AAAHH!
October 18, 2010 5:44 PM   Subscribe

 
Never would have expected Celine Dion to be making all those goofy faces. That is her, right?
posted by brundlefly at 5:46 PM on October 18, 2010


Sorry, that should be "all of your gif related needs." Looks like I'll be needing this one.
posted by lauratheexplorer at 5:47 PM on October 18, 2010


And yes, that's her.
posted by lauratheexplorer at 5:48 PM on October 18, 2010


What sets the internet apart from other modes of communication—video, audio, text, imagery—is the way it translates a combination of forms into meaning through the use of animated gifs.

This is inaccurate.
posted by Anything at 5:55 PM on October 18, 2010 [6 favorites]


Can someone start a flame war so that I can use the popcorn one?
posted by His thoughts were red thoughts at 5:55 PM on October 18, 2010


I will admit right now, right here that I have a huge collection of hilarious and weird animated GIFs. I don't know why, but they're so much better than regular videos.
posted by spiderskull at 5:57 PM on October 18, 2010 [2 favorites]


Oh great. Next up: Barbara Walters interviews Christopher Poole. But first, is cancer killing bees?
posted by anigbrowl at 5:59 PM on October 18, 2010 [5 favorites]


Somebody loves them some fourfour, I see.

A lot of these are straight from Rich's marvelous gif walls.
posted by louche mustachio at 6:00 PM on October 18, 2010 [2 favorites]


This is why space aliens gave us the internet.
posted by absalom at 6:04 PM on October 18, 2010


I will admit right now, right here that I have made a huge collection of hilarious and weird animated GIFs. I don't know why, but they're so much better than regular videos. I spent a large chunk of time yesterday making a gif of a squirrel poking its head out of Nicki Minaj's underpants.
posted by louche mustachio at 6:06 PM on October 18, 2010 [15 favorites]




Can someone start a flame war so that I can use the popcorn one?

Of course not, you fucking moron. God, the very idea of it would make Hitler sick with disgust.

I have a huge collection of hilarious and weird animated GIFs. I don't know why, but they're so much better than regular videos.

Same reason that image macros are so much better than regular pictures.
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 6:12 PM on October 18, 2010


YES. I love gifs. No longer shall I troll ONTD for funny ones.
posted by Solon and Thanks at 6:17 PM on October 18, 2010


What is the source for the rather disturbing "I'm Out (Emphatic)"?
posted by grabbingsand at 6:17 PM on October 18, 2010


Applause - expression of approval, appreciation, acclaim

But... But... That's really not what's going on in the movie there.
posted by Artw at 6:18 PM on October 18, 2010 [2 favorites]


Aaaahhahahahaha! Every time it loops I just keep thinking "nooo, Mariah Carey! Don't do it!"
posted by phunniemee at 6:19 PM on October 18, 2010 [2 favorites]


God, I need to stop seeing Dawson's cryface. It haunts me.
posted by something something at 6:19 PM on October 18, 2010


So matt, when we gettin' that image tag back?
posted by marxchivist at 6:28 PM on October 18, 2010 [9 favorites]




Goddamn, Busey. I guess this is the new infinite Hasselhoff.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 6:31 PM on October 18, 2010 [1 favorite]


Bringing LOLs to the web for 23 years. It's the gif that keeps on giving.
posted by googly at 6:33 PM on October 18, 2010


Here are some of my favorite gifs ever--some pre-Star Trek Leonard Nimoy movie

http://community.livejournal.com/ontd_startrek/1063689.html

I'm not really sure what emotion they are supposed to express, tho.
posted by Ideal Impulse at 6:34 PM on October 18, 2010


"Hey you got Spaceghetto in my Metafilter."
"You got Metafilter in my Spaceghetto!"
Note: Do not Google Spaceghetto
posted by msbutah at 6:34 PM on October 18, 2010 [1 favorite]


brundlefly: "Never would have expected Celine Dion to be making all those goofy faces. That is her, right?"

<ahem> Why do I know about this?
posted by Songdog at 6:37 PM on October 18, 2010 [5 favorites]


Did someone say gif related needs? I present exhibit A.

Warning: gifs. Lots of gifs
posted by special-k at 6:38 PM on October 18, 2010


I'm a big fan of "I'm out (emphatic)", care of Brian De Palma.

