Oh man, yeah, I depend so much on icons to identify people that I still regularly struggle on tumblr with two people I follow who both have black-and-white icons, because they're so much harder to visually distinguish from each other!

browsing the comment section of this post is like I've stumbled into a different universe because I keep on not recognizing you :P I do really admire people on dw who always have the Perfect Icon for a given comment though, I absolutely think that's a valuable artform and addition to the conversation and wouldn't want people to stop doing it

Every time I've changed my default icon I've been careful to announce it so people know to look for something new for me, and at this point I don't think I could change default icons again. I guess I'm Combeferre forever now!