Why do some people change their avatars a lot, and some virtually never?

I don’t know how.

I rarely change, but have no idea why. Laziness? Lack of interesting pictures? The fact that I loved that kitty and like to see her picture?

I change mine depending on my mood or level of boredom;)

I like change and I’m always finding interesting pictures online.

I’m quite lazy, plus queenie liked it so there it stays :-/

I get bored with what I have, and I tend to change often.

I like my avatar. People must know how awesome I am for listening to obscure albums!

Mine represents the phase of life I am in at the time. My phases don’t change all that often. A little more than once a year, so far. Of course, there was nothing like my original avatar to make a statement and to be recognized by. Alas, that phase of my life is over.

I like my pic. It makes me feel serene.I’ll be there tommorrow.

The avatar is me on fluther. I like it as well.

His name is papahondje and he has been one of the crew that my little boy has been relying on since he came to this world. :-)

I’m not sure about others, really. I’ve never changed my avatar in the entire time I’ve been a Jellie and never will. Being a military member, I just identify well with the bald eagle and it’s significant to me in my own special way.

Does changing one’s avatar have to do with a personality type? That is a very interesting question. Since you change your avatar often, how do you think it collaborates with your personality?

Depends on mood I would think. With wis.dm then I changed avatars a lot, most of the time in response to some theme or game going on and others just to share. I was a lot more interactive with users there, a whole lot more personal life being shared and offsite interactions going on.

With fluther I promised myself I’d be a lot more careful and reserved in order to avoid drama like I had encountered before. For me, a lot of fun went away with my naivete about the internet. In fact, I was really squeamish to put any pics on the fluther photobucket but so far, very calm waters with this site.

It’s like changing your underwear…Makes me feel fresh and clean when I do!

I change my avatar frequently. Sometimes I go through phases where I won’t change it, but they are usually short lived.

I am weird about it, though. I get really sick of looking at the same thing over and over again… especially if it is a picture of myself. When my avatar is a photo of me I start to overanalyze and nit-pick… and that can’t be good. So I change it up a lot.

That’s exactly the heart of my question @Pied_Pfeffer! One of the reasons I love this place is so often people can name exactly what I’m trying to say when I can’t say it myself.

@Dutchess_III me too. I love moving things around in my home, I get bored with my surroundings very easily.

Lack of decisiveness.

* shakes head disapprovingly *

There he is! The NEVER changing @bob_!!!! Yawns mightily

I have no interest in changing my hair color, growing a beard or getting colored contacts in real life. Sure I get new clothes on occasion, but they’re the same styles I’ve liked for years. Once I find a brand I’m happy with, I stick with it.

On Fluther, I am the cookie. What else would I be?

Its kinda annoying to me when people change their avatars often to me because that is generally how I recognize anyone. I see a cookie and know its cprevite or see flowers and know its gail. I dont have to read the name below so it just makes it easier when scrolling through questions looking who responded.

So thats generally why I will leave mine the same for long periods of time as well. I change it occasionally but its usually the same one for at least 6 months before changing.

I used to change mine every month or so, but haven’t changed the sunflowers in probaby a year. About two weeks ago I searched some photos to change my avatar and then decided against it.

@uberbatman It throws me off too. I’ll have recently changed my avatar, read a comment that I want to give a GA to…then realize it’s ME and I can’t!

bwahahaha “ya know, I gotta say that person right there is fucking smart as hell… bet theyre sexy in real life too…. lemme give them a GA….aww shit….”

I go in cycles. May leave one up for a month or two, then change it 3 times in the same hour. haha

I was asked to bring back my face the other day, but, it may be gone again soon.

Take a good look before Coloma goes poof !

Since I started here two years ago, I have only changed my avatar picture about four times. I’m the kind of person who likes change, but not often. Stability has always been an important factor in my life——whether it involves exercising, providing for my family, even the clothes I like to wear! All this gets translated with avatars too I suppose. Lol.

