The word 'avatar' is a perfectly ridiculous choice for the image attached to the moniker of a blogger or some other kind of internet personality. To me an avatar will always be some type of deity in human form, roughly the way Christians feel about Jesus. How 'avatar' got it's new definition is beyond me. The old definition is the antithesis of the new. The central concept to blogging is democracy. Anyone with a computer and the internet can post gibberish or profound prose or shitty poetry or personal experience or misinformation or whatever. The only possible connection to the real meaning of 'avatar' is that this ability to put your words out across the globe makes one a god in human form. This notion is so vain it is comical, not to mention sacrilegious, but that only adds to the mirth. I cannot comprehend why 'avatar' was chosen over something more apt like 'caricature' or 'profile picture.' Perhaps the new 'avatar' has a more complex definition than i realize, but even so, the comparison of a god in human form to the comic book guy from the Simpsons writing critiques about sitcoms is what comes to mind when i see the word 'avatar' used this way.
After surfing around my classmates' websites and a few other random blogs, the formula for an avatar seems to be a cartoon version of one's ideal self. Consciously or not this cartoon caricature is given attributes the individual wishes to highlight in themselves. I think a far better way to judge your author is to go to their profile and try to extract any information possible about interests, level of education, age, sex, etc. Anything would be preferable to the flippant pictures or cartoons or whatever. I suppose that given our current blog culture that the avatar provides insight to the seriousness or sense of humor of the author, but not much. In fact, writing should need no visual aids. Even pictures of famous authors on the back cover of a book adds nothing to the meaning of the text. I realize that few avatars are simply pictures of the author, and that the avatar adds a bit of personality to the page, but ideally the words should speak for themselves. No cartoon likeness is needed. Maybe the avatar is to help maintain the illusion of a solid self. That picture on your blog doesn't change though you do. As Lacan pointed out this sense of a constant self is an enabling lie. Allowing the reader to see that same image every time they log on to a blog creates some sort of solidarity. As Lacan says however the human psyche is naturally splintered, but the constant avatar gives the reader a feeling of sameness, even if the writer has changed voice. In fact the anonymity of the internet actually lends itself to the changing of voice, opinion, belief, etc, because there is no real responsibility for the author. We can post whatever we want, and there is no screening for contradiction. As Kunkle says, the internet and more specifically the monitor is conducive to this fragmented self, so much so as to cause a mild psychosis. Thus the avatar attempts to hide this constantly fluctuating self.
For my own avatar i wanted something real-not a cartoon. I took the picture two summers ago at the Swayambhu Buddhist temple in Kathmandu. At the time i thought it was just a droll sight, but it works perfect as my avatar. Besides the true meaning of avatar and the fact that i was at a Buddhist temple(not to say Buddha was an avatar, but close enough) the image of a monkey pouring bottled water on the ground is the perfect symbol for my blog. The monkey represents all bloggers-ambitious primates. The act of pouring bottled water on the ground represents both the absurdity and futility of taking a blog as fact, or at least too seriously. The hidden message being that as fresh water becomes more and more scarce we're approaching an eventual crisis. Similarly as we waste more and more time reading worthless opinions, hear-say, propaganda, and pure lies on blogs, good writing on the internet becomes harder and harder to find until we finally reach a crisis of online literature.
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