Should We Retire the Mystery Man?
We all, or all of us worth knowing on a question such as this one, know the Mystery Man, the pseudo-guy who looks like a reverse polarity keyhole, and who/which is the default avatar for wet-behind-the-ears WordPress sites – only rarely seen at this size:
Problems with the MM: First, it’s lazy to use it. Second, the figure is traditionally taken to be a “he”: Maybe it’s because he seems to be bald. Whatever the explanation, and despite WP’s decision to rename him the “Mystery Person,” relying on him or zir or it may still qualify as sexist.
Third, he happens to be… white.
Now, if you don’t like WordPress’s other built-in alternatives, as shown above, adding the code for your own default avatar is a straightforward operation. 1
One possibility, which you may have noticed already, would be “MOG,”” for “Mystery Ordinary Gentleperson”: Shehe’s an avatar of not-exactly-color, but not white – in my opinion also of no pertickler gender – before a drab off-yellow background of the sort you might see in some boring government office…
At a typical avatar size:
I added herhis hat with OT in mind – based on a design suggestion from Ordinary Gentleperson James K – and I chose the background with the specific intention of keeping it less than very attractive, the theory being that we want users not to like wearing the default avatar too much, and instead want them to go to gravatar.com and get their own avatars – it’s not hard.
Now, I’m not married to Mog. I happen to like himher for now because I have recently been arguing at my own blog with a confessed racist who also happens never to have bothered to get his own avatar. It tickles me a little to see him represented as a netizen of tone.
Eventually, I will cease to find the idea amusing, and may choose some more serious way to represent avatar-slackers – or I might decide to go avatarless. Some sites will assign their own branding to avatar-less users. An alternative for Ordinary Times, for instance, might be based on this:
A version of the above is currently in use as the site’s “favicon.” Another possibility, in view of the traditional affection at OT for bowler hats, as in or on Mog, might be just the hat:
The above is taken from a free graphic from Freepik, used previously. There’s also this hat on file:
Where it came from originally, I’m not sure. It happens to have been used already at OT, and still turns up in odd places. The explanation goes back to the original name of the site, “League of Ordinary Gentlemen,” as still evoked in remnant “retro” references and stylings, for instance in the site’s fonts and in the old-fashioned bicycle visible in the OT icon, and for that matter in the site URL at “ordinary-gentlemen.”
I was informed by Ordinarius Burt Likko in that same discussion with James K that “ordinary” was a common name for those bikes. As for the claim (voiced previously by commenter Bert the Turtle) to the effect that a bowler hat says “man,” maybe that’s a problem, too – or maybe not!
- Code and instructions are available at my site, where a version of this post has been cross-posted.
I kind of miss the monsters, to be honest.Report
I once had a web-technically innocent commenter who had grown, or so she said, quite attached to her particular monster. Before I switched the site to a different system, I copied and preserved hers for her, so she could continue using it under the new regime.Report
MehReport
The “identicons” have an unfortunate tendency to auto-generate swastikas…Report
Oh dear jebus, I want one of them swastikas identicons!Report
Then you have to post in hindi.Report
Well, they are called Ordinaries because they came before Safety bicycles. They are often referred to now as Penny Farthings.
Please keep the gravitars as I rather like my Tintins and obscure magazine covers. I would say to move to straw boaters for a default avatar for they were worn by both sexes. But the T with the ordinary wheel works well also.Report
I like just using the hat.
I liked the monster generations, though I think maybe we got some complaints? I can’t remember. The complaint may have been from MA, too.Report
So, either you believe that Liza defeats the hat = male assumption, or perhaps you don’t believe that the male assumption is a significantly problematic assumption?
I’d advocate doing something unique to the site rather than click a radio button and go with built-in cartoon monsters…Report
I think in the contemporary setting, the male assumption might not be what it was in a previous setting.
I had contemplated submitting a picture of multiple people together, with at least one female. But I think that approaches Trying Too Hard. JMO.Report
Yeah, a little TTH. After reviewing the discussion so far and seeing no great groundswell for MOG or any other option. I’d lean towards the “branding” option – i.e., some version of OT as in the favicon – since it seems to be a common second-best option. Of course, though I can implement whatever option at any time, it’s still up to the Eds.
Also haven’t looked at why GoG is showing the Gravatar default rather than the Mystery Person: Something hinky going on in the code, no doubt, may require hacking/fixing once this momentous decision has been finalized.Report
On the internet, no one can tell you’re a dog… Unless the default avatar is one.Report
I’d suggest following my lead, and using random baseball players. Who wouldn;t want to be Bob “Death to Flying Things” Ferguson?
Clearly too white, male and hetrocetric for this fine progessive blog.Report
What about an icon that includes the traditional gentlemanly bowler alongside a period appropriate ladies’ hat?Report
Have you learned nothing from cartoons? Put a pink bow on the bowler.Report
I don’t mind him.
In some ways, he’s sort-of ironic; if there’s a stereotype of the kind of person that makes women go anonymous/genderless on the internet, it’s the sad meme of the basement-dweller in the fedora. Deserved or undeserved, the OT dude far predates that, and I was quite happy to hide behind his masking abilities for a long, long time. You didn’t get my Godzilla ferns (my current gravator,) or any of the other I’ve used until CK asked me how come I was still dressed in a bowler hat.
What might be nice, though I don’t know if it’s possible, is another, more feminine version, and some random assignment of them.
Or just use the bike with the red T.Report
I’m personally a fan of identicons, swastikas notwithstanding. I’ve never noticed any on sites I’ve seen that use them, anyway. Though it is worth noting that many of the sites I know of that use identicons are rationalist aligned? This may just be a reflection of where I go in the blogosphere more than anything else. I also happen to think MonsterIDs and the Retros look nice. Although…
“looks like a reverse polarity keyhole”
Perhaps the MM could be replaced by an abstract keyhole, in reference to this statement? Just a circle and a trapezoid, relatively easy to generate with any graphical editing tool.Report
Would point to a more radical re-design approach – something I’ve been refraining from proposing, because it will be a complex undertaking, especially if intended to bring the community along with it.
