How Will The Animated GIF Affect The Presidential Election? | Idea Channel | PBS

The animated GIF has had a long and fascinating history, but the GIF took a giant leap forward this year when it became part of the 2012 Presidential Election!!! This election season, GIFs of Obama, Romney, Biden and Ryan, populated not only Tumblr and Buzzfeed, but also media heavyweights like The Atlantic, Forbes, and The Wall Street Journal. It became the perfect vehicle to capture a reaction, a gaffe or hilarious election moment and stream it ad infinitum. Will the Graphics Interchange Format swing the election for Obama or Romney? Probably not, but it's a pretty bold step for our pal the GIF!!!

Let us know what sorts of crazy ideas you have, about this episode and otherwise:
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Political GIF Archive:
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• Category

  Education

[Pxlnight13]

Okay, I know there's no reason for anyone but me to care about this, but I'm excited because the animated gif you used at 0:47 is one that I made myself from a video me and my friends shot. I never thought it would be popular enough to survive this long.

And now I feel obligated to actually write a relevant comment, so I'll say something that I've wanted to put in almost all of the Idea Channel videos: WHY COMIC SANS??? DON'T YOU KNOW IT BURNS MY EYES???

Seriously. Please don't use comic sans.

[TheNinja1111]

'According to Steve Wilhite, the creator of the GIF format, the original pronunciation deliberately echoes the American peanut butter brand, Jif, and the employees of CompuServe would often say "Choosy developers choose GIF", spoofing this brand's television commercials. This pronunciation was also identified by CompuServe in their documentation of a graphics display program called CompuShow.'

-From the GIF Wikipedia page under pronunciation.

Please thumb-up so everyone can has more smarts :3

[Iuri Chiba]

I never heard anyone saying "jif". #hm

[ShlttyBill]

JIF is peanut butter.

[beet111]

GRAPHIC IMAGE FILE,

NOT

JRAPHIC IMAGE FILE

[Evan McCormick]

well its spelled gif

[astris90s]

I say GIF because JIF is peanut butter.

[TheKoalaManOfJustice]

its pronounced JIF

[ComicSansC]

Hey, shut up. Everywhere I go someones talking shit about me.

[Alison Jay]

Nope

[Caitie C]

I agree with you, thats how its spelt so why say anything else?

[spar0mast]

I know I'm wrong but saying GIF as in gift without the T sounds better to me