I’ve changed mine just once in a year but I feel I could do with a new look.

Great question! I’ve had the same avatar the whole time I’ve been here (almost 2 years). If something isn’t broken, why fix it, right? It still feels like this avatar fits my personality. Plus, I’m way too lazy to look for a new picture.

That’s a very… not in-depth answer to the question. But I guess I’m the type of person to not change an avatar, and that type is 1) lazy and 2) doesn’t care about change.

I like going with various bad album covers lately. Just think they are funny.

An avatar is like a smiling face to me…If you keep changing, I haven’t a clue who the heck you are. I get annoyed trying to decipher who people “used” to be when they change their avatar or their names.

I’ve been meaning to change my pic to a more updated photo of my son…but haven’t gotten around to it yet. I will not suddenly change it to a dog or a cat photo though…because then I wouldn’t know who I was on here ;)

@uberbatman LOL! Yeah! “Hey! That was REALLY a good answer!...O”. :)

Ok, @Haleth let’s take it to another place, like…do you ever change things in your house? Do you ever try new things?

@Dutchess_III Good question. I hardly ever change things around in my house, or even clean, really. The biggest thing I do is add new posters and artwork to the walls. “Trying new things” is pretty broad, but I’m always on the lookout for new food, drink, movies, books, and music, things like that. (I love the fact that you can enjoy wine with all the senses, and it’s a learning experience!) But if you mean “try new things” like water skiing or rappelling off a mountain or whatever, then no.

And that kind of ties in with the fact that you don’t change your avatar either!

@Dutchess_III I redecorate rooms all the time & rearrange my furniture constantly. My face stays the same, though. My family and friends stay the same, too ;)

I change mine every few days or so, must have had dozens since I joined.
I do this because I can & because it’s just a dumb pitcha.

Okay…hot off the press. My new avatar, just snapped on my webcam sittin’ up on my hill with the geezers. A lovely afternoon it is down on the micro farm. :-D

Isn’t Marwyn the worlds most handsome goose?

I change it whenever I go into a different mood.
If I’m in a thoughtful mood, I’ll use my deer one. If I am in a quiet and sombre mood, I’ll use my wolf one. If I’m feeling cheerful and cheeky, I’ll use my current gun one. The fourth one is reserved for moments of boredom. (Or when the apocalypses happen.)

<——Changes with the seasons or holidays. Molly has on her summer shades for the summer.

<—— Zuppy says: Molly is sooooooo cool! <sigh>

I don’t really care but I found out that this avatar suits my ideal as “Your Majesty”.

I change rarely, because I get lost otherwise.

I never meant to use this avatar permanently. However, when I changed, several jellies asked to me go back to this. I occasionally do change, but only for a day or two.

I just get sick of looking at the same avatar sometimes so I change them often.

I think it has to do with variety.. You have so many pics and can choose only one so why not change them according to what you feel at the time or how you want to express yourself.. Some people are constant while others like variety. I don’t think it has to do with some hidden psychological urge, rather more a simple choice.

Boredom; lack of anything better to do; more boredom.

I occasionally change mine for seasonal, aesthetic, or celebratory reasons.

During the winter I usually use an aurora borealis pic, for spring and summer I use either a green swallowtail butterfly or a Yosemite falls pic (the one I’m now using), and for fall I usually use a fall foliage pic.

Sometime around last Halloween, I used a pic of me as a grade Z vampire that I’m sure terrified all who had the misfortune to see it. ;-p

Last Mother’s Day, I used a black and white pic of my mother and me, when I was about a year old.

I like this cat picture so I haven’t changed it. I might if I saw a picture I really liked. Mostly though, I don’t even think about it. Nothing to do with my personality I don’t think. I just haven’t bothered about it. I don’t think it says anything about me really, other than I like cats. It isn’t even my cat.

I get bored with myself. I like variety. It’s about time for the jellyfish hat to go . . .

