We heart the Internet: An ode to the glittery stripper GIFs of yore

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Remember a time not long ago, when the Internet was still fun? It was a place for weird exchanges with people across the globe (or in Reno) that you didn't know IRL (in real life) but connected with via your love for Buffy The Vampire Slayer. Maybe you met on Friendster or DiaryLand or MakeOutClub or even in a chat room or on a message board, and you talked for hours until finally taking it to the next level and exchanging Myspace URLs (which also was once the greatest hook-up site of all time) and phone numbers.

We miss that time so much, we wanted to give a special shout-out to a little thing called the graphics interchange format, or simply, the GIF. What does (or did) a GIF have to do with online love? Well, kind of like an E-card -- which no one sends but your mom -- a GIF was (and still is, if you can find a social networking site post-2008 that supports it) a great way to "show some love" to your internet lover.

Maybe he was the type of dude who liked a sexy lil' sparkly stripper. Or perhaps she had an affinity for Winnie the Pooh. Whatever your virtual partner liked, there was a glittery GIF out there that could say all that you ever wanted to say, but in the form of a weird, sometimes misspelled, but always flashy image.

GIFs were everywhere on the internet -- mostly supplied by shady websites that would blow up your computer with a million pop ups if you tried to visit them to stock up. Everyone could see how much you were in Internet-like.

But now that most of us live within the bland and blue frame of social networking, the act of showing some love has all but become extinct. Facebook has not only eliminated our ability to give our friends and bfs serious props through animated expressions, it has made the idea of internet hook-ups totally inappropriate and passé. If you can't be someone's "friend" without actually knowing them and there's no room for your patriotic displays of sexy love, what's the fun in social networking anyway?

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