How do GIFS make you feel?

[garystu]

Love:
Animated images are fun. Love it when the pictures move.

Hate:
The file format is outdated as shit, and is carried by compatibility internia. It should have been superceded by a combination of PNG and web video formats like fifteen years ago, but due to a variety of factors it hasn't shaken out that way. Its absurd.

yeah I still make GIFs in current year

Netural:
Reaction GIFs have always been embarrassing. Crucially, they're not more embarrassing than any other reaction images. Everyone is embarrassing forever. Deal with it.


Oh yeah, but Giphy? Giphy, specifically? Deeply cringe.

To take away:
GIFs are outdated and should be replaced, but only with new tools that can fufill the same creative outlets, and even improve them. 256 colours? 1-bit image alpha? give us more!!!!! give us more yesterday!!!!!!!!!

while my ideal replacements would be things like pngs and oggs, things of that nature, i dont hate webp, at least webp is finally moving things in the right direction

ASSUMING Google won't be massive turds, which they always are

Interesting web history:
https://burnallgifs.org/archives/

[BlazingCobaltX]

I love gifs, but in particular the Tumblr-gifset style. I like it when the gif is clean, as HQ as possible, and shows exactly enough of a scene to capture its impact. As a teen I made several gifs, but eventually Photoshop started changing too much and I lost interest in adapting. Have to say I don't miss it; it was fun to do back when I had a lot of spare time.

I don't feel gifs have a bad reputation at all. Some use cases have been dated, maybe, but the format is timeless in my eyes. Why would you not like moving pictures?

[moonunions]

i loooove gifs so much! it's definitely mostly because of nostalgia. back in the day when livejournal was popping, me and my friends would spam gifs back and forth in our comments. it was fun to try and find the perfect gif, snag gifs from other threads, and just goof off without having to tl;dr our thoughts every time. i look back on those casual interactions very fondly. :3

nowadays i use them less often since my main form of contact is discord (blegh), and it can be a bit ass when it comes to gif searching. ah well, that's how it be sometimes.

ty for the articles as well, they look super interesting!

[Dreamwings]

I love gifs. I've always been fascinated with them. I got on the internet a bit later and it was by the time when social media had taken over but before when gifs became commonplace on SNS besides Tumblr like they are today and I rememember being absolutely amazed and hypnotized by them because they were just like the super cool moving pictures from the Harry Potter movies (I was a major Harry Potter kid back then ). I became so amazed I made a Giphey account (before Tenor took over the integrated gif picker game it was Giphy) and made them on there myself (mostly MLP stuff) and that was my first social media experience. I took my job of making those moving horse pictures very seriously, as though it was an art form itself. Each one had to be perfect.
I still think they're super cool and fun (and still think of them like the cool moving pictures from the Harry Potter movies). There is literally so much you can do with them. I mean, yeah nowadays they're pretty awful format wise but they're iconic in a way (and webps still aren't accepted enough to take their place yet). I mean, literally what is cooler than a picture that moves (and isn't a video), honestly.
That being said though... I do kindaaa see where the article is coming from when they say that gifs are for boomers and outdated because the way that older people tend to use them (since they're integrated everywhere like in the tenor gif pickers) does make them obnoxious and a bit cringe. But if you overlook that and dig through said gif pickers for the gold, theres still the fun stuff (clips, etc).
Anyways, one of these days I need to get into making my own little, old-internet style pixel gifs. I have no idea where all those old websites got all of those dancing anime girls and stuff but I want to make my own with modern anime girls. (and maybe some other things too). Retro style, hand-traced made and all.

I really agree with this but I also feel like GIFs are a double sided coin, much like regular reaction images or memes they can be very cringy, my best example of this in GIFs being discord. Opening the gifs section of discord brings all these "sO rElAtaBlE" GIFs that just feel really soulless and uninspired. On the other hand I adore sites that have old GIFs, especially ones that feel like they were made specifically for that site

These are probably what the author was talking about when they said they were for boomers (and then just going off the first page results). You have to dig for the ones made by normal people by using certain keywords (too few and you get those).

Inspired by this thread, I did a little GIF while trying to curate my latest virus infection:


I use GIMP to create them. Works pretty well :).

Howwwww??? I've always found GIMPs gif creator to be a pain in the ass. No timeline, no variable framerates, etc. I had a difficult time making a gif that was literally just switching between two existing images at the same interval.

I only do somewhat agree to "the medium is the message" - this might be true when regarding the macro-room, but on my individual level - I've seen terrible, pretty, practical GIFs over the years - they evoked various emotions, and I think they are as versatile as any other medium - yet I've seen few artists who managed to create gifs that really affected me. I think their full artistic potential is yet to be extrapolated.

What do you mean by that exactly, when you say gifs that really affected you? I don't mean it in a snarky way or like "Harhar thats impossible", I'm just a little confused and kinda curious if you could elaborate maybe?

[ThunderPerfectWitchcraft]

Howwwww??? I've always found GIMPs gif creator to be a pain in the ass. No timeline, no variable framerates, etc. I had a difficult time making a gif that was literally just switching between two existing images at the same interval.

I make layers, duplicate them, and then edit/move the duplicate. You can set individual times for layers by adding (500ms) (or any other number) to the name of the layer. Sometimes I use layer groups for more complex stuff.

What do you mean by that exactly, when you say gifs that really affected you? I don't mean it in a snarky way or like "Harhar thats impossible", I'm just a little confused and kinda curious if you could elaborate maybe?

As said, it is rare. An example that comes to mind is the work of Dain Fagerholm:


they might seem kitschy as no tomorrow on the first glance, but I think there is some ambiguity in there - a desire, a wish for romanticism within the bleakness, and the option that it might be reachable. They come to my mind sometimes.

