GIF Hard G vs Soft G, Codename: Clickbait

I am trying to get into the habit of writing and blogging more. I used to think that a blog had to be profound and meaningful; or a spectacular piece of prose. That is not always the case. While I do want my blog to be a good one and have great content, I am realizing I cannot get to that level without constantly writing and posting. As my blog and depression management sensei Wil Wheaton would say "focus on making a thing rather than a good thing" (paraphrased from an episode of Where's My Burrito). So this week's thing is a divisive topic that I happen to find ridiculously entertaining. For those of you looking for an honest critique of the title subject, please move along, this is a humor piece.

Disclaimer: I am NOT a graphic designer or web developer. I have never created and gif file and I have no understanding of how the file works.

My extensive research on the subject of the GIF file format consisted of my opening wikipedia and reading the article entitled GIF. From that I learned the following things:

• GIF stands for Graphics Interchange Format
• GIF was devolped by Steve Wilhite and introduced by CompuServe in 1987
• Animated GIF capability was introduced in 1989 (this is the type of GIF that tumblr really likes)
• GIF has been recognized as both a noun and a verb

And lastly

• No one can seem to agree on how to pronounce the format abbreviation

This last point is the one that I find to be the most entertaining. Apparently Mr. Wilhite and Co. referred to it as "Jif" as an in joke on the popular American peanut butter, "choosy developers choose Jif." Unfortunately not everyone in the world got the joke and instead started using the hard G sound (you know as in Graphics). And thus a feud was born. According to the wikipedia article this war has involved 3 different dictionary publishers, the White House and Jeopardy! All I can do is sit back and smile while asking the question: WHY?

Something that literally comes down to "potaytoe, potawtoe" is getting top billing in flame wars all across the internet. When we have so many other important things to debate like internet censorship, net neutrality, and which actor was the best Batman. Why are we wasting our precious internet rage on the pronunciation of something we RARELY talk about in the real world? The world may never know.

In conclusion thank you for reading my thing. If you liked it consider subscribing, if not that's cool too.

Live Life in Color

P.S. I will not respond to comments asking me which side of this issue I am on. As I said the argument is silly and therefore I have no opinion ;)