Chat Room Avatars

Author: Ian C. Langtree - View Credentials
Published: 2 Feb 2009 - Updated: 4 Feb 2019

Table of Contents:
Synopsis - Overview - Related Content

Synopsis

History of chat, forums and comment avatars and how they originally came to be.

Overview

Avatars for chat rooms and forums are small graphical images that you may choose in your profile. They are displayed with your username on all posts that you make. You can select the image that best describes yourself from your profile options. Avatars serve the purpose of representing users and their actions.

In Hinduism, an avatar is the incarnation (bodily manifestation) of an Immortal Being, or of the Ultimate Supreme Being.

The word "avatar" comes to us from the Sanskrit word Avatara, meaning "incarnation" and usually refers to the deliberate descent of an immortal or divine being into the mortal realm for a special purpose.

The default size for a chat avatar is about 40x40 pixels. That's about as big as your average computer icon. Forum avatars tend to be larger such as 100 by 100 pixels.

Avatars can be practical any picture subject such as real life people and celebrities, cities and places, cartoon avatars, animal avatars, and even seductive avatars featuring nudity. Female seductive avatars tend to be more common than male...

Animated avatars contain motion, such as an eye tearing, a bird flying, or a flag waving. Shocking avatars include unusual, strange, and sometimes downright bizarre pictures.

Avatars for forums are small graphical images that you may choose in your profile.

They are displayed below your username on all posts that you make. You can select the image that best describes yourself from your profile options. Avatars serve the purpose of representing users and their actions, personalizing their contributions to the forum, and may represent different parts of their persona, beliefs, interests or even social status in the forum.

Chat room GIF (an image format) based avatars were introduced by such programs as Virtual Places as early as 1994.

AOL Instant Messenger (AIM) was the first popular instant messaging program to use avatars. However, users of AIM commonly refer to avatars as buddy icons. A Yahoo! Avatar is a character that you can personalize and use when interacting with friends online. By changing hairstyles, clothes, accessories, and backgrounds, you can create your own unique persona.

Avatars in the Disabled World disability chat rooms are pictures that you can select to be next to your chat name. This enables others to simply look at an avatar and recognize who is chatting without looking at the username.

Avatars in video games are essentially the player's physical representation in the game world. In most games, the player's representation is fixed, however increasingly games offer a basic character model, or template, and then allow customization of the physical features as the player sees fit.

Author Credentials: Ian C. Langtree is a writer, editor, and the founder and Editor-in-Chief of Disabled World, which he established in 2004 as one of the longest-running independent resources for disability news and information. Over more than two decades, he has written and edited thousands of articles on disability rights, health, accessibility, and assistive technology. Drawing on a global perspective shaped by extensive travel and lived experience, Ian is a committed advocate of the Social Model of Disability, the framework developed by disabled activists in the 1970s that focuses on removing societal barriers rather than on individual impairments. His writing is grounded in that framework and in a lasting commitment to disability rights, accessibility, and social inclusion. To learn more about Ian's background, expertise, and accomplishments, visit his full biography.