Internet archives make it easier to search for GIFs from the 90s. Gifcities contains millions of animations from flannel shirts and Nazi soup. GIFs were extracted from an old geographic webpage that (mainly) bite into dust in 2009.
The new version of Gifcities is easier to search. Now you can do semantic searches based on the content of the animation. In other words, by describing it, it is more likely to come up with the topic or scene you are looking for. In older versions of Gifcities, you can only search by file name. (If you feel masochistic, you can still access the version under the Special Search tab.)
Now, updated Gifcities also use pagination. This is a good thing, as the infinite scrolling of older versions can lead to slow browsing. You can also create and share “gifgrams”. As the name implies, these are custom electronic greens made from those ancient gifs.
The Internet Archives launched Gifcities in 2016 to celebrate its 20th anniversary. If you are too young, the Earth is the typical early internet hosting service. It’s a pioneer in social media, full of embarrassing fan pages, personal photo albums and “built” GIFs. (You will find a lot of the latter in this search engine.) Yahoo unplugged most of the Earth in 2009.
If your age is a certain age, you may enjoy browsing archives. (Or, how to learn about internet humor before you are born!) Just be aware that many results are NSFW. I made a mistake in searching for “Mr. T” and now I will let you wrap my eyes with bleach.