Lately, I've been very amused by the avant-garde animated gifs from the nigh-unnavigable ariel rebel's haunted gräfenberg spot. Link very NSFW. I recommend just hitting "random" to get to older posts. Example, example, example, example.
posted by Sticherbeast at 6:42 PM on October 18, 2010 [2 favorites]


Of course, this thread would be much better if there was still an image tag.
posted by 517 at 6:45 PM on October 18, 2010


GIFS ARE OLD NEWS. THE BLINK TAG IS THE NEW NEWS THERE IS NO EMOTION IT CANNOT EXPRESS.

SADNESS

JOY

ANGER

AGREEMENT

AND EVEN

SUBDUED DISGUST CONCEALED BEHIND POLITE SMILE

GIFS ARE MERELY THE USE OF SHARED CULTURAL REFERENCES USED AS SHORTHAND FOR COMPLEX EMOTIONS AND SOCIAL ACTIONS. A PHENOMENON NOT UNLIKE LANGUAGE. BUT THE BLINK TAG IS MORE. EXCITEMENT! IT IS A WAY OF LIFE. SAINTLY CONFIDENCE THE BLINK TAG CAN DO ALL THAT THE GIF CANNOT, AND MANY THINGS THAT EVEN THE BLINK TAG CANNOT. RESPECTFUL AWE THE BLINK TAG IS NOT ONLY THE FUTURE, IT IS ALWAYS. SAY GOODBYE GIF AND HELLO AGAIN TO BLINK. UNEXPECTED SENSATIONS OF HOPE
posted by TwelveTwo at 6:51 PM on October 18, 2010 [8 favorites]


That Oh No They Didn't needs a great big NSFW tag.

Mind you with a thread like this it should probably be assumed
posted by Fiasco da Gama at 6:54 PM on October 18, 2010


Needs more Tyra!
posted by ThePinkSuperhero at 7:07 PM on October 18, 2010


ah, brings back memory of the Hamster Dance page. And just about as browser-crippling, too.
posted by Old'n'Busted at 7:08 PM on October 18, 2010


I don't normally care for Jezebel, but this is pretty great.
posted by X-Himy at 7:14 PM on October 18, 2010


So, the Dramatic Hamster Prairie Dog is being voted off the island because he isn't an airheaded B-List celebrity? I don't think so.
posted by oneswellfoop at 7:20 PM on October 18, 2010


Just as lame as expected.

" I have a huge collection of hilarious and weird animated GIFs"

No, No you don't. You have a huge collection of animated GIFs.
posted by blackfly at 7:32 PM on October 18, 2010


This seems to be a stunning example of the world gone awry.
posted by ND¢ at 7:33 PM on October 18, 2010


I don't know why, but they're so much better than regular videos.

From Christina Hendricks on an Endless Loop: The glorious GIF renaissance:

"There is an appealing economy to these GIFs. They get to the point instantaneously, and at the exact moment when one feels the impulse to rewind and watch the climax again, the loop restarts right where it should."
posted by a snickering nuthatch at 7:40 PM on October 18, 2010 [3 favorites]


Animated gifs! I love this art form. No thread about animated gifs is complete without mentioning the great cyriak. (previously) If this were the renaissance, and I were nobility, I would be a serious patron of that man.

I realize this doesn't meet the wordless display of a sentiment as the Jezebel post describes them, but I feel that the venerable You're the Man Now, Dog was instrumental in pushing gifs beyond the poor man's binaries and shaping the tone of the internet today.
posted by frecklefaerie at 7:54 PM on October 18, 2010


I stand by my previous statements.

Feel free to mention it every chance you get. Or, you know, don't.
posted by muddgirl at 8:07 PM on October 18, 2010


Of course, I had to go through my personal collection (and remind myself why I should NOT be blogging)...

Waiting...

We're not getting anywhere with this...

Dust off that thing!

THE classic slap in the face...

It's dead...

Mmmm, chocolate milk...

Read HIS lips.

DO NOT WANT (slow-loading bunnies, please don't tell anyone at bunnyfilter I have this)

I think I've had too much coffee (if the logo looks like this)

Hi, Bill!

not animated but my best depiction of a MAJOR FAIL

also not animated, but still... "I can work with that!"

Can't we just agree to disagree?

So-o-o-o-o cute... (again, don't tell anyone at bunnyfilter)

BEYOND Jumping the Shark...

and finally, this must NEVER be replaced at the universal symbol of "YA-A-A-A-A-AY!!!"
posted by oneswellfoop at 8:08 PM on October 18, 2010 [2 favorites]


Somebody loves them some fourfour, I see.

