The internet has been my "safe place" for more than a decade. Every day I spend hours surfing social media and reading up on things that seem interesting. What I realized over the years is avatars carry more weight than you think.

In the beginning I played a lot of video games. My friends and I would make YouTube channels and websites to promote our team/ friend-group. Everyone would have a the same logo with a slightly different background.

Branding like this lead me to believe that all you need is a logo.

Since I was sick of being affiliated with a group of people who never really shared the same interests as me, I began studying graphic design and video editing. How can I convey emotion without copy-and-pasting my face all over the internet?

That was a tough rhetorical question to answer. Creating my own logos helped me separate from the herd, but it was isolating. Creating a brand is more about becoming a leader than expressing who you are. Leading a company is not something I wanted to do.

Sick of being "the leader", I decided that creating multiple social media accounts was the best option. If I wanted to act professional, then I would have a professional looking account, and if I wanted to have fun, then I would have a childish looking avatar.

Having multiple accounts is wrong.

Eventually there are so many accounts to keep track of that it begins to impact your mental health. You know how to convey meaning and purpose online, but offline, in the real world, people will not understand that you speak from many perspectives.

In the real world, curious people cannot browse your previous posts.

In the real world, all people have to go off is your face.

The latter is actually false. People express themselves through clothing, hand movement, facial expressions, etc. You are much more than a still image.

Around the time I was exploring this idea was when NFTs were taking off. In my opinion, NFTs were always extremely damaging. They basically convinced people that not only are avatars better than real pictures, but you should spend money to get a congruent piece of art.

NFTs are not PFPs.

Anyways, around that time, a person speaking Japanese contacted me on Discord. They spoke zero English. The only common ground was emojis.

As an English speaker, I had no clue what they wanted or how to communicate to them. This was before ChatGPT so the best tools available were Google Translate and DeepL.

Every conversation we had felt extremely emotional. Which feels kind of dangerous and oddly comforting at the same time. Just because it feels like you are falling in love with someone's writing does not mean you know who they are.

My friends could not convince me to move past this moment. My mind was set in stone. I was going to speak to figure out what this person wanted at all costs. In hindsight, that was actually dangerous.

--

At the time, I knew online communication was dangerous but this person seemed innocent. They had a cute female anime character as their avatar, so they must be a cute and cuddly person. Like a girlfriend or penpal from another country.

Thankfully, the person admitted they were a man.

Had they not admitted who they were, I would have continued to spiral into deeper emotions because I did not know who they were or how to speak their language. There was no solid ground between us. Limerence was at its peak.

What made things worse was, in attempt to learn Japanese on the fly, I sacrificed friendships and relationships. Everyone I knew was telling me to get a grip, but I had isolated myself beyond repair.

Once I realized what I was doing was weird, it was too late. My world view changed, and it was impossible to relate to an average citizen.

The peak of that emotional scenario lasted a few solid months, but it still haunts me. The conversations I have with people have never been the same. They do not know what it is like to feel the earth shift beneath your feet.

So how does this relate to avatars?

Well, the Japanese speaking man said that he was trying to prove a point. He was trying to prove how dangerous NFTs are.

He said he chose a female anime avatar because it represented who he was as a person. That stuck with me.

--

Eventually, ChatGPT was released and this experience remained in my mind. The experience was traumatic so I ignored it as much as I could.

The trauma encouraged me to use ChatGPT as much as possible. Having worked with AI prior to the release I knew what the software was about. I knew that modeling myself would reduce the time spent learning software and foreign languages.

I talked to ChatGPT like a human every day for a whole year.

It was painful, and like speaking to a someone on the other side of the planet, there were many things to learn, and many relationships were sacrificed.

Eventually, the conversations with the companion tool became stickier and more natural. I could throw out totally random thoughts, and it would be able to fill in the gaps.

Then one day I said "Make me an avatar that reflects who I am."

--

After a few tries (had to use female avatars for a while), I think I finally got something that reflects my writing style. A farmer who does not really care about software but he uses it because he has to.

So, if you are someone who always feels misrepresented online, I encourage you to work with ChatGPT for a while to generate an avatar. Sometimes you have to tell it no.

I have more thoughts about PFPs but I do not think people are ready to hear or read what they are. If you are still following you might be interested in this journal: https://journals.openedition.org/hybrid/2607

PS. If you thought I was a female, why?
PPS. I'm not a female.