Avatar

In the context of social media, an avatar is a visual representation or digital identity that users select, create, or customize to symbolize themselves on a particular platform. It often serves as the profile picture or icon. A key part of anyone's online identity, an avatar functions as a boil-down image that might even represent an almost impossible shorthand for urban society's recognizability and obsessiveness.

The word 'represent' might even be the best and only correct way to interpret the act of choosing an icon in any given online environment because avatars resemble, depict, or even caricature in ways humankind never could before the digital age. Much of what humans have done in life has also been aimed at accounting for their appearances in the public sphere—that is, how they look, what they’re wearing, the facial expressions they use, and even what the background of their public appearance might be. Avatars do all of this, too.

They might also do this with the kind of impunity and self-indulgence that has come to characterize many of the default ways humans live in a digital universe.