: Highly popular for social media, featuring puppies cuddling and curious kittens in domestic settings.

With the birth of the internet came the Graphics Interchange Format (GIF) in 1987. As internet speeds increased in the late 1990s and early 2000s, websites began hosting looping animations of dancing hamsters and blinking kittens. What started as primitive web decoration evolved into a sophisticated tool for emotional expression. 3. The Short-Form Video Boom