The "animation is here and the world is ending" thread

Now that animated gifs are allowed, what is your reaction?

Shock?

Panic?

Thrill?

Or are you just waiting for that one guy to ruin things for everybody?

My hope is that it doesn’t freeze my PC. When people show some gifs, especially a long row of them, it can glitch up my screen.

(not you - you haven’t frozen me yet - but I anticipate some Dopers may do a dozen or two of them)

Well,I don’t feel fine.

You know the other thread, “why has the SDMB stayed around”? Because we didn’t have stupid things like animated gifs. Can we have mutilple signatures and quotes automatically attached, too?

I can’t figure out how to post images, let alone little movies like that, so I won’t be using up anyone’s bandwidth.

Because all sites that allow animated gifs rapidly fail? …

Yes, that’s exactly what I meant. Cause and effect are interchangeable.

I think a better question is, has adding it benefited other sites that were going downhill?

What next? Auto-playing video clips with sound?

Animated anything is distracting, unless you’ve specifically opened the page because you want to see that.

I have a setting somewhere that only allows the gif to play once per page load, or something like that. Most of the time, they are finished before I get to them. Like the one immediately above this.

I think it’s a bad idea given how they work on this platform. Every social media site I know of has Animated GIFs set up where you have to click to play them. That way they don’t get annoying or waste bandwidth. It’s a good way to keep all sides happy.

I don’t see any pressing need for them, either. People here don’t tend to post “reaction GIFs,” and that’s their main purpose online. And what purpose they do serve would seem to be easily covered by video links. Most sharing sites convert GIFs to video anyways at this point.

I’m not exactly upset, as I don’t expect the annoying ones to be used much except in threads where they’re appropriate, or by Dopers trying to annoy, who will then get blasted for it. I don’t see this changing the underlying culture of the Board too much. We won’t become a meme board or anything.

But I do not understand why this was something @Ed_Zotti thought was a pressing need. I don’t see any thread asking for them, and we have plenty of things we have asked for that remain unfulfilled.

I’ve set my browser not to play animated gifs anywhere.

I find them highly irritating, and I don’t think they add anything to a site in any way.

Ordinary images and embedded videos (that you have to click to play) are great, but animated gifs… just NO.

And the SDMB joins the 21st century. Animated gifs are pretty standard everywhere. It’s pretty amusing to watch people here freak out about something that is so basic.

Just because they are widespread doesn’t mean they are good.

A stupid idea is stupid, no matter how cool and hip some people may think it makes the site look.

Seriously though, people, I think we’ll mostly see a lot of “Kitten Gifs!!!” threads, knowing this place.

(Oh, and to post one, just cut and paste the URL of the gif. Although, like any other picture, you should upload it to your own website, like imgur.com. Hotlinking from the original source is a dick thing to do.)

Doesn’t mean it’s stupid, either. This place is starting to look like a “get off my lawn!” website more and more each day. Do you want the Dope to survive, or not?

Look at the uproar about avatars – well, it’s been over a year, and none of the dire predictions came true. I love the Dope, but I absolutely loathe the way people around here act like a bunch of old stick-in-the-muds, and refuse to change with the times, then complain that the place is dying.

In this case, “the times” is the late 1990s.

ONOZ PANIC PANIC PANIC!!!

https:// gph.is/g/aQQW7qB

:yawning_face: :scream: :yawning_face:

Remember the old text sites with flashing text?

:crazy_face:  

So, this will help us survive?