# Why are bubbles blinking around my avatar?
**URL:** https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-are-bubbles-blinking-around-my-avatar/348270
**Category:** Support
**Tags:** rewind
**Created:** [January 21, 2025, 10:04pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-are-bubbles-blinking-around-my-avatar/348270 "2025-01-21T22:04:55Z")
**Posts on this page:** 15
**Page:** 1
### Author:  [@hellekin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/hellekin)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2025, 10:04pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-are-bubbles-blinking-around-my-avatar/348270/1 "2025-01-21T22:04:56Z")
Why is my avatar blinking with orbital bubbles? I can’t make it go. I tried dismissing all notifications, it’s sticking there and making me crazy. Please remove this!
I don’t seem to have access to any meaningful chat channel either.
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### Author:  [@hellekin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/hellekin)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2025, 10:12pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-are-bubbles-blinking-around-my-avatar/348270/2 "2025-01-21T22:12:32Z")
The orbitals went away. Can someone please explain?
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### Author:  [@KhoiUSA](https://meta.discourse.org/u/KhoiUSA)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2025, 10:16pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-are-bubbles-blinking-around-my-avatar/348270/3 "2025-01-21T22:16:10Z")
That’s probably related to this: [Discourse Rewind 2024](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-rewind-2024/348063)
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### Author:  [@Arkshine](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Arkshine)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2025, 10:16pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-are-bubbles-blinking-around-my-avatar/348270/4 "2025-01-21T22:16:19Z")
It happened with [Discourse Rewind 2024](https://meta.discourse.org/t/discourse-rewind-2024/348063). It should disappear once you visited it.
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### Author:  [@Heliosurge](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Heliosurge)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2025, 10:24pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-are-bubbles-blinking-around-my-avatar/348270/5 "2025-01-21T22:24:10Z")
Yeah was too bad it disappeared. Kind of liked the visual effect over the simple dot/icon showing a notification. 😉
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### Author:  [@RGJ](https://meta.discourse.org/u/RGJ)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2025, 10:24pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-are-bubbles-blinking-around-my-avatar/348270/6 "2025-01-21T22:24:29Z")
It shows when you have not visited the Rewind page. I struggled to get rid of it as well, and once I did visit “Rewind” (which I love BTW) I can’t find a way to get the link or the effect back.
>
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### Author:  [@HAWK](https://meta.discourse.org/u/HAWK)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2025, 10:24pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-are-bubbles-blinking-around-my-avatar/348270/7 "2025-01-21T22:24:47Z")
Yeah for some reason you have to refresh the page to get rid of it. @jordan.vidrine built it so he can probably comment more.
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### Author:  [@Heliosurge](https://meta.discourse.org/u/Heliosurge)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2025, 10:26pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-are-bubbles-blinking-around-my-avatar/348270/8 "2025-01-21T22:26:35Z")
Be great to have a #Customization > Theme component to add the effects as alternative notifications. 😉
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### Author:  [@hellekin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/hellekin)
#### Post date: [January 21, 2025, 10:32pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-are-bubbles-blinking-around-my-avatar/348270/9 "2025-01-21T22:32:01Z")
This animation is very troubling. Thank you all who responded. Indeed @HAWK, this is when I opened an internal link into a new tab that I noticed the animation had disappeared. I reloaded the original tab and it went away. It’s not so good for epilepsy and other troubles related to stress.
WRT the Discourse Rewind, it looks nice and is quite funny, but somehow found that #ai is an interesting tag for me: maybe because I tried to mute all AI things? – I think I muted that tag anyway.
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### Author:  [@jordan.vidrine](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jordan.vidrine)
#### Post date: [January 22, 2025, 12:49pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-are-bubbles-blinking-around-my-avatar/348270/10 "2025-01-22T12:49:38Z")
Yes, the hovering dots were mostly just a visual attractor for rewind. It was there to get people to click on their avatar, open the notification panel, and see that rewind was available to view 😄
Once you click through to the rewind page, that animation will no longer load, but it does require a refresh. Since this was just an experimental plugin, we didn’t go too deep in storing this data on the user in the DB. We just opted for local storage.
So if you _really_ want to see it appear again, you can remove `discourse_rewind_2024_dismissed` from your localStorage for `meta.discourse.org`
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### Author:  [@hellekin](https://meta.discourse.org/u/hellekin)
#### Post date: [January 22, 2025, 10:54pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-are-bubbles-blinking-around-my-avatar/348270/11 "2025-01-22T22:54:33Z")
I just logged in again and got the Rewind again. Didn’t change anything on the localStorage. Probably an expired session cookie? Probably should be a flag in the DB…
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### Author:  [@jordan.vidrine](https://meta.discourse.org/u/jordan.vidrine)
#### Post date: [January 22, 2025, 10:56pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-are-bubbles-blinking-around-my-avatar/348270/12 "2025-01-22T22:56:51Z")
This was just a quick experimental _possibly_ throw-away project (though I hope we continue to do it). So yes, probably should be in the DB, but it is not.
If you log out and back in, it also triggers the Rewind to happen. It’s something we will take a look at.
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### Author:  [@merefield](https://meta.discourse.org/u/merefield)
#### Post date: [January 22, 2025, 11:18pm UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-are-bubbles-blinking-around-my-avatar/348270/13 "2025-01-22T23:18:47Z")
Something different and fun, why not?! 🙂 👍
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### Author:  [@gassim](https://meta.discourse.org/u/gassim)
#### Post date: [January 23, 2025, 7:51am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-are-bubbles-blinking-around-my-avatar/348270/14 "2025-01-23T07:51:22Z")
> [@Heliosurge](#):
>
> Be great to have a #Customization > Theme component to add the effects as alternative notifications.
Yes! I’d love that very much!
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### Author:  [@system](https://meta.discourse.org/u/system)
#### Post date: [February 22, 2025, 7:51am UTC](https://meta.discourse.org/t/why-are-bubbles-blinking-around-my-avatar/348270/15 "2025-02-22T07:51:40Z")
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