geekosystem

Last night, National Review Online writer Kevin Williamson lived out our collective dreams and tossed the phone of a fellow audience member into the wings of a small outdoor theater. Part of us wants to call Williamson a hero, but polity brings us up short on that point. The cure for rudeness shouldn't be more rudeness, and grabbing someone's phone is likely to land you in some legal trouble or a fistfight, depending on the demeanor of the person whose phone you just threw. It's just bad behavior all the way around, and though it's tempting to, we can't condone any of it.

I guess it was only a matter of time. The White House has slowly made itself completely and totally a part of the Internet by invading social media like Twitter, so it's not all that surprising that they'd branch out to engage with people in other ways. Still, an official White House Tumblr? Yeah, that's a thing that exists now.

NBC is reaching out to an ever-shrinking demographic, Community fans, and asking them to post their favorite puppet-related GIFS to Tumblr for tomorrow night's episode "Introduction to Felt Surrogacy" -- the show's much anticipated puppet episode. They'll even give you free things if you post the best GIF to their GIFathon! You guys like free things, right? The whole shebang even has a hashtag, #CommunityGIFathon, so you know it's thing on the Internet. It's an act that's as transparent as asking an ex out for coffee because you just want to catch up, and about as dignified, and I don't know what makes me sadder: What it says about the state of a show that was a favorite of mine until mere months ago, or the fact that I only barely care.

Using GIFs to send dismissive and passive aggressive replies to things people say on the Internet is a tradition as old as GIFs themselves, but finding just the right jumpy, low-resolution, quasi-video loop to send has been a challenge -- until now. Starting today Google is rolling out a GIF filter in their image searches, making my job of finding Full House GIFs to send the other editors here at Geekosystem that much easier.

Once just a way to show that your website was under construction, GIFS are now a valued means of communication. Whole blogs are composed of them. Whole conversations are had in their parlance. The first thesis done in animated GIF format can't be too far off. Now, Tumblr, unofficial Internet headquarters for all GIF-related technology, is running sponsored .gif ads in its Radar sidebar. You will be able to differentiate these animated clips from all of the other animated clips on tumblr by, well, you actually probably kind of won't be able to, which is what makes this smart advertising. And just like smart advertising anyway, this might leave you feeling a little oily after you see it.

Highbrow animated GIFs? You know, the visual medium best known for doing stuff like this? Apparently so. That, anyway, is the mission of a New York-based photographer named Jamie Beck. Beck calls her creations "cinemagraphs" -- "more than a photo, but not quite a video" -- and has posted a series featuring supermodel Coco Rocha to her Tumblr.

Of course the technology to create GIF's has been around for decades but I believe its potential for both expression and impact, within the fashion world, has yet to be fully explored. Let me put it this way -- film has been around for a century, does that mean that we've exhausted the possibilities?

LOST. Tonight. 9pm. ABC. Episode 5: "Lighthouse." It's a Jack episode. Be there. Catch up on what you've missed.

In the meantime, we've stockpiled our five favorite animated GIFs of everyone's favorite LOST sociopathic charmer, Ben Linus. We're somewhat obsessed, both with animated GIFs and with Ben Linus, so non-Losties may want to skip this post. Alternatively: if you want to see a large man throw a Hot Pocket at another man, read on.