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When words won't cut it, express yourself with reaction GIFs

When you really want to get your point across, nothing beats a hilarious little video clip. Here's how to find them and use them.

Rick Broida Senior Editor
Rick Broida is the author of numerous books and thousands of reviews, features and blog posts. He writes CNET's popular Cheapskate blog and co-hosts Protocol 1: A Travelers Podcast (about the TV show Travelers). He lives in Michigan, where he previously owned two escape rooms (chronicled in the ebook "I Was a Middle-Aged Zombie").
Rick Broida
2 min read

You've seen them in message forums, blog posts and countless other corners of the Internet: little looping video clips that typically last no more than a few seconds. Like this one (which you may not be able to see if you're using a mobile device):

If a picture is worth a thousand words, something like this is probably in the mid-five-digits. It's informally referred to as a "reaction GIF," and it's a fun, often funny, often very funny, way to express yourself online -- usually as a reaction (natch) to something else you've seen online.

That green fella up above, for example? You might use that in response to a blog post that made you particularly angry. Or this one if you find something particularly absurd:

Okay, but where do you find these little animations, and how do you deploy them as you travel the Interwebs?

The where is easy: Start at ReactionGIFs.com, which features a large, growing and, most important, categorized collection of snippets. Here you can search for particular people or feelings, or view categories based on a feeling or answer (such as "hell yes!"). There's also a Reddit thread devoted to reaction GIFs. (FYI, some of these images are decidedly NSFW.)

Once you've found a GIF you want to use, the next step is to copy its URL -- that is, the address where it's hosted online. In the case of the above Simpsons GIF, for example, which I found on Reddit, I pulled the address right out of my browser's address bar:

reaction-gif-url.jpg
Screenshot by Rick Broida/CNET

In the case of ReactionGIFs.com, it works much the same: Click the GIF you want, then copy the URL from the address bar. In most browsers you can also right-click a GIF and choose Copy Image URL -- a helpful option in case you're pulling the GIF from a location that doesn't hyperlink the source.

Once you've copied the address, all that remains is to paste it into the right place. If you're a blogger and want to make it part of a post, that usually means choosing the embed-image option, then inserting the URL (as opposed to uploading an image).

Likewise, if you subscribe to a message forum, you may be able to use a reaction GIF as your profile photo -- again just pasting the URL instead of uploading a photo. Many message-board systems allow for this option. Similarly, you can often embed an image (in the form of a URL) when you're posting to message board. But you don't just paste the URL into the text; again, you have to look for an embed-image tool.

What's that? You don't like reaction GIFs? All I can say to that is: