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[YouTube]

In this short documentary, PBS explains animated GIFs in a way that makes you never want to make or look at one again.

It's the usual narrative: GIFs were web 1.0, then they went away (except they didn't), embraced by young people around '07 (right when everyone moved to Facebook, which didn't allow GIFs), then movie clips on tumblr, then ART (cinemagraphs).

No true GIF artistes could be found for an interview because they're all semi-anonymous, so PBS used the cast of Ace of Cakes.

The pretensions of calling GIFs "cinemagraphs" have been much lampooned (Paddy Johnson dubbed them "hair GIFs") but the Net is so vast none of the smirks made it to the PBS home office.

Was writing down phrases as I watched:

"Beyond the limits of the filename"
"You have... the glitch art..."
"It makes you so cool."
Fashion Jifs!
"It's about doing the next thing in technology."
"It allows a moment to live on."
"We see [cinemagraphs] as an evolution of photography."
"Essentially something you've never seen before" (accompanied by meaningful nod).

Fortunately some YouTube commenters are helping to straighten out this mess:

*cough* 4chan. Also, Unisys' snit when it tried to extract money from the patent on LZW compression, used in the GIF format, slowed uptake.

and

"Jif" is a peanut butter brand.

and

Sorry folks, but the correct pronunciation has always been GIF as in Growl or Goon or Ground or Guess or Gimmick, etc. No 'Jif'.

I only know one hard-shell GIF maker who calls them Jifs -- he goes by the pronunciation favored by, well, the inventor of the GIF but "the street" overran that long ago.

hat tip lh - ongoing edits - the horror

Update: PBS or PBS contractor.

From a comment thread about the death of Andrew Breitbart on a site that didn't like him:

You’re only supposed to say good things about the dead. He’s dead...good.

Tried to filter out consciousness of the deceased's name and presence during his lifetime but it was hard due to his self-promotional relentlessness. A few items that got past the filter:

--He promoted videos unflattering to the Obama administration and a community organizing group that were revealed to be fake, yet he suffered no shame or loss of status in the media

--he had strange ideas (projected sexual fantasies) about a certain left-leaning, authentic grassroots organization

--he was a "hit man" for a fake grassroots organization of the right funded by a couple of billionaires who don't like having their astroturfing exposed

--I saw him shouting on TV at newscaster Cenk Ungyur, not letting Ungyur get a word in, and he seemed like the classic loud drunk in a bar

--Despite all this, if you live in LA (his home town) and write for the Huffington Post you had to say he was "basically a good man" and "had his flaws." HuffPo commenters who said otherwise were reportedly censored.

Based on these few nuggets, it seems a little bit of poison left our planet last week. America constantly enables Joe McCarthy-like bullies to dominate public life and unlike McCarthy most don't get their comeuppance; the only way to be rid of them is for them to implode.

Back during some argument we were having about social media, someone lumped Word Press in with Blogger and similar mass hosting sites. This just seemed ignorant but it turns out (d'oh) that there is a WordPress.com which does hosting. Many blogs on the internet, however (including this one) use software provided by WordPress.org, which is not a host. According to WordPress.com's "about" page, the dotcom version was launched by some of the folks involved with WordPress who thought they'd confuse everyone by keeping that name (actually they didn't say that last part).

The point being, someone using Word Press software is quite likely a self-hosting "indie" who is responsible for his/her own domain and basic admin tasks such as keeping the site free of malware. It's not the same as working in what Dave Winer called the "corporate blog silos," where a balance must be maintained between complying with the silo's rules and being freed of administrative headaches. This is no diss against people who work in a mass-hosting environment (well, maybe a little, depending on which one) but an attempt to clarify this blog's niche in the new media ecosystem.

Snobbery is what indie bloggers have etc

Walking Horse - funny - via stage

This led to a quick cruise through the swamps of amateur animation on YouTube, following the picks of the "recommendation engine":

Grey Thigh Woman - forty years of feminist theory down the drain

Sexy Model Walk - somewhat more positive body image...for a robot woman

Gorilla Knuckle Walk - old school disney-style pencil test - this is actually good

Mustang - someone playing with their horse dolls - midi score - kind of pitiful if this person is older than five years

Æon Flux, "Tide" (November 17, 1992)
The description below was written by Jason Forrest* for Network Awesome.
Chances are you won't find the animation on NA or YouTube because a certain youth-market producer is playing its little games (when they're not allegedly uploading videos under aliases to give them promotional exposure, they're in outraged copyrightholder mode, which appears to the case with NA's upload of "Tide").
But I like the idea of complicated narrative being a substitute for a complicated animation when the original is apt to disappear without warning. So this is a found text or art-equivalent.

Peter Chung states on the DVD commentary that he planned this episode like a piece of music. The entire segment is composed of twenty backgrounds shown for two seconds each in the same order and same angle for seven cycles. [The elevator in a modern industrial building becomes a stage set moving down among floors, with a series of more or less identical actions occurring on each level. The ritual aspect of these repeated actions also suggests a kind of high-tech, absurdist Noh play. --TM]

The plot:
Æon and a blond female accomplice are on an offshore platform. Æon is shooting at a rope draped from a hovering helicopter, trying to keep it from connecting with a semi-submerged pylon, while her partner holds Trevor Goodchild captive in a nearby elevator. As Æon returns to the elevator Trevor has overpowered the partner and attempts to exit, pressing all of the elevator's level buttons. Æon stops him and tries to grab the numbered key he's holding, but he throws it behind a sink. When retrieving it, Æon accidentally rips off the attached numbered label, so it is unknown on which level the key will be useful.

The elevator descends. Æon attempts unsuccessfully to use the key in a storage locker on level six, while avoiding gunfire from a Breen soldier and again shooting at the hanging rope, which has stopped swaying enough for another attempt to reach the pylon. Upon returning to the elevator, Æon handcuffs Trevor to a handrail and attempts to retrieve the numbered key-label, but it is just out of her reach. Æon repeats the leave elevator/exchange gunfire with Breen/try key/shoot rope/return to elevator cycle for several subsequent floors, while her traitorous partner smooches with Trevor during Æon's absences. By level two, Æon realizes what's going on and the partner tries to stop her from killing Trevor; during the struggle she snatches Æon's empty gun and throws it at her. Æon falls back, strikes her head and is killed (although it is not explicitly indicated in the episode that she is dead, the DVD commentary indicates that she is).** The partner takes the key and runs to the level two storage locker. The Breen soldier enters the elevator and shoots Trevor, and on his way out shoots the helicopter rope just as Æon had been doing. (We'll soon find out why.)

The partner opens the storage locker with the key and retrieves a latched yellow case, taking it back to the elevator. Inside she finds a giant, ribbed rubber plug -- an obvious double entendre. Unsatisfied with what seems like such a measly prize, she runs out leaving the plug behind. As she reaches the semi-submerged pylon, the helicopter has successfully inserted the rope, weighted with a metal device that interlocks with the pylon, and starts to pull up and away, carrying the Breen soldier who has come downstairs just as the device lifts upward (his shot from level two bought him a few seconds of needed time to arrive). As the helicopter ascends, it yanks from the pylon a rubber plug identical to the one the partner previously discarded, causing seawater to spout out of the newly vacant hole. The enormous platform and gangway behind her suddenly sink into the ocean, leaving her stranded alone on the concrete pylon.

*I made some edits for clarity, style--call it a remix
**Æon dies in all the early, short episodes.