Membership How do you feel about people using their own pictures for OOC avatars?

[Kaycakes 78]

I feel ambivalent about it? There's pros and cons to it, but I don't feel funny or weirded out by people using their pictures for an OOC avatar. 

RP isn't some big secret I harbour. I'm not releasing any other information besides my face there along with my alias or nickname. Sometimes I will, but showing my face doesn't always mean I will share much more information. I'm not looking to be totally anonymous or secretive, nor am I looking to attach myself in as "oh hey I'm a character" -- it's an OOC acct! It's obvious I'm not a character. So, I did this the first few times I joined a forum because I didn't really care and didn't have pretty graphics to attach to an avatar.

 

So, no, I don't feel squirmy about other people doing it. I guess the only time I'd be weirded out is if a forum required it. Has that ever happened? I've never seen it, but I'm imagining... I'd be all, no, you don't get my face. Because that sort of requirement would (in my mind, anyway) inevitably lead to a requirement to add other personal information like where you live, your age, etc. As long as I'm over 18 on an 18+ board, you don't need to know these things about me. You can know these things about me if we're chatting and I tell you shit. I like to forge connections that way. On my board, we do have a field in miniprofile that shows up with the avatar: Time Zone. It's optional, though, not required, and it's there for partners to find out whether they'd be compatible RP partners or figuring out when they'd expect posts or when they could plot.

 

I think another thing might be immersion. I wouldn't use my face if I could use a picture I liked or a graphic image I made. On my own board, I use a peacock image I worked on as an avatar on an OOC admin account. It's part of the Indian culture and kiiind of works with the overall aesthetics of the site.

[Jacob 58]

I think I've only used my offline self to represent me out-of-character-wise once, and that was for a resource community like this.  It's a wee stumbling block on my end, especially as an invalid.

Edited January 17, 2018 by Jacob

[Raven 18]

On a role playing website, this would make me uncomfortable, and I think it'd be okay to ask them to change the avatars and add a rule in if you'd like to do that. Privacy can be a big issue, and while I think it's fine for them to share images in appropriate areas, avatars I'm ehhh on. I do share my images online, including on role play sites, and I have several people on my site who have added me to their Facebooks. Avatars are very public though, so idk.

[Elena 546]

@Raven - What's wrong with sharing the photo as avatar vs as facebook or something else? What's wrong with being public? Not all the people are private and caring about it. I don't care if it is public or not. (I don't use my photo as an avatar, except my FB writer page, but simply because I don't think I am photogenic. I think the avatars I use represent me better. But "being public" had never been one of my concerns). I dare people to find me in a 3 million people city, among the 300,000 Elenas out there.

[Kit the Human 759]

I don't like people putting their face on their OOC account because for me, that's a trust thing. I, whether as a random guest or a fellow member, have not earned your trust and I feel like a certain level of familiarity is being expected from me because you're giving my information that I perceive as private. It makes me uncomfortable!

 

Furthermore! Why the hell do you want me to know what you look like? I don't need to or want to know, why is this information thrust at me? 

 

btw, I could never pinpoint why exactly, the thought made me so uncomfortable. Glad I've worked it out. Thanks for the thread 

[Raven 18]

@Elena I think Kit more accurately pinpointed why I feel the way I do. I wouldn't be comfortable with someone I just met online sending me pictures of themselves, therefore I wouldn't want to see them as an avatar. On an 18+ site it's less of a problem, but on any sites that have under 18s, it would definitely make me even more uncomfortable.

 

If someone adds me on FB, presumably we've talked and we know each other. I've gained that trust. I don't just add every single member on the site to my facebook at all, let alone as soon as they join. It isn't the first thing people see of me. With Facebook, it's a conscious decision to bring me into a circle of trust that says "yes, you can know this about me". It's very possible it's a conscious decision for members to upload an image of themselves, but if I don't know them, for all I know that's just what they thought they were supposed to do, or a privacy concern never occurred to them.

 

Even if no one "finds you" in your real life, sharing pictures online with people can lead to negative privacy concerns: stalking, sexual harassment, people can use those images to paste onto other images or videos. They can take your image to use somewhere else. I'm not saying it's likely, and I'm certainly not about to do it. I doubt I've met many people online who would do any of the above specifically because an image was posted. But those things become possible, or more concerning, and I don't feel comfortable with that trust being placed in me before we've so much as had a conversation.