GIFs
The Graphics Interchange Format was a cornerstone of the early internet, bringing life to static internet pages before streaming video was a possibility and long before Adobe’s Flash came along to muck everything up. Once released upon the world there was no way GIFs were ever going to completely disappear from the internet, but by the early aughts they had more or less become an antiquated design tool (PNG file’s offered transparency with much better quality) and they were a telltale sign you had stumbled across an abandoned website from a forgotten era of the web.
In a time when it seems like there’s now a 50/50 chance of any video shared online getting DMCA’d and taken down, bitesize GIFs feel like a bullet proof alternative to share a favorite pop culture moment, spreading too fast and too efficiently to ever be eradicated. With high-speed data connections on every device we use, GIFs are also now an effective communication tool: often serving as the perfect reaction or comeback without having to type a single word. The antiquated and overly-compressed file format (all part of its charm) can even be considered a potential metric for something or someone’s true celebrity and fame. Would Tim & Eric have as big a cult following today without the millions of GIFs the show spawned?
