Dramatic Prairie Dog

JAN 17 2007 · 12:00

The five-second head-turn cut from a 1999 NHK documentary, rescored with the Young Frankenstein orchestral sting and uploaded to YouTube on 17 January 2007. The template for every YouTube-to-GIF reaction cut of the following decade. Place: YouTube · clip originally from a 1999 NHK documentary, rescored by an anonymous editor Figures: Anonymous YouTube uploader · the prairie dog itself · NHK documentary crew (uncredited source) A YouTube user uploads a five-second clip on 17 January 2007: a black-tailed prairie dog turns its head sharply toward the camera. A three-note orchestral sting (lifted from the 1974 film Young Frankenstein) is overlaid on the turn. The source footage is from a 1999 NHK Japanese television documentary; the cinematic re-score is the anonymous editor's only addition. The clip is titled Dramatic Chipmunk despite the animal being a prairie dog. Within two weeks of upload, GIF conversions are circulating on SomethingAwful (see [[somethingawful-image-macros-2002]]) and 4chan (see [[4chan-founded-2003]]). Within a month it is on every forum that supports inline images. The GIF is approximately 250 KB and loops the head turn indefinitely, which is exactly the unit of meaning a reaction GIF needs to be.