Tumblr is having another ~moment~ in the media, so I’ve been thinking about how Tumblr gifsets have been a huge part of how I consumed pop cultural visual media for the past decade or so. I can’t think of any other website (that I use anyway) that utilizes gifs in this way.
A lot of pop cultural discussion websites are text-oriented (here thinking of the dearly departed TWOP and its slew of replacements). Reddit has that but also more noise and more memes. I don’t know how conversation occurs on other websites; I can’t envision it. But with gifsets, Tumblr creators are able to distill their favorite shows down to some kind of ineffable essence conveyed precisely in the form of its own medium, and not awkwardly translated into transcription or commentary, or literally re-cut as clips that rob a potential viewer of their true first-time experience.
With a gifset, a creator is saying, “These are some parallels that I have noticed are artistically interesting in some way,” or “These are moments that have touched me in some way, that I want to relive through the dissemination of this gifset.” And that’s it, no additional commentary (I mean we can talk about tags later). I am interpreting someone else’s interpretation of an entertainment product, before I ever experience that product myself. The gifset creator brings their followers to the doorstep of that experience, but we walk through with our own preconceptions or misconceptions. I may imagine and envision something based on a gifset that does not exist in the actual product (think of all the meme posts that ask people to describe what they think a show is about, based solely on gifs they’ve seen on Tumblr), but I imagine and anticipate on that basis, too, and it’s an experience not available on other pop culture/social media websites.
