  https://sh.itjust.works/post/7955084
  The intent wasn't originally to generate avatars, but some people did wind up using it as their avatar.
  
  I remember that post! I had a lot of fun generating people's usernames :)
  I guess we can always do another one?

I liked the avatar. That's about it.
I prefer posters with avatars, personally.
- Which came first, your username or your avatar?
  
  Username came first.

In comment sections or in community pages, it's mostly an ocean of default avatars.
When I joined it seemed like most people had an avatar. I have used this one for years, so why not?
I also like recognizing other Lemmings. Username is alright for that, but the image helps even more. It makes it feel like a small community from the internet of old (forums).

It's an ornithological avatar. I'm trying to raise mass awareness of a certain avian variety.

because you reminded me

There's no compelling reason not to, but to each their own. I'm not judging either way.
But I'm not reusing the same avatar image on multiple platforms either.

AI garbage drawings were pretty much brand new when I set up my account. So I figured, sure, a lemming astronaut would be fun. And I liked it so I kept it.
As a Reddit refugee (API debacle), I liked not having the same cheesy avatar as everyone else.
- Same. There was a thread prompting users to generate AI images of their username, and I liked the result.

It makes my username make more sense. Plus, you made this one for me, so there's that. Plus plus, I'm not here to be "anonymous".
I also prefer dealing with people who have images. I dunno, it's just like putting a "face" to the words.
- It makes my username make more sense
  Of all the times not to just respond That's a stupid question!
- I consider this one to be my public/serious account, so, eh why not, it adds a face, a personnality. And I think I look cute on it. Due to the origin of my nickname, it's realllly not that hard to find out who I am. Facebook ruined the anonymity aspect a decade ago, so I just live with it. And it's a little bit more recognizable than just the username. For anonymity I have alts.
  It has some downsides though, like people telling me I look like I got my dick chopped off. I'm cis, my dick is perfectly intact. Come on guys it's just hair dye lol.

I joined after Reddit’s API changes with that site’s willful negligence of its bot infestation on my mind. If the bar for “this account looks like a human” is raised by human users individualizing themselves more, then that requires more effort on bot makers to disguise their bots as people. Accounts look less bot-like with personalities, particularly those which are neither stereotypically normal nor a caricature of a few base traits. With my “The Son of Man” profile picture, as well as my profile description that is all three of esoteric, farcical, and personal, I wanted to be just the right amount of weird while also subtly (and perhaps subconsciously) commentating on the potentiality of Lemmy eventually falling victim to bot plagues as it grows. Despite all of this, I’ve since come across another user with the same profile picture (with a different level of zoom) who also happened to have the same cake day.

Completely forgot there are profile avatars on Lemmy. BRB, gotta hop on my desktop to see if I have one set up. Cannot find any settings about it in Voyager ( probably didn't look hard enough or my eyes glossed over it ).
Edit: editing on my browser and I have my favorite Tiny Toons character as my profile avatar. All is good. I don't have many images I use as profile avatars, so Dizzy Devil Ducky it was. At least that;s what I imagine was going through my head.

I didn't realize its a lesser used feature. There was probably generic auto-assigned pfp and I dont like those.

Easier to quickly distinguish between users with different-colored indicators for different users. There isn't built-in functionality to do that. If there was, I wouldn't have.

I use the same avatar in every network I'm in. Is kinda my internet persona, although is not "me", its has his own name and everything, Dusk.

It amused me.

I always put an avatar where I can. It gives me a sense of individuality in a sea of unknowns.

I paid for mine on r/hungryartists - I think it's a cool drawing & I am happy with it.
That was a very, very long time ago of course.

Because ^

When I first signed up for Lemmy I was just curious to check out how that feature worked (after I found it while browsing through the profile settings to see what was there).

I like this place, plus it’s a small enough platform that I thought seeing my comments with a “blank” avi probably gets annoying after a while ¯(ツ)/¯

It woofs sadly

I like spaceships...

I find it easier to follow a thread if I can quickly tell who is saying what. I usually don't remember the usernames so a picture helps there. It's not a necessity of course

No reason in particular, i like mad Tom O'bedlam and his god of cities from the invisibles comic based on the 17th century poem/song

There'd be no point in drawing myself an avatar if I wasn't going to use it

I don't know who has avatars as I'm on Voyager and can't see them 🤔

i like cat
- And I like owl.
  
  c:

I didn't. So there.

I’m used to having an avatar of some kind. Plus I think it looks good.

Avatar ? The blue people ? The bald kid ?

I just thought it looked nice? I don't feel like the little icon stands out. I honestly don't notice icons to be fair.

All my public facing socials have avatars

I want to encourage people to talk to me, I wanna make new friends online, also, I have some little info in my profile page

Because it's Mimi. She's awesome

it's my artwork that I made in krita. I have been meaning to post some more on lemmy at some point...
I have art up here if you're interested in seeing more before i post it on lemmy.

It's cute and funny, and I like my lil guy. (:

Wait, there are default avatars? Who has a default avatar? How do I tell them apart?
Anyway, in my case, I'm this random you know, and since my account is Mothra I figured the avatar should reflect that

Because I am so pretty?

I use connect. When I pulled open the sideboard thing I saw a blank space for an avatar so I put in the one I use with this username. I only see it when I open the sideboard though so it's for me, I guess.

its fun