GIFs are starting to become prevalent on TV shows - Sitcoms Online Message Boards

TMC · 05-29-2019, 09:19 PM

https://slate.com/culture/2019/05/gi...to-bushes.html

"Usually, moments from TV shows become GIFs," says Heather Schwedel. "Witness this one of the Broad City girls using their middle fingers to move up the corners of their mouths after someone on the street yells at them to smile: Great TV moment begets great GIF. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re not talking about what may, technically speaking, be the original TV GIF, the dancing baby from Ally McBeal. We’re talking about a TV show, in a display of its devotion to realistic storytelling, showing a GIF on screen, because the show seeks to portray that in real life, the way many of us live and talk to each other and experience the world is, well, with GIFs....So perhaps it’s not such a surprise that GIFs have made the trippy leap from a format mostly used to immortalize moments from media, like TV, to bits of visual texture in those very media."

TMC · 01-08-2026, 05:54 PM

“Ally McBeal's” Dancing Baby, One of the Internet's First Viral Memes, First Graced Screens 28 Years Ago

The dancing baby had already been making the rounds by email when David E. Kelley's assistant shared it with him.

05-29-2019, 09:19 PM	#1
TMC Member Forum Idol Join Date: Jan 09, 2001 Posts: 126,334	GIFs are starting to become prevalent on TV shows https://slate.com/culture/2019/05/gi...to-bushes.html "Usually, moments from TV shows become GIFs," says Heather Schwedel. "Witness this one of the Broad City girls using their middle fingers to move up the corners of their mouths after someone on the street yells at them to smile: Great TV moment begets great GIF. But that’s not what we’re talking about here. We’re not talking about what may, technically speaking, be the original TV GIF, the dancing baby from Ally McBeal. We’re talking about a TV show, in a display of its devotion to realistic storytelling, showing a GIF on screen, because the show seeks to portray that in real life, the way many of us live and talk to each other and experience the world is, well, with GIFs....So perhaps it’s not such a surprise that GIFs have made the trippy leap from a format mostly used to immortalize moments from media, like TV, to bits of visual texture in those very media."

01-08-2026, 05:54 PM	#2
TMC Member Forum Idol Join Date: Jan 09, 2001 Posts: 126,334	“Ally McBeal's” Dancing Baby, One of the Internet's First Viral Memes, First Graced Screens 28 Years Ago The dancing baby had already been making the rounds by email when David E. Kelley's assistant shared it with him.