Gawker Media Adopts the Reaction GIF

2006

Judge Judy's eye-roll, the exact register of reaction GIF Gawker, Deadspin, Jezebel, and Gizmodo systematically imported into edited journalism after 2006. The vocabulary walked across the class barrier wearing a smirk. Place: Gawker Media offices, SoHo, New York · Gawker, Deadspin, Defamer, Jezebel, Gizmodo Figures: Nick Denton, Gawker founder · Choire Sicha, Gawker editor · A.J. Daulerio, Deadspin editor · the rotating Gawker Media writer pool From roughly 2006 the Gawker Media blogs — Gawker, Deadspin, Defamer, Jezebel, Gizmodo, Kotaku — make sustained editorial use of reaction GIFs in headlines, sidebars, and body copy. The aesthetic comes directly from SomethingAwful (see [[somethingawful-image-macros-2002]]) and the forum web. The infrastructure (ImageShack, see [[imageshack-2003]]; YouTube, see [[youtube-launches-2005]]) makes the cuts and the embeds trivial. Deadspin under A.J. Daulerio is the most aggressive adopter. A sports highlight becomes a three-second GIF before the broadcaster's own clip site has the video up. The GIF appears in the post, in the headline image, in the social share. The site's reading experience is, by 2009, structurally dependent on inline animation.