ha, after seeing at least my 3rd Bruce Willis a few minutes ago, I finally said "WTF, this can't just be a coincidence of huge Bruce Willis fans!" So I checked my own profile settings and discovered the pre-loaded set of actors and musicians that explained it. Then before whining about it, I figured I'd do a search to see if there was another thread whining about it, and, lo-and-behold, here is a thread about it (and seemingly the only one in the whole forum)...and it was posted less than 12 hours ago!
Why did two different people suddenly care about this issue on the same day? All I can figure is there has somehow been a big influx of duplicate-avatar users recently that made us finally notice.
Anyway, why do I want to whine about it? Because it's confusing as all hell! In mind, curmudgeonly wacko "Bob W" is the original "Bruce Willis", so now whenever I see someone else using that avatar, I assume that they're a curmudgeonly wacko. I get all the Bob Marley's confused with each other. I thought a recent "Cameron Diaz" was a secretly-returning anti-mustachian nutter from the early days of the forum!
I think avatars are super-useful for instantly recalling a poster's history/personality in your mind, and I wish more people would use them.
But only if they're unique! It makes no sense to me that the board would provide this pre-loaded set of avatars. The picture->person recall that happens is just too powerful so this linking of one picture to multiple people is seriously uncool!
When I read the Bogleheads board, I essentially click on a thread and scroll down until I see nisiprius's orange butterfly (because whatever nisiprius has to say is 100x more valuable than what anyone else has to say). Seeing another orange butterfly would seriously piss me off. Same when looking for MMM's comments on his blog posts.
Consider this my official request to get rid of the default avatars! (I suppose the existing holders can be grandfathered in if they want to be).
