The Long, Remarkable History of the GIF
It's honestly something I've become quite bitter about.  I find the resurgence of the gif has significantly reduced my enjoyment of browsing websites like reddit.  Even small subs which used to be the place to go for deeper discussion have largely devolved into image boards targeting the lowest common denominator.<p>When it's appropriate I have no problem with a video.  But if posting a video it should really be in its original form.  Uploading to Youtube or even just using a <video> tag lets the viewer decide if they want to listen to audio, and what resolution to watch in.  It's pretty rare that I'd choose to watch in no sound and at the lowest resolution possible.  Not to mention the absurd amount of data gifs download.<p>The recent trend of converting videos into gifs <i>back</i> into videos (websites like gfycat) make even less sense.  All you're doing is damaging the quality of the video.  To what end?<p>Even articles that are posted are now scattered with gifs.  Why?  I guess because it's trendy.  But it makes it incredibly difficult to focus on the text.  The article above is a good (and likely self-aware) example, but this one from Atom also stuck out for me.<p><a href="http://blog.atom.io/2016/02/03/introducing-block-decorations.html" rel="nofollow">http://blog.atom.io/2016/02/03/introducing-block-decorations...</a><p>Terribly nauseating.<p>So that's my rant.  Frankly I'd welcome a browser extension to block animated gifs online and hide reddit posts than only link to them.