So, I've been hitting a lot of message boards...

as I've been assisting in the Fanboy Rampage Fill-In Meltdown (which, by all accounts, is turning into some kind of blogging nightmare). It's lead me to a question, though...

Why do people have gigantic signature pictures with every post? The Bendis board, Newsarama... they've got these things in their signature that take up at least two-thirds of their posts (not everyone, of course... but a bunch).

For once, I'm not even saying this in a failed attempt to be snarky or mean. I just don't understand it, and that bothers me. Is it some kind of technobabble body art, used to signify something or another? If so, it just looks like going to the beach and seeing the same tribal armband on half of the people.

Avatars, I get. They're small, unassuming, and don't take up a quarter of my screen. They work just as well as an indentifying mark.

The next time I have something to say to a group of people, I'm going to wear a big sandwich board - I think that's the closest approximation to these things in real-life conversations.