Journal of Other Forum Analysis

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To be fair, the criticism of avatar bets started with an aggressive suggestion to outright ban them

did you not share the entire conversation? because this patently did not happen

The first post I shared was the first one mentioning avatar bets. I skipped the ones in the middle (before nepnep’s first response) because they mostly just agreed with it, but none were “aggressive” either. Here they are:

Spoiler:  (click to show)(click to hide)

Wait there is avatar swapping / betting and these are different users with the same avatar?

Well let me join the club, that sucks, I absolutely didn't notice and presumed it was the same person.

I think I only really noticed that there were different people with this avatar when I saw two of them arguing against one another in a thread once

I agree, and thank god the terrible pink tag was removed.

I agree with this as well.  Between this and the Zelda Avatar bet, it's really harmed the ability to follow discussions on this site.

I'd like to see large-scale avatar bets be done away with in favor of tags (but not that sparkly shit either). 

Like hasn't this gone on long enough- can't we end this early?

Avatar bets are fun. Just read the names if it's that bothersome.

I don't know. There are a lot of people on this site and sometimes it can be hard to remember who everybody is when they all have the same avatar and tend to post in similar threads to each other. I think the safest way to do it is have the "timer" on avatar bets shrink a bit. You only get the changed avatar for 1-2 weeks and then it reverts back, rather than the avatars sticking around for months, well after the bet has fallen out of common memory.

That also isn't how people's eyes work: in the same way it's important in UX to have iconography with different shapes (and ideally colours) and not just have everything in a box or a circle to improve recognition speed, your eyes will absolutely use the avatar for shorthand and your brain won't even notice that the name is different.

I agree with you (I mean, just facts really), but the problem here is people can change their avatars freely, so you can already freely skip past people because it's not an avatar you recognize (in fact, PlanetSmasher is a good example of someone I precisely just did that too ITT until I glanced back because I'm used to their previous avatar).

I don't really see the harm in avatar bets that free unlimited avatar changing doesn't already cause. I guess you can argue the whole "multiple people same avatar" type thing but there's nothing stopping me from copying your avatar right now and causing the same effect.

I don't really get skipping past people you don't recognise, so I can't meet you at that level.

re: copying my avatar, I mean there is nothing stopping you from doing lots of things in life that you shouldn't do: "nothing stopping you" and "game encouraging you" are different things. You can change your name as well, so you could be JusstTeaThankYou with my avatar if you wanted. But that would obviously be a dick move, and importantly, isn't currently systemised as a game.

Look, I have no idea how rampant avatar swapping is (like I said upthread, my brain didn't even register it was happening) but if it was a massive thing in this community I'd probably just turn avatars off and move on. I do think it's silly, but it's not deal breaking.