Reblog Era
Tumblr, the cinemagraph, animated capture from film and TV. The GIF becomes editorial: a moment lifted and recirculated.
Part of GIfs
10 moments in this segment.
- — Tumblr Launches. Leslie Knope shrugs in Parks and Recreation, an archetypal Tumblr-era reaction GIF reblogged across every dashboard from 2010 onward Place: New York City Figures: David Karp, 20, founder · Marco Arment, lead developer Tumblr launches in February 2007. The product's defining feature is the reblog: any user can repost any other user's post to their own followers, with optional commentary, in one click. The format that benefits most from this mechanism, in 2007-2013, is the animated GIF. A photograph reblogs as itself; a GIF reblogs as the moment it captures, played again, on demand, on every reblogger's dashboard. Within five years the platform has 75 million blogs and serves animated GIFs at a scale no prior infrastructure has attempted. The GIF's bandwidth profile (small file, no plugin, loops forever) is the perfect fit for an infinite-scroll feed. Video: Founder Stories sit-down with David Karp, four years after Tumblr's February 2007 launch, on why standard blogging tools failed most people and what the dashboard was built to fix.
- — r/reactiongifs Launches. A canonical reaction GIF of the kind that filled r/reactiongifs after its January 2010 launch, when the subreddit standardized the form on Reddit Place: Reddit Figures: Anonymous Reddit moderators · the early subscriber base of imageboard refugees On the first day of 2010 a subreddit called r/reactiongifs opens for business. The premise is simple to the point of being a tautology: post a looping animated image that captures a reaction; title it with the situation that reaction is for. The grammar already exists on imageboards and on Tumblr (see [[tumblr-launches-2007]]); the new thing is that a major US English-speaking general-interest platform now has a dedicated channel for it, indexed and votable. By 2013 the subreddit has over 500,000 subscribers. By 2020 it has 2.5 million. The reaction GIF, an unofficial language since 4chan's /b/, gets institutional shelf space on the front page of the internet.
- — Double Rainbow. Paul Vasquez (Yosemitebear) loops on the double rainbow over Yosemite, July 2010, in the Gregory Brothers Schmoyoho remix that locked the moment in Place: A property near Yosemite National Park, California Figures: Paul 'Yosemitebear62' Vasquez, videographer and reactor · Jimmy Kimmel, who tweeted the link Paul Vasquez uploads a three-and-a-half minute video to YouTube of his own emotional reaction to a double rainbow over his property near Yosemite. He sobs. He laughs. He asks what does it mean? in a voice that will be quoted back at him for the rest of his life. The video sits at a few thousand views for six months. On 3 July 2010 Jimmy Kimmel tweets the link. Within weeks the original is at twenty million views. The GIF cuts arrive within hours of the Kimmel tweet. The rainbow itself, the Vasquez face mid-sob, the WHOA mouth, the trembling camera. The video-to-GIF pipeline, which had been ad-hoc since the Dancing Baby (see [[dancing-baby-1996]]), is now an industry. Video: Paul Vasquez's original three-and-a-half-minute YouTube upload from his property near Yosemite, 8 January 2010. Sat at a few thousand views until Jimmy Kimmel tweeted it on 3 July; 52 million views and counting.
- — Cat-Bin Lady. Cat rescued from fire. The dignified opposite of the Coventry CCTV clip that turned a stranger into a viral villain. Place: Coventry, England Figures: Mary Bale, 45, bank worker · Lola, the cat · Stephanie and Darryl Andrews-Mann, the cat's owners and CCTV operators On 21 August 2010, a CCTV camera mounted outside the Andrews-Mann home in Coventry records a 45-year-old bank worker named Mary Bale stopping to stroke a tabby cat named Lola on a garden wall, lifting the cat by the scruff, and placing it into the green wheelie bin on the curb. She closes the lid. She walks away. The cat is in the bin for fifteen hours before being heard and rescued. The owners post the CCTV clip to Facebook. By 24 August it is on every UK news channel. The Bale identification happens within 48 hours via Facebook crowdsourcing. The looping GIF of the dumping action arrives in parallel with the news story. Mary Bale receives death threats and police protection. Video: ITN news report carrying the Andrews-Mann CCTV clip from Stoke Heath, Coventry, 21 August 2010. Mary Bale lifts Lola off the garden wall and drops her into the green bin in under fifteen seconds.
- — Nyan Cat. the 8-bit Pop-Tart cat by Chris Torres (PRguitarman) trailing a rainbow through space, posted 2 April 2011 and looped to infinity on Tumblr Place: YouTube, then everywhere Figures: Christopher Torres (PRguitarman), animator · Momo Momo (Daniwell-P), vocaloid composer of Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya Christopher Torres, 25, posts an animation on his site PRguitarman.com on 2 April 2011: a cat with the body of a strawberry Pop-Tart, leaving a rainbow trail, flying through space, on a 12-frame loop. Three days later a YouTube user named saraj00n pairs the animation with a sped-up cover of the Japanese vocaloid song Nyanyanyanyanyanyanya by Daniwell-P. The video racks up tens of millions of views in months. Within hours of the YouTube upload the animation exists as a GIF, then as a thousand GIFs, then as a Chrome new-tab extension that plays the loop indefinitely. By July 2011 YouTube ranks it among the year's top videos. The chiptune cover loops in the background of dorm rooms across at least three continents. Video: The official canonical upload of Christopher Torres' Pop-Tart cat animation paired with the sped-up Momo Momo vocaloid cover, posted 12 April 2011, seven days after saraj00n's now-deleted original. Source of every Nyan Cat GIF in circulation.
