Play that avatar!

Recently, my favorite online newspaper, The Spokesman-Review, upgraded their website and now all the blogs allow the users to create “avatars” to represent themselves.

Wikipedia paints an avatar as “. . . a computer user's representation of himself/herself or alter ego” “It is an “object” representing the embodiment of the user. The term "avatar" can also refer to the personality connected with the screen name, or handle, of an Internet user.”

An avatar also is a reincarnation of a Hindu deity! And further is defined as “an embodiment, a bodily manifestation of the Divine."

However, in the blogosphere of Huckleberries, an avatar doesn’t necessarily show a deity as much as it shows the mischievous, whimsical, and playful personality of the individual behind the avatar.

You can be anything you want to be, the stars are the limits. You can be thin, svelte, young, animal, personality, even a symbol. Anything goes.

If I take the concept behind an avatar, then I am assuming that each user is displaying his persona in that little icon. On Huckleberries – unlike any other forum displaying avatars – the individual avatars change sporadically throughout the day, expressing that individual’s mood at that moment: naughty, nice, cantankerous, ornery, quizzical, mysterious. Mine at the moment is pixyish fairy with a subtle mischievousness – in other words, a brat. :) (Tinkerbell) (I did find a naked Tink and gave it about five seconds before I visualized my avatar (and me) being banned forever and ever.)

Actually, when I go through the blogosphere at Huckleberries, I can never quite be sure that doodleface is really Jane Doe, it might be Jack Splat. And with the constant changing of the avatars for one single individual, at any given moment, which seems to be going on with nearly everyone on the blog, I think the whole Huckleberries community is filled up with escapee schizophrenics. And I’m one of them!!!

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