Tracie and Rich are BFF. They co-host Pot Psychology at Jezebel, too.
posted by one.louder.ash! at 8:25 PM on October 18, 2010




This page is lacking in sexy Katy Perry gifs.
posted by waraw at 8:29 PM on October 18, 2010


In my head I hear TwelveTwo's comment in the robot voice from Radiohead's Fitter Happier.
posted by axiom at 8:44 PM on October 18, 2010


This page is lacking in sexy Katy Perry gifs.

I don't know. I'm hot and I'm cold on those ones.
posted by GuyZero at 8:54 PM on October 18, 2010


GIF PARTY

(some are very NSFW)
posted by zinfandel at 9:09 PM on October 18, 2010


I realize this doesn't meet the wordless display of a sentiment as the Jezebel post describes them, but I feel that the venerable You're the Man Now, Dog was instrumental in pushing gifs beyond the poor man's binaries and shaping the tone of the internet today.

Is this now the thread where we post our favorite YTMNDs? Mine is Lol is my child.
posted by heathkit at 9:27 PM on October 18, 2010


I stand by my previous statements.

Feel free to mention it every chance you get. Or, you know, don't.


I figure he's just very proud to be hosting all of those websites on his local machine. Odd to use a server for metafiltering, but what are you gonna do?
posted by flaterik at 9:27 PM on October 18, 2010


Ok this one is pretty fantastic, too.
posted by heathkit at 9:32 PM on October 18, 2010


Even the Cheezburger Empire has a site full o' gifs. (SFW but still disturbing)
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:36 PM on October 18, 2010


The total lack of IMG tags and avatars and signatures is the #1 reason MetaFilter has remained so much better than almost every other forum-style website.
posted by straight at 9:50 PM on October 18, 2010 [3 favorites]


I could totally stare at this one for hours, it's just so... sinister!
posted by drinkyclown at 9:51 PM on October 18, 2010


I was going to comment on the "Deal With It + Sunglasses" meme, but I think this covers it.
posted by oneswellfoop at 9:56 PM on October 18, 2010


I'm Commander Shepard and this is my "favorite" thread on Metafilter.

(And this, just because.)
posted by kmz at 10:19 PM on October 18, 2010


I made an American clown once. It took ages to make. It didn't mean anything either. Don't know why I bothered really. Did I mention that it took a long time to make?
posted by unliteral at 10:26 PM on October 18, 2010 [1 favorite]


This gif expresses the discomfort felt when disembodied legs erupt out of a chandelier and begin circling you.
posted by benzenedream at 10:30 PM on October 18, 2010


Once I made a great gif once using images from a old-timey stick-fighting manual that was posted to MetaFilter, but I uploaded it to free Imageshack and the computer it was stored on died. I had been planning on making a series of them featuring the two combatants, one a rich dude and another a poor guy, with the rich dude always exclaiming 'Egad, a pauper!' before giving the wretch a well-deserved drubbing. As often with my clearly brilliant ideas I never followed through, but I've always suspected that Kate Beaton telepathically stole the opening line of my idea, altered it enough to evade litigation, and to compound the hurt, made pretty awesome comics.
posted by Alvy Ampersand at 11:03 PM on October 18, 2010


Don't click this. Seriously, don't.
posted by Brocktoon at 11:20 PM on October 18, 2010 [3 favorites]


All right, one of my favorite subjects. Braindump time!

My speculative history of the revival of animated GIFs on the web:

On 4chan, a lot of the images posted (that aren't macros) are "reaction images" — images of faces that represent readers' responses to the original post. This site has the authoritative collection of reaction images: MyFaceWhen — and it calls them "Like using emoticons, on steroids!"

That is exactly what's going on, and it's fantastic: instead of having text abstractions stand in for our faces, they/we use other people's faces to stand in for our faces when talking anonymously and virtually.

Then ONTD borrows this idea of reaction images from 4chan, being another insanely active community of deeply internet-savvy people -- but LJ allows for embedding inline GIFs, unlike 4chan, and ONTD members make and share tons of GIFs of animated reaction faces, because that's an even more fun way to appropriate other people's expressions as your own. This catches on in the vast hordes of ONTD-influenced LJ communities as well, and then ONTD-influenced sites like Jezebel and some areas of Tumblr, and on and on throughout the web. Excellent.

See also:

What sets the internet apart from other modes of communication—video, audio, text, imagery—is the way it translates a combination of forms into meaning through the use of animated gifs. — they're half-joking, but there's a bit of truth to this. See In Defense of the Blink Tag by Timoni West: "the blink tag is the HTML tag that truly makes use of the dynamic possibilities of the digital medium beyond what’s available in a conventional (e.g., paper) 2-d setting." I don't know of anything really equivalent to a GIF in other mediums — a short loop of something moving alongside static elements. Maybe related to familar sounds like the Wilhelm scream or the Amen break, repeatable and recognizable snippets inside other works, but not really.

