Fri 27 December 2024

I was reading Deadly Headshot's toot on Christmas day, and it got me thinking about Object Permanence and social media.

The funny thing is, I can remember conversations I had on IRC in the late 1990s, but there are many people I greatly enjoyed conversing with on the Fediverse just a couple years ago that have either simply disappeared (either deleted their account or simply don't post/reply anymore), or just don't show up in my "orbit" anymore.

All too often, I completely lose track of who I'm talking to, being enthralled in the conversation itself and not mindful of the individual identity of my conversant. This is exacerbated by the fact that I'm often using a command-line Fediverse client which only shows users' avatars when requested, and in a separate image viewer program.

I think the best advice I can give to someone concerned about their permanence in people's minds online would be to use a simple-but-memorable avatar/profile pic (and not change it), and to have a unique and memorable user name. Thinking of the avatars I find most memorable, some are basically geometric (but unique), some are images of unique faces (one I'm thinking of is a black-and-white halftoned image of a vampire lady), some are custom clip-art, like a certain fellow who strongly resembles an avocado. The ones that I often get confused with other people are the ones that are either extremely simple logos or geometric shapes, or simple portraits. Most faces just aren't that memorable, sorry. ^__^

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