And many people thought it summed up the national zeitgeist then. Origin: Tumblr word art artist Cat Frazier made this GIF in 2012. Here are Vox’s choices for the most iconic reaction GIFs on the internet - ranked by order of necessity to our lives, from occasionally essential to can’t-use-the-internet-without-them. When you can shorthand “blinking white guy” and have people understand exactly which blinking white guy you’re talking about, your reaction GIF has reached peak internet saturation. The internet would appear to have many, many, many candidates for “greatest GIF of all time,” but it’s undeniable that some reaction GIFs are so ubiquitous that the average internet user can likely picture them simply from reading a description.
And as we consider the legacy of the internet’s greatest file format, we must pause to recognize a special category of GIF that’s left an indelible mark on social media: the reaction GIF. The GIF is now 30 years old, but it already feels immortal - possibly because it’s already outlasted the internet’s most turbulent periods of evolution.
