Avatar is a word with several meanings. It can be a human manifestation of a Hindu deity. It can be a creature with a combination of human and alien DNA. And then there is the meaning with which we will be most concerned: a digital symbol or icon with a connection to a person or else just a simplified cartoonish image of a person used for video games and social media. Now what do these digital visual representations of a person have in common? They all strive to simplify how a person is shown to the world. In the simplified cartoonish image version, the complexities of a person’s inner grounding are removed. These complexities consist of those particulars which a person would normally see in a photograph or portrait painting. Once a person has gotten rid of them, it is easier to remember the image version of the person within a two- dimensional screen reality world. In the simplified cartoonish image version, the person’s complexion is removed as are the texture of the clothes he may be wearing in the original image from which it is taken, assuming the image was not created from scratch.
In the symbol and icon versions of the avatar, the representation has become totally abstracted, so that it can lend itself to a fairly quick association with some quality of the person or else some group with which the person is connected. This would be very relevant for a gamer. If a gamer joins some game online, his opponents would surely want to be able to identify against whom they are playing at all times, particularly if it is a game that involves multiple competitors. And as for social media, it would probably be nice, assuming a person chooses to be represented by a symbol or icon there, that it would represent some positive quality of the person or perhaps a quality he would like to have more of.
But a question arises if there are any long-term effects for the user of an avatar in terms of how the user begins to perceive himself. Yes, we are getting back to this notion of blurring identities. The more we humans use certain phenomena, the more we become them. This is particularly true with regards to what I call complex behavioral entities. Up until recently, I would have included in this category humans, animals, computers, and other complex machines. But now there is an important new category to be added: that of images used to represent humans and other complex behavioral entities in two-dimensional screen reality and in three-dimensional virtual reality. This would include all the cartoon characters found in two-dimensional screen reality as well as those found in virtual reality. Many of them are treated like movie and televisions stars that have their own fan clubs.
At any rate, only a certain number of all of these complex behavioral entities are ever turned into avatars. Although some of the animals become totems in preliterate traditional natural societies. Animals become totems if they are important in some way to the members of the society. Either the animals are important because of inspirational positive traits to which members of the society would like to aspire or else they are an important source of food and materials for clothing and shelter or else both. This explains why members of these societies want to merge their identities with these complex behavioral entities.
So, we can say that avatars are, to a certain extent, the equivalent of totems as visual representations of people for modern technological society. But whereas totems are usually group symbols for group-oriented traditional societies, avatars usually represent highly personal symbols for highly individualistic modern societies. And whereas totems are usually visual representations that unite people and give them grounding, avatars, by putting people even further in an experiential vacuum, to the extent that they identify with their avatars, fray the emotional bonds between people, and contribute to the emotional isolation of the people who use them. In other words, because of the two-dimensional screen reality in which they dwell, avatars end up doing the opposite of what they are supposed to do. They isolate people rather than bring them together.
I don’t have an avatar, and I am not getting one anytime soon.
© 2024 Laurence Mesirow
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