catfishing
WendyLuvsCatz
Posts: 40,291
I am wondering if anyone else feels uncomfortable about rendering and presenting themselves as a glamorous DAZ avatar online?
I tend to go all out fantasy furry myself ie JaguarElla who is in my sigline dancing for that reason.
I know many people have avatars of the opposite sex too and get mistaken for them, they of course render what is attractive to them, I wonder, is being a DAZ avatar online perceived by others outsiders, a bit like catfishing?
In online games it is also accepted, nobody expects you to be like your player, still I feel uncomfortable straying too far from my gender, race, body size etc presenting myself online in so far as being over accurate at times in videos using facegen and big girl morphs as could not bring myself to render a skinny youthful Wendy I once indeed was.
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Comments
A good point, I may have to change my avatar to a more realistic, less attracive one ...
well you are misleading a few lonely pincushions
looking for someone to poke
My icon here is a slightly idealized self portrait made back when Genesis was the new best thing. It's as close to a real picture of me as I ever get on an internet forum. :)
mine is literally my cat
fishing for compliments
I have only a few images of myself on the web, and since I am not claiming to be wonder woman or other than I am, I don’t feel I’m misleading others. My gender, appearance and such is quite frankly nunya, although I am open about that in relevant situations and it is in my profile if people want to see.
to me it is catfishing to deliberately misrepresent with the intent to do so.
WHAT!! You are NOT Wonder Woman!!!??? I am crushed
I am kinda with Wendy on this, I used to use a small image of me I had from a web cam as my avater, but went with the emoji as I felt it just represented a positive icon with no gender slant.
When I do FPS gaming online, I sometimes use a female avatar as I find some opponents take it easier on you as a female (tactical advantage!), LOL
I absolutely refuse to put up an avatar that in any way represents what I look like. My avatar is one I made years ago after testing one of the models. I just loved her look. In games, I cannot make a character like me, even idealized. For one thing, they are young, fit and capable of fighting.
I do really like your emoji! Its quite distinctive. Yes, sadly, not wonder woman. I do have people oddly message me and ask my sex, and I am female (it does say it in my store profile as well) I find it interesting, as to why this is something that they are burning to ask me, but humans are curious. I've learned long ago not to assume the sex of a person based on their avatar. =-)
Well, weirdly enough, my avatar image really is me. It's a costume theme I continually tweaked and enhanced when I attended Dragon*Con (an Atlanta based multi-genre conventions) during the 90s. I turned a photo depicting the entire ensemble into a face only avatar when I first acquired internet access in 1997 and I've used it almost everywhere since. I reason it makes for easy identification without revealing my real face. Basically, if you see that image anywhere online, that's me (unless someone were to "borrow" the avatar for themselves).
Sincerely,
Bill
My avatar just shows what I like best: Dragons.
I only recently changed my DAZ avatar. It used to be someone lurking; as that's what I tend to do. Like DaWaterRat, my new one is a slightly stylized, fairly accurate self-portrait. We are all here for different reasons, some are corporate branding, statements of interest, or individualization. CatFishing requires more stealth and less (by staff) monitoring, not a (possibly harmful) addiction to 3D art and assets.
In case someone thinks I just grabbed some random bald dude or did an amazing render... no, that's me.
Mine is just some random render.
My avatar is loosely based on a younger me. I actually did a character that would look more like I do now (not only older and with less hair, but the face is a closer approximation), but I like the avatar I've been using. But I wouldn't say having a different or idealised avatar just to identify yourself in a forum reaches the level of catfishing. It's more what you do with that account - if it's used to troll or mess with people's emotions, that would make it catfishing IMO.
Mine's from an old, old "doll generator" that was online back in the '90s. It may still be there, but it's basically kaput since last time I checked, all the links were broken.
It's not precisely me. Although the coloring is relatively accurate (if artificial).
Me once upon a time on a cold late afternoon with a pint of beer in my hand (not visible).
My avatar is a toon version of a cat I had a long time ago.IIRC the cat was modelled by Netherworks and the texture was made by Cyllan.I edited the texture slightly to make it look more like my cat.
This is what I look like right now.
Hmmm?! I never thought of it considering using a daz avatar .But you make a good point Wendy, i use across the board type "Ivy" icon for all my social profiles. I use to have a picture as a avatar until that stalker I had made me rethink that choice.
Does anyone know how misrepresenting one's self to fool others became known as "catfishing"? That term is used in online dating a lot. But why "catfishing"?
Same avatar since 2004, before that I used a hand drawn dragonfly avatar or none. Why just change you gender, when you can change your species?
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Catfishing
This should help explain the phrase.
Sincerely,
Bill
I have seen some avatars in the forums that were clearly random pictures someone has copied of a stranger elsewhere on the web. I only change mine to to satiate my boredom for time to time and I seem to have changed my avatar more than others in these forums.
I don't know what catfishing is and don't care to look it up.
Back when I joined my 3-D skillz were crap, so a render wasn't in the cards. OTOH, I'm mildly paranoid and not about to post a real photo (aside from the fact that every camera I've used to take said picture suffered SLS - Shattered Lens Syndrome). So I grabbed a photo of a painted lead 54 mm French Carabinier of the guard I'd just obtained.
My avatar is an avatar, no more, no less. It presents a face to attach to a name, but isn't intended to represent my personal self. I prefer to keep photos of myself not online for my own reasons. That said, with the exception of RPGs, where there should be an expectation of reality differing, I don't present myself as anything other than I am, so if someone ends up feeling catfished, that's on them, not me.
My avatar, in this case, is a small part of a character portrait I had comissioned of one of my RPG characters.
remembering the dayz of animated gif avatars
My avatar is a picture of my dog.
Mine is the face of my favorite art piece of Catwoman that I had printed on canvas. But a lot of people think it's an idealized image of myself because the basic stats are the same. When I create an avatar in VR I do try to make it as similar to myself as possible. Just feels more comfortable to me.
I dunno why I used this render I did......
I guess it was this or my 'Supweme Wuler' render.... or Aunty Jack render.... or.... maybe.....