Profile Pictures Through The Years

For no reason other than nostalgia, I wanted to take a trip down memory lane of the handful(ish) of photos and graphics I can remember using for my profile picture online.

When I started university in 2003 I was surprised to learn that ICQ was not the go-to chat app because it certainly was amongst my group of friends. So a switch to MSN Messenger presented an opportunity for a new profile photo. As I was in university, I wanted to seem cool but because the photo was taken with a terrible webcam, you can only barely make-out how cool I was¹.

Within a year or two, Facebook started to take hold and I added this beauty of a photo. I used Facebook actively for a few years and then spent another several years keeping my account active but not using the service². I have since deleted the account but for the ten(ish) years I had the account, I never changed my profile picture.

Around the time I joined Twitter I started to become less interested in using my actual photo for things I did online. Thankfully I had the perfect graphic to use. I ran a failed campaign to be on the Wilfrid Laurier University Student Union Board of Directors and I created campaign buttons with my last name and a check mark. After my loss - and in attempt to be funny - I put a big red X through it and updated my MSN photo (which is probably still my avatar on there). It was also what I used when I signed up for Twitter and was probably the first universal logo I used for any new accounts.

When we get in to the 2010s, Twitter was basically the only social network I used - my Facebook account wasn’t used and MSN seemed to have given way to things like iMessages, kik, and BBM… I had some profiles elsewhere (like Last.fm) but there weren’t many and I used them infrequently. At some point I realized that the J and K keys (my initials) were next to each other on the keyboard and with that, I found a perfect photo to use. I added a bit of a fake blur and some instagram-style filter and then replaced the profile picture for every active account I knew of.

The keyboard initials were my default choice for a while - probably 5-6 years. A few years ago I was starting to come around to the idea of using a proper photo of myself and I was able to find a decent balance with the photo below. It’s a screenshot from a video I took at a ribfest using an app that made the video look like it was shot on an old camcorder. I really like the effect and I also thought I looked pretty cool. It helped that my face is partially obscured so it allowed me to use a real photo without putting myself too out there.

Finally we arrive at the change I made yesterday. I needed to update my profile photo at work and was also getting tired of the hipster headshot I have been using. I had just got a haircut and my beard seems to be at a reasonable length where it doesn’t look too ragged. Because of my greatly reduced use of online accounts³, the only places I have had to use this photo are on the About page, on my Micro.blog page, my LinkedIn page, and my various profile photos at work.

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