Oh the irony…millions of everyday people surfing the interwebs because they don’t want to miss out on anything but can’t expose themselves to the lurking spammers and whackjobs. Talk about getting connected!

Warhol “misunderestimated” (thanks Dubya) the amount of time that we will all be famous..it’s down to about 15 seconds…and he prolly didn’t know that we’d have a fake online name attached to one of these delightful anonymous avatars.

Go US!

Digg: http://digg.com/img/udh.png

I hate hate hate the Facebook default avatar. I don’t know why but it really bothers me.

yayeveryday.com has an amazing one
http://yayeveryday.com/images/profile_images/default.png

your IMDB is labeled IMBD :)

And Tribe:
http://images.tribe.net/tribe/images/unknownUser.jpg

Neat idea, it’s cool to see these kinds of things.

How about Gravatar?
http://www.wprecipes.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/01/gravatar1.jpg

WOWInsider, it’s a niche site but I like the ogre avatar. http://www.blogsmithcdn.com/avatar/images/99/2450025_64.jpg

How about Infield Parking- the Nascar Social Network:

http://www.infieldparking.com/images/defaults/thumb_avatar_md.jpg

Oh yeah, meilinmiranda.com uses a cheez-it. Not sure if that’s the kind of site you’re looking for or not, though. :)
http://www.meilinmiranda.com/sites/default/files/cheez-it-icon.png
(and not to be a pain, but the IMDB now just says IM)

legend idea… sleeq is the best, then friend feed. I’m surprised there are not more animal silhouettes or smart quotes saying “im too scared to show my face”

The Story of the Cheez-It Icon: http://wiki.meilinmiranda.com/index.php/Cheez-its

Thanks for thinking it excellent. We’ve had fun with it. :)

Multiply’s:

http://images.keychain.multiply.com/logo/

Simply amazing!!!

Dimeadozen.org: http://www.dimeadozen.org/themes/dime/images/default_avatar.gif

http://www.cricketschirping.com/weblog/2006/12/12/no-image-images/

they changed the youtube default icon. the new one looks terrible! look for yourselves

Dreamwidth:
http://s.dreamwidth.org/img/profile_icons/user.png

I had the privilege of being on the discussion list while things like the default avatar were being hashed out, and people brought up gender/race/ability and probably a few more things before the owners made a final choice.

Here via Sociological Images, because Denise linked to one of their posts (about the pushing/actively pushing wheelchair user graphic vs. the static/seated one), and naturally this resulted in wandering…

Does anyone have a copy of the old facebook default? That would be good to include. As I recall, it was a blue question mark. I knew someone who had it, rotated, as their profile image for a while, but the ‘previous profile images’ thing doesn’t seem to go back far enough for me to find it.

Never mind, I see there’s a copy of it at the other collection linked in comments.

Crochet Me:
http://crochetme.com/files/default-avatar.gif

Someone should make an image with just an X.

Why more people are’t fawning over the genius of Yay!Everyday’s default avatar is beyond me. Danny Glover circa 1988 = Perfection.

Thanks for the reply to my post at #21

To explain, the site has a number of nations characters can belong to, and the anonymous character art is available for each nation’s character that don’t have art–e.g. you know what uniform they’re wearing but not the character’s face. The green face with “no picture available” across it is a reference to the classic “Anonymous” character meme found on popular imageboards.

Landed on this page (over a year from the last comment, unfortunately!) after googling my irritation to getting plunked with a masculine-looking default by the NY Times. Maybe this list was shorter earlier, when the first gender-bias-complainer was accused of having a chip on the shoulder, but looking at the list now, clearly the male-looking avatars (13 or so?) far outweigh female-looking ones (I count only one), not counting images of famous people or cases where there are two options. I will tell you on a personal level it was annoying to be given the NY Times default with no alternative–even blank would be just fine! How would a manly man feel getting a flower-in-girly-hair avatar such as at The Knot? What’s worse, The Knot assuming female readers or the NY Times and Wall Street Journal assuming male readers? Now tell me I have a chip on my shoulder.

I like it when people download the default avatar, edit it and upload it as their avatar. You could start a sub gallery of such uses.

So, according to most of these sites, the anonymous user is a male…interesting. That’s a good reflexion of our societies: by default you are a male, unless otherwise specified. I would expect a little bit more of a reflexion from someone who has to design an icon to represent people.