This would be a possible example. As said, they are rather rare, but they exist.

On the other hand, I remember a crisis in another land, largely caused by "my" nations politic. Our local media didn't exactly ignore it, but, you know how it is, they tuned everything down a bit. Back then, I followed an critical reporter who shared a short, gruesome video snippet that autoplayed when I opened the site. It was like a window to hell, and stayed very present for me for various days - and maybe even ever since. If it had been a video file, I wouldn't have started it; most scripts are blocked on my system. But thanks to being a .gif, it sneaked past all my defenses - and this versatility was why the reporter used it - he wanted this thing to be seen by as many people as possible, and utilized a format that allowed it to be easily plastered on various corners of the internet.

----------------------

I once dreamed that my father was devoured by the moon that fell down from the sky. Within my dream, I opened a news site, and saw, among other things, a GIF depicting the scene.

[littlesecret]

Thanks for the articles!

Gifs are amazing. Theyre perfectly expressive, I love seeing a tiny dance or movement from an image, It adds a lot of texture and personality to anything you put it on.

I especially like tiny gifs like the ones on this forum, they feel like mini stickers, a personal stamp. I've added a few to my website as like a mini "badge" section and i've also started signing my emails off with a tiny gif. It makes me smile and feel like I'm being myself.

Any chance i get to decorate myself and put my own personal stamp on things, i'll take it. its important it feeds the soul. i dont think i did that enough when i was younger, like decorate my room and whatnot. so now i make it a point to decorate everything nad make it expressive.

[Paprika]

I like gif in general, especially for blinkies, buttons or stamps. However the big gifs like at Giphy and stuff are sort of boring because there's too many weird stuff, crypto bros hidden ads and irony. So I tend to use those less and less. I don't "hate" it either but you know, I like them small and nice. The only exception is the gif of the whole Morbius movie, it's hilarious !

[MrsMoe]

I like gif in general, especially for blinkies, buttons or stamps. However the big gifs like at Giphy and stuff are sort of boring because there's too many weird stuff, crypto bros hidden ads and irony. So I tend to use those less and less. I don't "hate" it either but you know, I like them small and nice. The only exception is the gif of the whole Morbius movie, it's hilarious !

This is basically how I feel.

I think it's CRAZY to dub gifs as a whole as a cringe. Like, how are you gonna deem all moving images under the sun as cringe by default?

However, the type of reaction gifs old people and millennials use do put me off a bit. The kind of stuff you'd find in the twitter or tumblr gif search by default, I mean. I don't know why, but I think it's the association with "weird aunt on facebook" type people that makes it so cringe to me and other younger people.

[devils]

I love GIFs, even for static images. The dithering looks cool, the only reason I use PNGs more is because I can compress them in bulk easier...

GIFs are the bees knees! Some people loved them so much they made entire pages full of glittery, rotating, swirly, moving things that could make your eyes and brain hurt.

One of the best editors made for creating them was made by big, bad Microsoft - MS GIF Animator back in the days of Windows 95. I was making some just last night, but in Photoshop using its Timeline.

I had never heard of MS GIF Animator, that's really cool! Man, I wish I had been using Microsoft when it was actually good XD

[brisray]

Information is power and money - lots of it, that's why companies got so nosey and collect everything they can about you and try and lock you into their products. Companies are just collections of people and there are plenty of those around who are just dicks. Just because you can, doesn't mean you should, which is exactly why AI is being misused.

There are also plenty of nice people around. The entire FOSS community is made up of those, and even the companies that people love to hate have contributed so much to what we do. Microsoft gave us Movie Maker, I still use it for simple edits. My copy dates from 2012, it was first made for Windows ME, and still works on Windows 11. Even FrontPage was given away. It was horrible, but allowed many people to create their first websites. MS Expression, which was also free, was much better and had one of the best screen recorders available built into it.

Over the years Google has given a lot of software and resources away. Their collection of APIs is outstanding. I've been using their Chart API on my sites for years.They've also given a lot and then taken them away, I miss some of that software. I don't know why they discontinued them, but some were very useful.

Today, both companies are focusing on AI and must be spending billons of dollars on it. To see where computing is heading and what could be available take a look at Microsoft Research and Google Research.

A couple of years ago the emphasis was on imaging and multimedia, and what both companies were developing was unbelievable. These are the pages where early VR, 3D virtual desktops and the compression techniques used in WEBP and WEBM were demonstrated. Microsoft came up with the Image Composite Editor (ICE) that was only available from their research pages. At the time it was far in advance of anything else available, even Adobe couldn't do anything like it.

[brisray]

And while I am here...


GitHub probably has everything you could possibly want or do but there are other places. Knight Lab at Northwestern University has some nice utilities that I've used on different sites.

[ennui]

i love gifs, even the so called cringe reaction ones. i use them with my partner all the time when i can't find the words to convey what im thinking. even the older gifs that lots of us use on our personal sites, the little pixel ones. i used to be able to make my own gifs back when i had a tumblr but since it's been decades i've completely forgotten how.

[Monoki]

I love gifs honestly. I probably overuse them a lot in various places on the net. but sometimes a moving picture is a better way of conveying certain things than a static image imo.

Added note with the web revival, It adds to the look and ive found it useful to make gifs for animated webpage elements. though i could stand to make more.

[boyrotting]

I think gifs are awesome! I can kinda get what the article is trying to say. Some gifs *cough cough* THOSE 'happy Monday ones' *cough cough* are the kind of things you see old people using. Although sometimes I find myself (a teenager) using those as well because they make me feel silly . And honestly, I always assume anyone who uses the word cringe just hates joy and whimsy. Use however many gifs your heart desires if they make you feel good.