GIF

The term 'Graphics Interchange Format' is what GIF stands for. It is a widely used format for image files. When you send a message with GIFs, you are doing so with one of the most popular kinds of file formats.

What makes GIFs so engaging is that they tend to be animated. Most of what people are sharing when they send each other GIFs are essentially short, looped animations. The only real difference between those animations and video clips is that those video clips are often compressed more than GIFs.

This means that GIFs are somewhat limited in what they can do. If a GIF is going to be good, it needs to be pretty close to the original file in quality. At the same time, though, GIFs have an extra quality that some of the other file formats don't have, and that's that they can convey a kind of movement to an image.

And in the era of social media, a movement screenshot has tended to be more or less equivalent to a divisive shibboleth or social media platform.