Some like change.

Some don’t?

There. All set for the Fourth.

This discussion makes me feel like changing so I think I will!

This discussing makes me feel like not changing, so I think I won’t!

Change to a different coloured smock perhaps @bob_ ?

No, @bob_… please don’t. Don’t let them talk you into an identity crisis.

lol @whitenoise… well we wouldn’t want that!! I just thought a little red smock would be cute.

Never!

Okay then… well if you want to be a stick in the mud :D Do you like my new hairdo?

Um, sure.

I change very rarely (usually only seasonally), and when I do, it’s almost always recognizably “me”. Even so, I’m having trouble finding myself in threads right now because I’m sporting my July 4th colors.

I don’t really know why I stick with one for a long time, but I do. Every now and again, I want something new, but then I stick with the new one for just as long.

@Jeruba I love the avatar for the 4th of July!

Probably another reason I’m less fixated on all of our avatars is when I fluther from work then the avatars are all little boxes with red x’s in them.

@Jeruba FANtastic! I gotta go play too!!

@Jeruba Will you please send me that hat, please?!!???

I’ve had the same avatar since the day I joined because I feel like it’s my identity around here. People can see the picture and know who I am. That’s especially helpful since I don’t interact a lot, so it is unlikely that people would come to know me by my name. Perhaps this way there are some people that actually recognize me. (I’ve been here a year and a half, and I’m only at 3500 lurve. That says something about my general activity level. I prefer to lurk a lot and respond only when I think I have something to add.) When people that have the same avatar for a long time suddenly change, I can’t always figure out who they were, so I will probably keep mine forever.

I change seasonally.

@Dutchess_III, sure—here you go.

How’d you get rid of the white square it’s on @Jeruba ?

@Dutchess_III, that’ll depend on the application you use. I use a version of Paint Shop Pro that is so old it creaks, and my son refuses to answer a single how-to question any more (“The answer to all your questions is Photoshop, Mum!”). It has a little tool that allows me to pick an image out of a plain background and isolate it. I have to do a lot of cleanup around the edges (and if you look at my avatar, you can see how crudely I did that—I don’t fuss for more than about ten minutes on these throwaways).

Any Paint Shop or Photoshop or other decent tool made in the last ten years ought to do a much better job with that maneuver than my Stone Age software did.

@Jeruba… Can you send me your cleaned up version?

@Dutchess_III you’d need a program that can handle transparency to merge it with your picture. If you have that, then you can likely use that program easily to clean it up yourself.

Do you have photoshop?

No. Guess I’ll go get me some though.

ok. i’m lazy! please jeruba? Pretty please?

@Dutchess_III, I don’t think so. I extracted the image, copied it, and dropped it over my “plain” version of Cate’s picture. And then I cleaned it up there, in place, in the image you see there now. (My Paint Shop Pro is too old to have layers.) Any form I could send the hat to you in would still have a background and you’d have the same problem.

But if you’ll post the avatar you want to put the hat on, I’ll put the hat on it for you and return it. PM me about how we can do this.

that’s sweet, @Jeruba

Oh, look, @Dutchess_III—now we’re twins!

Jeruba makes all of my avatars. She is a total sweetheart about it, and good at it, too!

: ) But…you aren’t a dog! Yes she is Auggie!

I admit I have thought of creating a second, similar cookie avatar to use for holidays and such. Maybe a colorful M&M cookie.

I just changed mine again. If you enlarge it, you can see me and my dogs on a sandbar but it looks like we are walking on water. Right after the pic was taken, we had to run like crazy because on these mud flat type beaches the tide comes absolutely __rushing__ in and you do have to run flat out to avoid getting caught!

Like this, @cprevite? I can see you in that outfit.

@Jeruba: Yup. That’ll work – for when I’m feeling festive. :^)

Nice @rooeytoo…may I ask what state you’re in?

@Dutchess_III – I am in tropical North Queensland!