Memescape: How GIF Captions Reanimated Reaction Memes

Since around 2017 and through early 2019, the mainstream meme meta was dominated by image reactions (not to be confused with reaction images). The megaformat, which rose to its peak popularity on Reddit in 2018 alongside the object labeling memes, has been the king of easy upvotes and likes of the late 2010s. The overabundance of lazy formats, many of which de facto shared identical punchlines, made the more demanding audience grow tired and seek refuge in irony, video fads and formats that were less formula-reliant. But while these types of memes provided a much-needed escape from the repetitive memes, only one format can be considered a direct upgrade to image reactions. Cue GIF Captions.

On the surface level, GIF Captions are not all that different from image reactions: a witty caption is accompanied by an illustration, with the only change being that the illustration is animated. In 2019, GIF Captions far from being a new format: pioneered by iFunny in 2014, GIF Captions have been the app’s main export for nearly half a decade. But in late 2019, the app’s growing influence upon the memescape, combined with the aforementioned overabundance of repetitive formula-based formats, has led to GIF Captions becoming a major creative outlet for those seeking to push the frontier of the meme game ever further.

GIF Captions have a major advantage over simple reaction images: unlike a single frame forever stuck in time, an animated image allows the mememaker to tell a short story with its own exposition, conflict, climax and resolution, all within the span of somewhere between one and ten seconds. While GIF Captions have their own fads as well, with some particularly popular GIFs such as Walter White Breaks Down, K’s Scream and Thrashing Will Byers appearing in hundreds upon hundreds of memes, this microplot, however predictable, gives GIFs a very competitive edge over image macros.

But there is another even more likely reason why GIF Captions have fallen into favor while image reactions fell out of it: GIF Captions provided an ever-so-desirable feel of a clandestine art only available to the most skillful and knowledgeable mememakers. Since iFunny has been (and still, for the most part, is) the uncharted waters for those who don’t bother to look under beyond mainstream-tier memes, the art of making GIF Captions has, for the most part, evaded your average mememaker, which made GIF Captions a rarer, and therefore more valuable, meme.

This ability to meme in a way that other people weren’t able to tickled an important fancy for those who shied the mainstream and strived to be one step ahead of the meme game. Nowadays, however, this is less of a case. GIF Captions are more widespread than ever, while esmBot on Discord has enabled your average joe and their mother to make GIF captions with ease. The “secret knowledge” charm has been vanishing at a fast rate – but is not likely to disappear completely any time soon.

The rule of the GIF Captions started in late 2019, when the format really started slipping out of iFunny’s grasp and spreading over Twitter. To be fair, iFunnyers, while very protective of their memes, never had a chance of keeping GIF Captions for themself, with highly-smiled posts inevitably being leaked by karma-hungry renegades on Discord servers, Twitter, in /r/okbuddyretard subreddit and on Instagram (often as, ugh, still images). While many GIF Captions had made their way out of the app and into the wild before, the most notable shift took place around the time when Group Name Misinterpretation and Fandom Generalization Memes were all the rage in November 2019.

In the footsteps of Twitter, in March 2020, Reddit’s mainstream meme powerhouses /r/dankmemes and /r/memes jumped on the trend, both introducing their own GIFs such as Team Fortress 2 Soldier Smiling and feasting on iFunny’s heritage.

It would be unfair not to mention that parallel to how GIF Captions started to conquer the meme meta in the United States, they also started doing so in some other parts of the world. Similar to how GIF Captions spread from iFunny into the meme mainstream in the US, they also spread from more experimental meme pages on VK to mainstream meme communities in Russia, for instance.

With an endless supply of already existing GIFs and billions of hours of films and YouTube videos that can be turned into ones, GIF Captions won’t be running out of source material anytime soon. But avoiding slipping into a routine and repeating the fate of the image reactions will be a harder feat to achieve. However, some tricks that have already been employed by the mememakers to mix things up and keep them fresh: popular GIFs had been sped up and decelerated, reversed, flipped combined, color-shifted and altered in dozens of different ways. There is even a notable mini-meme you might have already encountered: adding a clarification for the joke in the caption.

But the most important defense GIF Captions have against becoming a dead meme is still their higher “meme skill” ceiling compared to ordinary memes. While the word has long since been out, most people will not be bothered to install iFunny, esmBot or find another way to make a GIF caption – and for the sake of keeping the meme relevant, it’s a good thing.