People communicate in many different forms. Reaction gifs can tell as much of a story as someone typing out their thoughts, and perhaps more importantly, they provided needed emotional context that is often omitted from text-based discussions.
We tend to frown upon posts with nothing but a gif in them unless the gif also contains text that would stand as a standalone comment (because “I agree” as a post isn’t particularly useful in a discussion, whether as text or as a gif), but there is no question whatsoever that a “THIS!!!111one” gif followed by elaboration is far more poignant than just their elaboration to begin with, and has significant value as a result. It’s also a lot more fun to read than paragraphs trying to convey the emotion a simple gif can sometimes provide.
In short, text is an imperfect medium for communication, and time is a rare and important commodity. reaction gifs are an excellent way to both improve the emotional content of text-based communication and save time. I’m glad they are here to stay.
On the subject of old browsers:
They are terrible. IE6 hamstrung the digital world for years because everyone used it and new web technologies could not be rolled out because those users had to be supported. Modern web development is hamstrung by needing to support tons and tons of old browsers that don’t work in the way that new ones do, and every feature rollout needs to be tested against a daunting number of iterations of browser and platform versions to make sure the sites in question still work with old browsers. It’s a terrible waste of time, to support a diminishingly small number of users, and holds back a lot of technologies that are expressly designed to make mobile browsing use less resources and data because they can’t be universally rolled out.
It’s pretty clear that Linkedin came to the same realization and expressly removed certain browsers that aren’t able to use modern web standards to avoid broken behaviour. While it sucks from the perspective of those who cannot upgrade browsers, it is a critical step for the modernization of the web that we get these ancient clients out of the ecosystem so we can build a modern and efficient web for everyone.
