More Grove GIFs

The following is an assortment of GIFs from University of Florida's Grove, a now-defunct personal website hosting service for students, staff, and faculty. These GIFs, which were acquired via Wayback Machine's 1996 snapshot of Grove, range from the once-ubiquitous construction GIF to the absurdly annoying "Bottom 95% of all Web Sites" badge many netizens used to wear as badges of ironic honor.

The majority of these GIFs, whether animated or static, seemed to be wielded for no greater purpose than sprucing up one's website, to add a cascade of pizzaz hopefully unrepeated by another. As we all know, these GIFs were, in fact, repeated -- by everyone. I like to imagine that there was some "prime GIFer", some bot that expelled random GIFs from its snout like the lovesick computer I'm sure is responsible for composing Harlequin romance novels from a series of bank of key terms and a repository of shirt-ripping scenarios. The truth, however, is likely less intriguing.

 

Early Team Coco member

An early example of Mac snobbery

Surreal pizzaz

An example of "link bullying"

 

Bordering

 

 

Ironic pride

 

Muybridge-esque

 

A badge of artistic appreciation

 

See "Diablo"

A common GIF, often used to bring attention to a link

Browser badges were common, indicating site preference or compatibility

Netscape acid test!

Netscape Gojira!

A rather inventive GIF, incorporating actual images from the site creator's photo galley (graduation photo, landscape, shot of Century Tower)

The "wobbly" flag was common, but unnecessary: the Net knows no borders.

A crop of common "under construction" GIFs, many of which never left their posts (an indication of intent with no follow-through)

 <-- Easily my favorite.