Do username/avatar/gender affect perceived suspicousness?

[quadz08]

Color of username definitely matters

I am very open about the fact that I suck at mafia - no one ever considered me a good player at any point (average at the very highest). Then I became a listmod, joined a game or two, and suddenly people were treating me like I was better than average. I am decidedly not that!

[Untrod Tripod]

there is nothing I love more than lynching someone with an anime avatar

[Oversoul]

How about a mafia game for only men? What would happen???

I think this happens often.

[Postie]

there is nothing I love more than lynching someone with an anime avatar

I'm getting the feeling that anime avatars are like marmite.

[kuribo]

Yes, if you have a sinister looking avatar it affects my opinion of you


For some reason people think my avatar looks angry

[Vampirate]

Just lynch all the Guys In Real Life and everything's fine.

[Varsoon]

So, hey, I'm actually qualified to chime in on this subject.

Basically, we're building digital personas here. Your avatar is the most important piece of information that you're putting forward for a few reasons;
-It is an image, which processes much quicker than words and other symbols
-It is a recurring image that is linked to your existence, which causes it to serve as a digital 'persona'
-Most players bring this to its logical conclusion--a portrait avatar of a living being, often a human face. This becomes that player's digital 'face'.

I've been paranoid of zMuffin's screaming wolf avatar and I'm not even that spooked by wolves.
I've been chilled out by Flum's Hobbes avatar and Bookitty's Hello Kitty avatar.
I've wanted to policy lynch Debonair Danny DiPietro for that smug Penn avatar.

So, consider the 'face' you want to put forth. People will recall their memories of your play via that face as well, so if you have had some particularly bad games, a change of avatar may be a way to distance yourself from those old associations.
Regardless of what you do, your avatar serves as a repeated signifier of your identity that has more immediacy than anything else in this digital space.

Username comes second to avatar, and I don't believe that most usernames actually influence play all too much. Now, there are some notable things to be said about names in general--mostly that people tend to favor shorter names (this is why most usernames are shortened to one/two syllable nicknames) and that particularly striking usernames will cause reactions. Those reactions, however, tend to be more personal. Going back to DDP--his username also bugged me simply because it felt unnecessarily affecting. I suppose it's the difference between meeting a guy named Joe and meeting the same guy but he calls himself Maxmillian Joseph Epcott the Sixteenth. Similarly, some names that are a bit more playful can open a more relaxed environment. I feel like I typically can chat with players like Cheetory or Bookitty, because the 'ty' ending of those names isn't threatening, awkward, or distant for me. By the same right, someone with the username 'Xx_Sephiroth06_xX' would illicit me thinking, "Heh, nerd," but wouldn't really paint how I think of the player after a few games. I think the important thing here is that the name ends up being almost tertiary, and maybe that's something I should get into.

For many players, posts are the primary aspect of the game. Secondary to posts are user avatars, which carry weight and are tied to the game but do not directly influence the game in the same way posts do. In this way, usernames are technically secondary, but their influence really doesn't seem on-par with the user image, and, honestly, I tend to use the avatar as a means of identification more than the username. In several ways, the username becomes as influential as a truly tertiary subject.

Which brings me to gender on forum mafia. Gender is absolutely tertiary. I've only ever seen gender come up when players make it a point to bring it up, and when they do, it feels forced and out of place. When considering a digital identity in which players typically use avatars that are not reflective of their physical selves, Gender becomes a nebulous quality. Many people actually assume gender based on user avatar (deferring to the immediacy of the image and how gender is typically divined) but our digital identities here allow use to escape gender as a real consideration. In almost every game, it does not have a direct influence on the post made (in that gender is not mentioned in the posts, that is). When considering other players, the Username and Avatar become the means of identification, but gender is secondary to those, as both the avatar and username may belie a gender but don't have any actual connection to your gender unless you decide to make them that way. While gender certainly is important in face-to-face mafia and it certainly plays into the approach/mentality players have, actual considerations of gender hardly ever have an effect on a game. Certainly not in the way a name might, and definitely not in the way that an avatar does.

Ugh, I'm getting too longwinded.

TL;DR:
I'm a nerd and really into digital rhetoric.
Avatar is most important thing, choose it wisely.
Username ain't such a big deal.
Gender's literally a non-thing.

[Porochaz]

Noone's mentioned Adel yet?

[kuribo]

I've been paranoid of zMuffin's screaming wolf avatar and I'm not even that spooked by wolves.
I've been chilled out by Flum's Hobbes avatar and Bookitty's Hello Kitty avatar.
I've wanted to policy lynch Debonair Danny DiPietro for that smug Penn avatar.

My first memory of avatar affecting my read on someone was way back in 2008 when Claus was around and used his evil Santa Claus avatar


I swear I thought that guy was scum every time I saw that wickedly grinning St. Nick

[vezokpiraka]

I think avatars only affect the first few games you play. After people know who you are and the avatars doesn't matter anymore.

[Katsuki]

Noone's mentioned Adel yet?

Was about to say.

Gender is huge, and there are scummers I can point to who are heavily influenced by it.

Avatar for me only really affects for first impressions, which does affect how I see said player from thereon out.

Mod colors matter if you don't know them.

[Postie]

Some great points, Varsoon!

Noone's mentioned Adel yet?

What.

I think avatars only affect the first few games you play. After people know who you are and the avatars doesn't matter anymore.

I'm not sure whether it would stop mattering completely, but I can definitely see people becoming more apathetic towards a person's avatar as they become used to it.

[Katsuki]

Adel was a male who fakeclaimed female for the intended purpose of gaining an in-game advantage.

