The humble Graphics Interchange Format file, invented in 1987 by CompuServe, endures as the industry standard file format for shitposting and memes. Here at Hmm Daily, we strive to responsibly employ the animated form of the .gif when it is determined that use of an animated .gif will enhance or otherwise capture the essence of a post.
We proudly present the first installment of an occasional roundup of our favorite .gif moments to date. This first image is all the way meta, for a post spelling out the 10 Rules for Bloggers.
This next image captures the key moments of an alleged kerfuffle/assault/mutual combat which occurred mere feet away from the President of the United States of America, and was in aid of the Nov. 9, 2018 installment of our The Worst Thing We Read™ franchise entitled: The Worst Thing We Read Yesterday. An important detail captured by this animation is the obvious traumatic effect the melee had upon an innocent bystander.
Whose house? Alexa’s house! That’s the message being reinforced by this painstakingly-crafted animation of an Artificially Intelligent listening device portrayed in support of the Oct. 10 episode of The Worst Thing We Read Yesterday™.
“Sometimes you poke the b’ar, and well, sometimes the B’ar pokes you,” is a clever visual-portmanteau amalgam of Facebook’s archaic non-committal yet creepy “poke” message and the universally accepted animal spirit of Russia, the mighty bear, illustrating The Worst Thing We Read Yesterday™ on Nov. 15.
Here’s another bear, a terrifying robot bear of the near future. THE MACHINES assure us there is no danger.
The .gifs went dark, in image tone and theme, for this post in reaction to the reactions to the death of George Herbert Walker Bush.
We were pulled into the darkness for an image to accompany a mind-bending journey to the bottom of an unreally-real Business Insider profile which appeared to be illustrated with stock portrait photography and written with stock phrases. It was The Best Thing We Read Yesterday on Oct. 19, 2018.
This next moving image, we hoped, would create awareness of and sympathy for some of the other victims of our President’s potentially disastrous trade wars, a privileged pup that might lose its purchase.
We think this image of voting info accurately captures the confusion and frenzy of the election night data stream provided by the television and Internet prior to the closing of polls and accurate tabulation of the votes required to determine a winner. On Nov. 7, 2018, it was The Worst Thing We Read Yesterday.
Jacob Bacharach’s Business Column on The Sears Racket provided concise direction for this violent .gif. “Sears got Goodfella‘d.”
The word we thought to ourselves at the Hmm Daily Dot Gif Desk as we assembled this image of the goonish Matthew Whitaker supporting the suppurating mouth of his boss, was “rectal.” We stand by this pulsating animated gif, used for the Nov. 8, 2018 The Worst Thing We Read Yesterday™.
Here’s another mouth in action, simple and relentless. It belongs to perpetual pundit Max Boot, writer of The Worst Thing We Read Yesterday, as of Oct. 9, 2018.
On Nov. 19, 2018, The Worst Thing We Read Yesterday compelled us to present yet another mouth, but it’s not moving, it’s caught in the act of what could be interpreted as a smile, or the unknowing parody of a smile. We theorized with our animation on what thought was being generated by the brain buried behind that disturbing expression.
Sometimes we publish an animation to convey emotion. In this case, abject shock, as 99th-percentile NFL placekicker Justin Tucker witnesses his non-zero chance of missing a field goal.
Other times during the process of still-image selection, we compare and contrast a pair of pictures and accidentally find an animation to employ, realizing it underscores a question in the post, in this case, Who Does Ross Douthat Think He Is?
And then there are times when the subject themselves present a silent signal that harmonizes with our post. We present Jordan Peterson, who just sort of makes shit up.
This is our favorite .gif file to date, a simple distillation of video wordlessly portraying ineptitude and futility as we celebrate the return of Your Washington Wizznuts, The Best Thing We Read Yesterday, Nov. 29, 2018.
Finally, how close can you get to something before you touch it? Even if you don’t want to touch it? This succession of images, almost fractal as they drill down into The Infinite Unknown, provides no answers, only more questions as we examine the apocalyptic American horror of Watergate Salad.
