GIFs are more popular than ever, but their roots date back to 1987. Before the internet was what it is today, GIFs—or graphics interchange format—made their way into society as short, silent, usually humorous clips. November 5, 1999, was proclaimed “Burn All GIFs Day” by a group of people who created a website with the same name. These people wanted to get rid of GIFs, which had saturated the web, and get back to good old-fashioned PNG picture files.
Unfortunately for them, their plan didn’t work out so well. Today, GIFs are worth hundreds of millions of dollars. Giphy, the site that allowed Twitter to introduce a library of thousands of GIFs for users, is valued at an estimated $300 million. Imgur is another site that has tried to modernize and switch up GIFs, with a launch of their own GIFV format. Society has begun to use the title of GIF for any video snippet with no sounds, which just goes to show the normalcy of GIFs in everyday life.