[sthar8]

I enjoy lynching animes and they have a higher bar to meet before I consider them proficient.

[popsofctown]

Adel was a mafiascum user that played using the opposite gender because he thought it would give him an advantage at mafia. There's probably plenty of other people that do that too. Adel had lots of out-of-game friendships with other users though, and continued to use a false gender for those interactions, which was, a controversial choice of his, and why he is memorable. He eventually confessed to it.

I'm not sure you can conclude anything about gender's impact on gameplay based on his games, so I don't see that much value in bringing him up.

[kuribo]

Adel was a male who fakeclaimed female for the intended purpose of gaining an in-game advantage.

As opposed to just letting people assume?

[Postie]

Oh, I see. I considered pretending to be male, but I forgot what my thinking behind that was. Maybe I'll make a male alt at some point just to see how much of a difference it makes.

[quadz08]

Adel, I believe, used to say that people interacted with him differently after he ended his 'experiment.' There was no actually scientific rigor applied to the experiment, so who knows what the difference was in practice (especially considering that him having successfully lied for several months would likely play into people's opinions of his scumgame

in and of itself

).

[popsofctown]

Yeah, the fact that Adel lied in a manner external to the game is a much more powerful factor than which gender he was perceived as so you can't really gather any info. A better test would be someone who just played different alts with different genders.

It's also different because he started out one thing than switched to another which makes him different from an account that has always been one or the other since it began.

[catboi]

there is nothing I love more than lynching someone with an anime avatar

same

[farside22]

I see none of this ever effects me at all.
I'm female, players that don't know me think I'm a he.
My user name gets mostly jokes.
The reality is the longer you have been here, the less people trust you.

[farside22]

So, hey, I'm actually qualified to chime in on this subject.

Basically, we're building digital personas here. Your avatar is the most important piece of information that you're putting forward for a few reasons;
-It is an image, which processes much quicker than words and other symbols
-It is a recurring image that is linked to your existence, which causes it to serve as a digital 'persona'
-Most players bring this to its logical conclusion--a portrait avatar of a living being, often a human face. This becomes that player's digital 'face'.

I've been paranoid of zMuffin's screaming wolf avatar and I'm not even that spooked by wolves.
I've been chilled out by Flum's Hobbes avatar and Bookitty's Hello Kitty avatar.
I've wanted to policy lynch Debonair Danny DiPietro for that smug Penn avatar.

So, consider the 'face' you want to put forth. People will recall their memories of your play via that face as well, so if you have had some particularly bad games, a change of avatar may be a way to distance yourself from those old associations.
Regardless of what you do, your avatar serves as a repeated signifier of your identity that has more immediacy than anything else in this digital space.

Username comes second to avatar, and I don't believe that most usernames actually influence play all too much. Now, there are some notable things to be said about names in general--mostly that people tend to favor shorter names (this is why most usernames are shortened to one/two syllable nicknames) and that particularly striking usernames will cause reactions. Those reactions, however, tend to be more personal. Going back to DDP--his username also bugged me simply because it felt unnecessarily affecting. I suppose it's the difference between meeting a guy named Joe and meeting the same guy but he calls himself Maxmillian Joseph Epcott the Sixteenth. Similarly, some names that are a bit more playful can open a more relaxed environment. I feel like I typically can chat with players like Cheetory or Bookitty, because the 'ty' ending of those names isn't threatening, awkward, or distant for me. By the same right, someone with the username 'Xx_Sephiroth06_xX' would illicit me thinking, "Heh, nerd," but wouldn't really paint how I think of the player after a few games. I think the important thing here is that the name ends up being almost tertiary, and maybe that's something I should get into.

For many players, posts are the primary aspect of the game. Secondary to posts are user avatars, which carry weight and are tied to the game but do not directly influence the game in the same way posts do. In this way, usernames are technically secondary, but their influence really doesn't seem on-par with the user image, and, honestly, I tend to use the avatar as a means of identification more than the username. In several ways, the username becomes as influential as a truly tertiary subject.

Which brings me to gender on forum mafia. Gender is absolutely tertiary. I've only ever seen gender come up when players make it a point to bring it up, and when they do, it feels forced and out of place. When considering a digital identity in which players typically use avatars that are not reflective of their physical selves, Gender becomes a nebulous quality. Many people actually assume gender based on user avatar (deferring to the immediacy of the image and how gender is typically divined) but our digital identities here allow use to escape gender as a real consideration. In almost every game, it does not have a direct influence on the post made (in that gender is not mentioned in the posts, that is). When considering other players, the Username and Avatar become the means of identification, but gender is secondary to those, as both the avatar and username may belie a gender but don't have any actual connection to your gender unless you decide to make them that way. While gender certainly is important in face-to-face mafia and it certainly plays into the approach/mentality players have, actual considerations of gender hardly ever have an effect on a game. Certainly not in the way a name might, and definitely not in the way that an avatar does.

Ugh, I'm getting too longwinded.

TL;DR:
I'm a nerd and really into digital rhetoric.
Avatar is most important thing, choose it wisely.
Username ain't such a big deal.
Gender's literally a non-thing.

I think people just noticed when I changed it. No one realized till I told them it is the same child just about 3 years or 4 years older (can't remember how old he was in my first avi of my son)

[Alchemist21]

I never knew that was your son. Lol

[farside22]

I never knew that was your son. Lol

I have so many pic's I've used since he was born.
This one is perfect for mafia.

[Espeonage]

It appears no one has forgotten I'm shit at mafia even though I got this badge thing.