#1 – Giving the Perfect GIF

Words are so 2003!  These days the reply of choice is a GIF, one of those short animations drawn from movies or video footage.  The reaction GIF has recently made the jump from email chains and message boards to art galleries and museum exhibitions.  Sideshow's Sean Rameswaram talks with Tyler Menzel, who tags GIFs for a living at the search engine Giphy.  (He’d like to be known as Notorious G.I.F.)  He said the animations express “the essential human emotions: hunger, love, and sadness.  "If you're feeling things other than that, you're wasting your energy."

Here are links to all the GIFs mentioned in the piece

For Any Occasion: Beyoncé Obama Dancing on Pizza

For Fans Only: A Classic Sailor Moon GIF

For a Birthday: Happy Birthday Cake Mistake 

For Good News: Levar Burton Thumbs Up

For Good Space News: A Space Cat Riding a Burrito

Giphy’s Tyler Menzel and Sideshow’s Sean Rameswaram during their contentious interview about GIFs