A Social Experiment
Face Your Avatar
A Social ExperimentOnline Communication
The internet is a cool place. There are people to meet and things to see. I'm sure we'll all agree that deviantART is an amazing online community filled with plenty of like-minded individuals for potential friendships. But there's one problem with online communication - it's just not like face to face conversation. There are many differences between online chatter and physical chatter which set internet friendships apart from physical ones. You can learn a lot about somebody when you talk to them in person - from the expressions on their face, to their hand movements, to their tone of voice, to the way they represent themselves through their appearance. You can also learn a bit about them from their face itself. Because none of this exists on the internet, barriers are put between online communications. It's not easy to jump over these barriers to make talking on the internet more personal and more relatable.Face Your Avatar
There is one barrier which we can break down right here on deviantART. Originally run by mattdanna back in 2011, Face Your Avatar is a social experiment to see if we can knock barriers over by setting our avatars to photos of our own faces. The theory is that by removing the no-face-barrier, we can make online conversation a wee bit more natural. In doing this, it will become easier to meet new people and make friendships, as well as strengthening those already established. We'll know that there's a real person chatting to us behind another screen on the other side of the world - something we so often forget. Likewise, as it's not as easy to abuse someone directly to their face, there should be a decrease in heated conversation. As an overall outcome, I believe that the deviantART community will be more personable, friendlier, and full of extra character. Plus, it's fun! So, let's see what happens - set a portrait of yourself as your avatar and join the experiment! Tell us in the comments what you think the outcomes of this experiment will be!