My sources say no
That was an excellent pair of posts. 
Oh, no!!
I’ve offended @nelliebly
I try so hard not to offend. But, I’ve been told I’m the “most ignored” person, not in the pit.…I was in the pit once, it was scar—y
I won’t name names but this person would know the facts.
Yeah,I know it’s not always all about me.
But, still…
You couldn’t offend me, Beck. And who could ignore you?
^^ Two of the 3 people I’m least likely to ignore.
Aww. Y’all so sweet!
I guess I better start my Goodbyes now…
Hmm. On the old boards, my ignore list was solely people I found extremely annoying and not worth listening to.
On the new board, my ignore list is increasingly being populated by people whose avatars bother me, rather like the OP’s point…
Avatars didn’t bother you on the old board but they bother you on the new? Why’s that?
Also, Mister bagpipe-humming bird-mosquito should be the last person to complain about avatars. Just look at the confusion you are responsible for! 
Because I never saw them there. I understand there was some monkey - gidget thing that you could install to see them when you were logged in. I logged out to see what I was missing, and didn’t like what I saw, so I never installed the greasy monkey thingamabob. Probably beyond my techno-peasant skills anyway.
No option here, other than to ignore the ones I find … disturbing. Even that, took some time for me to figure out how to do.
And since I see nothing but a nice set of pipes, I don’t take any responsibility for misunderstandings about mine own. 
Ah, I forgot you could turn off avatars in vBulletin.
I never figured out how to turn them on. Something to do with a greasy monkey?
In the numerous threads on the old board debating the avatar issue folks on the pro-side often asked: What would be the harm in having avatars? Why not have avatars?
I remember opining that I would prefer not to have avatars because they might become distracting. I said they might become annoying topics in and of themselves.
I changed my mind on that some after we moved to Discourse because there are some advantages. But now @Northern_Piper’s post reminds me of my earlier concerns.
Things could be worse. We could have huge animated sig pics (anyone on any board which has one which is too big and/or is animated get said pic blocked). Much worse. In any event I find exactly one avatar here annoying, tho grasp how YMMV.
My fault, avatars were turned off in vBulletin, you had to turn them on to see them. BigT wrote a GreaseMonkey script for something else but I can’t remember what it was.