The Year of The Animated Gif at Art Fag City: "So why are artists suddenly more interested in the file format? It’s hard to say, but one theory tabled in a recent conversation, suggested a reaction to a decrease in websites and search engines able to handle the file format as a possible explanation." — I really like Art Fag City, and it's a good post, but I don't know about this. I think there is something web-nostalgic about people appreciating GIFs, and something sophisticated, too: quick and easy embedded video was novel and interesting a few years ago, and slick easy self-publishing was novel a couple years ago, but what next? The novelty of collective shared bits of culture as embedded in GIFs, maybe.

And for the art theory reader in you: The Affect of Animated GIFs as quoted on Tom Moody's blog (one of the most interesting gif artists around): "animated gifs function like cinematic close-ups — 'abstractions isolating the object from the time-space coordinates in which we were moving'...A close-up immediately cancels out the whole that precedes it...the endlessly looping structure does enhance a kind of 'anaesthetic' state..."

And more thinky thinking:

GIFs are the form of art native to the web, in the same way that basketball is the sport native to the United States — maybe not the most popular or well-loved product of the web, but genuinely created and produced and grown here. They're weird and ugly and spontaneous and complex and incredibly diverse, easy to save and post and trade, supported in every browser, authorless and public domain. I love them. (I really want to make a FFFFOUND just for gifs, but maybe with Delicious-style tagging so I can easily view and access all my pizza-related gifs on a whim. I call it the "labyrinth of forking gifs" in my head. We'll see if I ever get around to actually making it happen.)
posted by dreamyshade at 11:37 PM on October 18, 2010 [21 favorites]


Gifs—"graphics interchange formats"...

[INSERT MILDLY AMUSING CRINGE GIF HERE]
posted by Dr Dracator at 11:49 PM on October 18, 2010 [1 favorite]


Let's bring back midis!
posted by TwelveTwo at 12:47 AM on October 19, 2010


I lol'd
posted by delmoi at 3:02 AM on October 19, 2010


if we were in in fourchan right now i would make fun of how that jezebel post is like How To Internet For Girls ©2006. But that would be dumb because animated gifs, even megaOLD ones are still awesome and that thread introduced me to SnookiBombing, which, I mean, Thanks.
posted by Potomac Avenue at 4:57 AM on October 19, 2010


I can never work this gif into any online conversation besides "hey everyone, what's your favorite animated gif?" so here you go:

Mr. Rogers learns how to pop and lock
posted by Metroid Baby at 6:37 AM on October 19, 2010 [6 favorites]


They forgot the That's RACIST! kid.
posted by klangklangston at 9:21 AM on October 19, 2010 [2 favorites]


Metroid Baby wrote: "I can never work this gif into any online conversation besides "hey everyone, what's your favorite animated gif?" so here you go:

Mr. Rogers learns how to pop and lock
"

I think that one is perfect for any time you want to say "WTF," but "WTF" is not quite..enough.
posted by wierdo at 9:49 AM on October 19, 2010 [1 favorite]


Still one of the most useful gifs: O RLY?
posted by barrett caulk at 10:16 AM on October 19, 2010 [1 favorite]



The total lack of IMG tags and avatars and signatures is the #1 reason MetaFilter has remained so much better than almost every other forum-style website.



If we had the IMG tag here I would never leave the house. I would be hunched over my Wacom tablet all day long. I would dine on nothing but microwaved fishsticks and Fresca, and would lose all my depth perception.

Unrelated: I did not make this, and I don't know who did, but tell them I love them.
posted by louche mustachio at 11:01 AM on October 19, 2010


I looked for, and was sad to not find, my favorite .gif:

Italian Spiderman Hippie Freakout

posted by chaff at 12:28 PM on October 19, 2010 [2 favorites]


louche mustachio: "Unrelated: I did not make this, and I don't know who did, but tell them I love them."

That would be by Cyriak, who has made pretty much every single one of my favorite gifs. (More here)
posted by flatluigi at 1:31 PM on October 19, 2010


My fave
posted by rossmeissl at 7:38 PM on October 19, 2010 [1 favorite]


Nice.

Also great.

Not too shabby, either.

My personal fave.
posted by Durn Bronzefist at 8:09 PM on October 19, 2010 [1 favorite]


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