GIF (Graphic Interchange Format) is a format for graphic computer files. It was quite popular in the early days of the Internet, because it produced small files, and it had the ability to show small animated sequences. It fell from favour because:
With the spread of digital cameras, JPEG became the standard file format for photos, and the new PNG (portable Network Graphic) gained wide acceptance. GIF disappeared into the big hard drive in the sky, along side Netscape, WinAmp and PKZip.
So for myself and other Web we were shocked last year when Oxford University Press - publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary - named "GIF" as the word of the year, lauding it as a new and growing trend. They also claimed it had reached the gold-standard of Internet slang: it had become a verb.
Dictionaries don't have the greatest record when it comes to picking up Net-related words and phrases. It seems that whenever you see one of these articles about a dictionary adding new words, naming the word of the year, or predicting the big breakthrough slang for next year, it always turns out to be either a word that no one is really using, or a word that's already come and gone.
But GIF was so far gone that it made us all wonder: surely even the squares who write dictionaries couldn't be that far behind the times. Was there some new trend, some groundswell of GIF usage that I've been oblivious to? Did the kids stumble on GIFs as a way of getting ironic hipster-cred?
It didn't help when I see Jon Stewart drop a mention of GIFs on The Daily Show. He's precisely the sort of person who might be ahead of the times or behind it. If Letterman mentioned it, I'd assume it was out of date. On the other hand, if Fallon mentions it, you can assume it's an actual trend (albeit one that's just about run its course).
Also, we always used to pronounce it with a hard "G," but Stewart's mention was the second time in recent days I'd heard it pronouced with a "J" sound, like Jif peanut butter. So now I don't even know how to talk about it.
Now you could ask why I care about this. If I used GIFs back in the day, then left them behind when they were no longer useful, why should I be worried that young people who don't know any better are making them cool again? I'm sure lots of people have this kind of situation, but with mini-skirts or punk or something else infinitely cooler than graphic file formats. So choose your moral to this story:
- The pictures are limited to 256 colours
- Unisys owned a patent on the mathematical processes behind it, and tried to get licensing fees from companies that used it
- Little animations got really annoying really quickly.
With the spread of digital cameras, JPEG became the standard file format for photos, and the new PNG (portable Network Graphic) gained wide acceptance. GIF disappeared into the big hard drive in the sky, along side Netscape, WinAmp and PKZip.
So for myself and other Web we were shocked last year when Oxford University Press - publishers of the Oxford English Dictionary - named "GIF" as the word of the year, lauding it as a new and growing trend. They also claimed it had reached the gold-standard of Internet slang: it had become a verb.
Dictionaries don't have the greatest record when it comes to picking up Net-related words and phrases. It seems that whenever you see one of these articles about a dictionary adding new words, naming the word of the year, or predicting the big breakthrough slang for next year, it always turns out to be either a word that no one is really using, or a word that's already come and gone.
But GIF was so far gone that it made us all wonder: surely even the squares who write dictionaries couldn't be that far behind the times. Was there some new trend, some groundswell of GIF usage that I've been oblivious to? Did the kids stumble on GIFs as a way of getting ironic hipster-cred?
It didn't help when I see Jon Stewart drop a mention of GIFs on The Daily Show. He's precisely the sort of person who might be ahead of the times or behind it. If Letterman mentioned it, I'd assume it was out of date. On the other hand, if Fallon mentions it, you can assume it's an actual trend (albeit one that's just about run its course).
Also, we always used to pronounce it with a hard "G," but Stewart's mention was the second time in recent days I'd heard it pronouced with a "J" sound, like Jif peanut butter. So now I don't even know how to talk about it.
Now you could ask why I care about this. If I used GIFs back in the day, then left them behind when they were no longer useful, why should I be worried that young people who don't know any better are making them cool again? I'm sure lots of people have this kind of situation, but with mini-skirts or punk or something else infinitely cooler than graphic file formats. So choose your moral to this story:
- cyclic trends are ultimately pointless
- culture now moves so quickly that dying trends are almost butting up against the revival of the trend
- Talk show hosts and thousand-year-old universities should not be used as bellwethers of fashion.
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