An Interesting Experiment by Ilker Yoldas

When I started blogging, I purposely didn't add any pictures anywhere. There was a reason for this. I wrote a post about it called "Method to the Madness". The purpose was that I wanted people to get to know me, my children and my life without seeing what we looked like. People usually judge a book by it's cover. I wish it wasn't like that, but it is. What happens next? They make this whole snap judgement and create this "distorted perception of reality". Then they expect you to act and behave like the fantasy world they created.

My friends have a theory. When I was going through court battles with my ex-husband for custody, visitation and support...I always got the short end of the stick. All of my friends told me they believed it was because I didn't let them see me sweat. They told me not to dress well, do my hair or my makeup. They wanted me to show up looking...well in despair. That's not me, I never let them see me sweat. For that reason, I may have been misconstrued as a villain. Whatever. I survived and I still don't let them see me sweat. My friends believed the judges assumed I was a cold hearted b#$@&. As if I had stepped all over his heart and walked away. Hhmm, if they only knew. Their theory was that the way I looked was what created this distorted perception of reality.

Anwyay for that reason, I chose to write in my blogs and leave the rest to the imagination. I thought it was funny to read about a person that did the opposite. Here's a blog post on The Soho Quest about it:

Gaming the Blogosphere with Ilker Yoldas

This person used a picture of an attractive female (she's a latin celebrity) as their avatar as an experiment. The experiment was to see if it helped the blog gain more traffic. I think that's pretty funny. The blog is pretty good. It's called The Thinking Blog. (Perfect example for all those young kids. You really never know who you are talking to or reading about).

Did the experiment work? Well, I knew about The Thinking Blog because the avatar was all over MyBlogLog. I also saw the avatar repeatedly on JohnChow.com. I'm sure it did contribute to a lot of visitors that were curious.

Do you think that a picture can have this effect? Do you think that some of the top myspace bloggers would be there, if they hadn't posted their "professional" photos? Do you think that mentality is specific just to myspace or does it happen on other blog sites? Could it be due to the age of the readers or could this happen among an older crowd of bloggers?

Hhmm, makes you wonder. Doesn't it?