Avatar is too long (maximum is 307200 characters)

What does this even mean? I want to update my avatar with something well within the parameters from derpibooro, but I get this error.
 
’Splain?

Does it really say characters and not bytes?
 
The avatar page says the maximum file size is 300 kilobytes, which is 307200 bytes. So make sure the file you’re uploading is smaller than that.

Welp, I guess that means no dancing Apple Bloom for my avatar, because I can’t edit gifs.
 
And yes, it said characters.

@aoqazu  
Run it through an every day online image resizer or something.

@The Smiling Pony
 
Yeah, I tried that. I guess I’ll give it another shot.
 
Edit: Seems to have worked

Fascinating; I’d never noticed that this forum architecture doesn’t retroactively replace avatars on older posts.

@TexasUberAlles  
Actually, it does.
 
What happens is the site caches the entire post, avatar, post count and all, as those are things that change not very often at all. Is much cheaper than for every post checking the current avatar, postcount, name, whatnot like other forums do. It will expire after a few hours and get the latest data, and there are some events (like editing the post) that will force a refresh.
 
Shoestring budget and all requires those sort of shortcuts. Thankfully most people don’t notice =p

@The Smiling Pony  
Ah, that makes sense, thanks; it was the same way when the spoiler image got changed, and for a while it was just showing a list of all the tags in the space where the Jpeg should have been… all the spoilery tags.
 
I just thought it was really weird that aoqazu changed his avatar, but his older posts still had a placeholder, since I’d never seen that happen before in a forum (apparently because I’d never seen it happen in real time).