Avatars can be all sorts of different images that can represent us as we scroll the pages of the internet. My avatar that I created resembles me as how "I" perceive myself as an anime character. This idea of creating a certain image of ourselves online, that doesn't necessarily represent us in real life, relates to David Bell's concept that identity can be endless when on the internet. This occurs because people feel free to express themselves however they want to online, where they couldn't possible represent themselves in real life as when on the net. It is an imaginary world that can be molded by the user and can become addicting since can live in a sphere that represents more of who you are. Basically, Bell's theory stresses that identity can be endless on the internet and can let people experiment with other identities that they couldn't have represented in their life to life moments.
However, as I was looking through different avatars, the avatar doesn't have to exactly have characteristics of a real person. The other examples of avatars that I found were just smiley faces that were dressed to impress. This was interesting to me since I always thought of avatars as kind of looking like we do, but different in contrast. This was certainly not the case and has made me more interested in making more avatars. But, the smiley face avatars seem to lose some depth when creating an avatar that could represent you. I would rather have an avatar that looks more like me than an abstract image of me which is what these smiley avatars represent, at least to me. Overall, this was a fun project and now I actually want to explore the world of avatars and the different ones you can make.
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