GIFs can be generated in such a way that they don’t loop. Most are not. Therefore, a once-only gif can be used to mess with people’s heads since no one is accustomed to it and most don’t know it’s an option.
Another recent example of this that was briefly popular on lemmy is a webcomic that showed a crowd scene featuring Waldo (or Wally if that’s your way), then removing him while keeping everything else identical.
It’s a GIF. A skeleton runs from right to left.
Something is wrong with my client then because it’s just a static image for me. I tried to download it too and it was just a .jpg
https://files.catbox.moe/t9uke8.webp
maybe youe browsee can do it, if you are curious, what client do you use btw
Browser does it just fine yeah. The client I’m on right now is Eternity. Not sure why it wasn’t animating it.
A lot of the Lemmy clients hate gifs for some reason. Jerboa certainly does.
(Enormous 15MB) gif copy just in case for others
https://files.catbox.moe/2n8gfy.gif
Mine just shows a ‘your picture here’ image. I get a lot of those on Voyager.
Oh interesting. On my phone, when I wrote that, it was displaying as a static image. But on my desktop now it works.
Still, this raises more questions. wtf?
GIFs can be generated in such a way that they don’t loop. Most are not. Therefore, a once-only gif can be used to mess with people’s heads since no one is accustomed to it and most don’t know it’s an option.
Another recent example of this that was briefly popular on lemmy is a webcomic that showed a crowd scene featuring Waldo (or Wally if that’s your way), then removing him while keeping everything else identical.
lol love it
They definitely can, but can WEBPs? Anyway, this particular webp definitely doesn’t do that.
I don’t know anything about webp’s, but it does do exactly that for me. Maybe it’s a client thing?
Oh weird. All sorts of weird inconsistent behaviour going on depending on client.
Jerboa shows a static image. Web browsers loop indefinitely. And something else just plays once…
Indeed, I think each developer has their own idea of how things should be done. Sometimes it’s a negative, sometimes a positive.
But FWIW, I’m on Connect and rarely have issues with images other than when they’re in spoilers.
*webp but yes :D