Why I disabled showing avatars and deleted mine

JackJack Regular
edited July 2010 in Spurious Generalities
This web site is about INFORMATION. All sorts and all viewpoints. Some of the information you will agree with, some you will find shocking, and some you will probably disagree with violently. That is the whole point. In this society we go to schools where there is one right answer: The Teacher's. There is one acceptable version of events: The Television's. There is only one acceptable occupation: The pursuit of money. There is only one political choice to make: The Status Quo.

On this web site you are expected to make decisions all by yourself. You get to decide who and what to agree with, and why. You get to hear new viewpoints that you may have never heard before. On this web site people exist without age, without skin color, without gender, without clothes, without nationality, without any of the visual cues we usually use to discredit or ignore people who are unlike ourselves. All of these things are stripped away and the ideas themselves are laid bare.

You will change. You will transform. You will learn. You will disagree.

You will enjoy it.

Not even 2 years and already I was forgetting what Totse is about. My avatar is pretty fucking cool but in pretty much the only worthwhile all-information-dedicated place, it has no place. I don't want anyone to look at it and see that it's pretty fucking cool (or not) and form an opinion based on an image.

I'll stand in this community on the merit of my ideas and contributions or not at all. :mad:

Comments

  • Joe CamelJoe Camel Acolyte
    edited July 2010
    I like my avatar.
  • skyclaw441skyclaw441 Regular
    edited July 2010
    I'm sorry you feel that way. I don't think that an avatar gets in the way of good content. It's simply a personal touch of flair. Anyone who judges a book by its cover obviously doesn't belong at &T anyway.
  • edited July 2010
    Yeah were &T version two. We have the same core principals, just have a bit more updated way. And if you automatically judge people by there Avatar then "that sounds like a personal problem."
  • ILTST9ILTST9 Regular
    edited July 2010
    I have no problem with avatars. It helps to differentiate users as long as they're not switching them every single day.
  • metameta Regular
    edited July 2010
    Ive got no beef with avatars. To be honest it kind of helps me recognize users more, like putting a name to a face.
  • JackJack Regular
    edited July 2010
    I understand and appreciate the book-by-its-cover thing but I don't think that's quite it. It's that, whether we want to or not, we will form some opinion of others based on the visual cues they put around them, which may or may not be accurate to and interfere with the image of the real person. Even someone could look at my username and think something of it before reading my posts, to which they would apply their prejudgement. There's little escaping this unfortunate situation, but we can at least work against it.

    Hey actually guess what I'm kind of drunk and stupid right now but I had an even better idea. Since this place is supposed to be about different and opposing viewpoints, and sucking it up and getting along anyway or something like that, I re-enabled my avatar and re-enabled viewing avatars and if you don't like it or I don't like it we can both go suck a dick. :D

    Also I chose this partially and/or mostly because I still felt like having an avatar but didn't want to tarnish the tenets of Totse. Now that I see how no one gives a shit including the FAQ I no longer feel compelled to give a shit. Sorry for this waste of your time.
  • Pill PopperPill Popper Regular
    edited July 2010
    meta wrote: »
    Ive got no beef with avatars. To be honest it kind of helps me recognize users more, like putting a name to a face.

    Agreed
  • AnonymousAnonymous Regular
    edited July 2010
    I like my avatar though.
  • SlartibartfastSlartibartfast Global Moderator -__-
    edited July 2010
    I'm pretty sure the when Jeff wrote that he was referring to racial and religious discrimination. Not that he didn't want individuality.
    You can't change your skin colour but you can be whoever you wish to be on the internet. You can change your avatar.

    In fact i seem to recall the only reason Jeff didn't implement Avatars was due to bandwidth concerns.
    For all you know I'm really am from the planet Magrathea.
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