Only Slate Plus members can gift Slate stories. Become a member to share 10 free articles a month. Last week, the family of the man who invented the GIF, Stephen Wilhite, announced that he had passed ...

Facebook is betting on the potency of GIFs by acquiring Giphy, whose technology will be integrated into Instagram, which Facebook acquired in 2012. The price was reported by multiple media outlets to ...

And so on. But the thing is? The Times is right. The first GIF I ever made, which, lamentably, isn't currently online, was of breakdancers. (It was sort of like the image at left, which is from this ...