The GIF turns 30 – celebrate with these awesome Fresno GIFs

Tomorrow marks the 30th anniversary of the GIF.

It seems totally unbelievable that A.) there was a time when GIFs didn’t exist, given their ubiquitousness in modern life, and B.) that the GIF could possibly be that old. But a quick check of Wikipedia shows that, indeed the Graphic Interface Format (aka the GIF) was created in 1987 by some guy working at CompuServe.

There’s a rather nice explanation of the technology and the time line of the GIF’s world dominance over at Metro. As a bonus, it’s done with GIFs and comes with the 30 best GIFs of all time.

Suffice it to say, we’ve come a long way since this:

There’s also a study, done by the user-generated GIF platform Gfycat, which found 63% of the 1,000 Americans surveyed use GIFs (20% use them All. The. Time). The study also found that 39% create their own GIFs as a way to make friends, laugh or share inside jokes or just be creative. That explains at least some of these Fresno-centric GIFs, pulled from Gfycat and Giphy (lest, you fall down the Fresno-GIF rabbit hole on your own).

You may be cool, but you’ll never be Planet Asia blowing smoke rings cool.

Kai says, “Smash.”

A typical scene from Fresno, or rather “Fresno,” which turned 30 last year.

And finally, a trigger warning for historic preservationists.