Which brings up an interesting problem: The abstract forms would evoke an entirely different aesthetic approach that also will tend to evoke a political concept.
References to the cultural past tend to re-capitulate the mores of the past. The retro accents – at this point mainly the fonts, the logo, the bowler, and the URL – will tend in one way or another to recapitulate retro assumptions, for instance that the kind of topical conversation encouraged at this site is something conducted by “gentlemen,” whose status or membership in that certain social stratum will be signified by a common mode of dress: including bowler hats during the period, approximately, that people also rode “ordinaries” and that the font the site uses for post titles and within the logo – “Gaudy Bookletter 1911” – might also have appeared in signage, playbills, and illustrated magazines.
Now, if we were really dedicated to retro, we could go big with it, but we’re not, so we don’t. It’s just a quaint distinctive mark or artifact, but I think, like the remnant reference to “gentlemen” in the URL – it exerts some (gentle) influence on site culture, not a perfect restraint by any means, just a bit of a check on progressivism for better and for worse: a reminder to be “gentlemanly,” but also a set of sexist-classist-racist-imperialist etc. assumptions that also happen, inevitably, to show up in typical objects, especially, fashions: The whole state of the world ca. 1911 can sooner or later be derived from a bowler hat. (Liza as “Sally Bowles,” sexy in a bowler, is not random either… )Report
Aloysius is pestering me to no end… he suggests:
hmn… wont let me embed the picture. Here’s the link http://i47.tinypic.com/1pc95k.jpgReport
Yes, blank blankness is also an option, and not a bad one IMOReport
OTB has blank blankness, which has the added benefit of allowing me to scroll through more quickly since I tend to be more interested in the thoughts shared by people with gravatars than without them.Report
That’s a good point. I got a gravatar pretty much in direct response to James H saying my having one would make it easier for him to refudiate all my bad arguments. 🙂Report
Right – people who agree to play along and get avatars should be rewarded. To heighten the rewards, we can make avatars larger, accentuating the blankness of the avatarless name and the expressive potential of the avatar itself. If we really wanted to ensure that everyone got an avatar – as much for the ancillary benefits of enforcing a dress code as for the avatar as end in itself – we could even attach/deny certain privileges accordingly, but that’s probably going too far.
Current thread-avatar size is 40px. Can easily be expanded to a higher number + maybe get rid of the radius setting that make them all circles – so:
Current:
60px:
96px (Gravatar Max):
Note: We could also install a capacity to allow people to use OT-only avatars – in case they want to “get away from their day-jobs”. Since some potentially very worthy commenters are vastly tech-impaired, we could also nudge and spoon feed anyone who is interested.Report
I think I like the 60px, and the more I’ve thought about it, the more sold I am on empty space in the absence of a gravatar.Report
I recall briefly or inadvertently trying “blank”/empty space and getting complaints. It will tend to throw off displays – like in the sidebars – that use avatars.
While there is a lot more we can do with site “branding” other than the favicon “wheel/T.” So, just for example:
Or, just the wheel (also saying “zero”):
Or, moving away from Gaudy Bookletter and 1911 references:
What about a spacer image?Report
If I understand you correctly, that’s what choosing “blank” does, introduces space in the dimensions of the absent avatar where the avatar would go. It doesn’t throw off the layout in the sense of disrupting it or moving elements around, but it does throw it off visually. Even an empty box, in other words a space but with borders, would throw off the visual less.
I could adjust the setting to blank to show you. Or do it on my own blog if you think it would be too disruptive here. Give me a time window if you want to try it out.Report
By spacer, I mean an image that is the same dimensions as a gravatar, but white rather than a hat or figure or anything else. So the image is there. It gets loaded and displayed. You just wouldn’t notice it as a user since it’s the same color as the background.Report
Right, that’s what I thought you meant, and it’s the default behavior.Report
The wheel is nice, I think. Also, while encouraging people to get gravitars is great, I think there’s some merit to picking a non-ugly generic one; we do want the site as a whole to look nice, after all.Report
I’m kinda liking the wheel, too, until and unless a broader decision to go anti-retro is adopted. In addition to “zero,” says “spinning wheels,” but also says “moving (probably forward).” Could be turned into an “O” at any time if desired.Report
As I’ve suggested behind the scenes, my favored default would be the ordinary bicycle — the whole thing, not just the big front wheel.
Failing that, a bowler hat motif is a fine tribute to the site’s history. Plenty of women wearing hats choose bowlers, or at least that’s what I see when I go to Hollywood.Report
I don’t know how wise it is to reveal this, but one Halloween (before joining the LoOG) I dressed up as The Son of Man in Rene Magritte’s painting. (The guy whose face is blocked by an apple and is wearing a bowler hat.) For the bowler hat, I borrowed one from my wife that seemed close enough.
Here’s a bit about the painting: http://totallyhistory.com/the-son-of-man/Report
Did you carry a bombing playing “Sinnerman”?Report
Bombing = boom box.Report
I think the reference was lost on a lot of people already. In my little brain I thought everyone knew that painting.Report
If no one actually cares very much – a distinct possibility! – we could just try different ones out until we hit on one that someone somewhere did like.
Site policy is to respect copyright even in the absence of likely (likely at all, much less likely successful) claims, so using the Son of Man – which’d be cool! – wouldn’t be an option. We could, however, use a nice public domain green apple like this one:
I think we could “bowlerize” the apple without violating copyright.Report
Just don’t call it an iBowler.Report