- — What Should We Call Me. A Jim Carrey reaction GIF of the strain the What Should We Call Me Tumblr (launched February 2012) made canonical for two-panel internet comedy Place: Tumblr, posted from New York City Figures: Two anonymous law-firm summer associates, college friends, identities later revealed as Brooke Pollak and Lauren Caruso Two college friends, summer associates at a New York law firm, launch a Tumblr in February 2012 called What Should We Call Me. Every post follows the same template: a relatable situation as the title (when my boss asks if I have a minute), a single TV-or-movie reaction GIF as the body (a sustained close-up of a face slowly registering dread). No commentary. No tags beyond the title. The post is the joke. The GIF is the entire content of the post. By April 2012 the blog has over a million followers. The founders' identities are reported in the New York Times. They are, briefly, the most-imitated voice on Tumblr.
- — Tumblr Adds GIF Search. A Jennifer Lawrence reaction GIF, exemplar of the catalogue Tumblr's 2012 GIF search treated as a first-class searchable medium alongside photography and text Place: Tumblr HQ, New York City Figures: Tumblr platform engineering team · David Karp, CEO Tumblr ships a search-filter update in 2012 that lets users search posts by file type, including GIF specifically. The animated image, until then a sub-category of photo post, becomes a first-class platform object. You can now search the entire Tumblr corpus for nothing but GIFs, sorted by tag, by date, by note count. The platform that scaled the reaction GIF (see [[tumblr-launches-2007]]) is now indexing it. The combination of the dedicated filter and the per-post note counter (the public tally of likes and reblogs displayed on every post) turns the GIF into something measurable: a social-status currency with a leaderboard.
- — Harlem Shake. meme cuts from solo dancer to full-room mayhem on Baauer's bass drop, February 2013, the format that briefly ate YouTube Place: YouTube, then offices and gyms and college dorms worldwide Figures: Filthy Frank (George Miller), early uploader · TheSunnyCoastSkate, the breakout · Baauer, producer of the original 2012 track The format crystallizes in early February 2013: one person in a mask or helmet dances alone for 15 seconds while everyone else in the room sits or stands ignoring them. The bass drops at 0:15. Cut. Everyone in the room is now in costume, in motion, doing whatever ridiculous thing they can think of. The track is Baauer's Harlem Shake, released on Mad Decent / Jeffree's in May 2012, sleeping on YouTube for nine months. By mid-February 2013 there are approximately 12,000 uploads in a single week. Office versions. Locker-room versions. Fighter-jet-cockpit versions. The Norwegian Army version. A version filmed by Matt Damon. Today show hosts attempt one and look exactly like Today show hosts attempting a Harlem Shake. Video: George Miller's DizastaMusic upload of 30 January 2013, the Filthy Frank skit that establishes the format. Pink Guy alone, the cold open, then everyone in the room in costume when Baauer's bass drops at 0:15.
- — Yahoo Buys Tumblr for $1.1 Billion. Yahoo logo, animated. Marissa Mayer's Yahoo bought Tumblr for $1.1 billion on 20 May 2013; Verizon wrote most of it off four years later Place: Yahoo HQ, Sunnyvale, California · Tumblr HQ, New York City Figures: Marissa Mayer, Yahoo CEO · David Karp, Tumblr founder, 26 Marissa Mayer, eleven months into the Yahoo CEO job, announces on 20 May 2013 that Yahoo will acquire Tumblr (see [[tumblr-launches-2007]]) for $1.1 billion in cash. David Karp, 26, becomes Yahoo's highest-profile founder hire. Mayer promises, in the press release, not to screw it up. The promise becomes a recurring quote in the obituary coverage of the deal four years later. The same week, Giphy is founded (see [[giphy-founded-2013]]) and Steve Wilhite accepts his Webby (see [[wilhite-jif-2013]]). May 2013 is, by any reasonable accounting, the GIF's peak news cycle. Video: Charlie Rose interview with the 26-year-old Tumblr founder on Bloomberg TV, recorded the week of the $1.1 billion Yahoo announcement, 29 May 2013. Karp on the deal, on dropping out of high school, and on keeping the dashboard authentic.
- — The Obama Reaction Set. President Obama drops the mic at the 2016 White House Correspondents' Dinner, the gesture the Tumblr reaction-GIF era had been priming the political vocabulary for since 2012 Place: The West Wing, the White House Press Briefing Room, the Washington Hilton ballroom Figures: Barack Obama, 44th US President · the West Wing communications team · the Tumblr and Buzzfeed editors who cut the loops Barack Obama is the first US president whose body language gets systematically converted into reaction vocabulary at scale. The slow clap during a speech. The smile-and-look-down deflection. The late-2012 inauguration fist-bump. The 8 May 2014 mic drop at the White House Correspondents' Dinner. Each becomes a GIF in heavy rotation across Tumblr, Reddit, Twitter, and the long tail of group chats. The administration leans into it. The official White House Tumblr (launched 2013) sides with the hard-G pronunciation in a 2014 post (see [[wilhite-jif-2013]]). Press secretary briefings include reaction-friendly moments that look engineered for the GIF cut. The medium has reached the institution. Video: Obama's closing line at his eighth and final Correspondents' Dinner, 30 April 2016 at the Washington Hilton. Two more words, then the mic. The frame that the reaction-GIF web had been training the presidency to deliver since 2012.
