I don’t have a problem with gifs in general. I am guilty of getting on LOLcheezburgers and looking at all the cute kitten and puppies. I laugh myself silly at text fails. I think animated gifs where people are rolling their eyes or throwing things are hilarious. That being said, I have a problem with gifs in reviews.
My problem isn’t the single gif, but the 18 million gifs that are crammed into a review that overtake and essentially BECOME the review. You scroll through never ending
SQUEEEEEEEEs
OMGs
LOVEEEEEEs
and a multitude of gifs only to come to the end and realize there WAS no review. It’s just an endless montage of pictures and squeals. They are distracting. They slow my computer down.
They annoy me.
Now, I’ll be the first to say to each his own but what blows my mind is the hundreds of likes these reviews have. What exactly are these people liking? The review? It can’t be the review because there is no review. So it must be the pictures. Is that what we as reviewers and readers are evolving into? Unable to use words to properly express ourselves so we need a gif of a famous person crying or going insane to let the viewers know that we found a particular scene disturbing? That disturbs me. Words should be our friends. When I first started selling online, the best advice I was ever given was to write my listings for the blind. Meaning, my buyers should be comfortable to buy my item without pictures.
When I see a gif riddled review…I’m not comfortable buying that book.
So tell me what do you all think? Do gifs in reviews bother you or are you:
I’ve only ever seen the review with gifs on Goodreads. The first few times I encountered them, I thought they were cute, but it got old. Now they just seem to be people calling attention to themselves on the coattails of other people’s work. To me they seemed essentially to be using the reviews as their own personal blogs. So I just skip over them. Would probably not hold their silliness against the books themselves, though.
I never judge the book by a gif riddled review either. I just wish pictionary wasn’t the new review on Goodreads.
I almost always immediately dismiss reviews that start with gifs. One at the end I can take but when my feed is full of them, it drives me batty.
Me too. And it seems my feed is FILLED with crying girls, freaking out boys, and little floating breaking hearts. *sigh*
Drives me CRAZY! Excellent rant.
Thank you.
First I like it
Then, it become more and more annoying. Can you imagine the gifs review have 100+ likes in short time? I want to rant like this in Goodreads but afraid my Goodreads friend think that I’m jealous for the reviewer because they got so many attention
Yup. I felt the same way..hence, my rant is here. lol
I loathe them. Seriously. I read reviews because I want, you know, a review. Plus they always load weird on my phone. On a positive note my 6 year old thinks they are hysterical.
Once in awhile it’s okay. The constant overload has pushed me off the cliff. lol I will admit that sometimes I copy some of the funnier gifs.
THANK YOU, TORI! Very well written and echos my sentiments exactly. Although I am thrilled when I get a great review, and appreciate that the writer spends so much time putting it together, if there is no literary meat to it, it leaves me wondering who it was serving. Having said that, I’ve only received a few that were gif-riddled myself, and they have actually had a very nice review shmushed in there…somewhere. But the ones I’ve read of other books were cringe-worthy at times, and distracted me from my ultimate goal of wondering how another felt about a certain book I had either read or was considering. So again, thank you for the mini-rant. I liked it! (no gif enclosed)
EXACTLY! Who or what is a gif riddled review serving? Especially if there isn’t an actual review? It’s like a popularity contest. Let’s see who can make the most picturesque review and get the most likes.
*snicker* — even if they did have words in the review, I don’t read them, because I’m so distracted by the pictures. I don’t mind if they are in a blog post, because they usually structure them a bit better, the all gif goodreads.com reviews are a bit annoying too — especially since you have no control of looking at them, they are there sucking in your brain as you scroll…
I wish Goodreads had a gif-filter. That would be SUPER helpful.
When I first started seeing them I thought they were cute and now I hate them with a mad passion. A few days ago I was looking at reviews for a book that I thought I might like. It took me a little bit to find an actual review among the pics and when I found one it ended up getting pushed off my screen by gif’s that were still loading. I couldn’t find that review again and did not want to hunt through the pages for it. I ended up giving up and decided not to get that book.
As someone a lot smarter than I has said – Gif reviews (at least the ones you’re describing Tori) – tend to make it about the reviewer rather than the book. And I don’t LIKEY at all. Those squeeing reviews tell me nothing, and I hate them with a passion of a 1000 fiery suns. Or something. I don’t mind the odd gif or two within a well written review, because sometimes they do add a laugh or an eyeroll.. but the on the whole, I really prefer text.. because it’s easier to read, doesn’t slow my computer down, and I just as easily get a sense of taste, preference, and writing style from a wall of text as I do a picture.
You know, I have never thought of it like this: “Words should be our friends. When I first started selling online, the best advice I was ever given was to write my listings for the blind. Meaning, my buyers should be comfortable to buy my item without pictures.”
I just get cheesed off because my old ass computer freezes when I open GR. But that is an excellent point.
You so smart….
There have been a few that have really made me laugh – but these days I just skip them. They slow up my computer and I don’t have time for them. I want to know WHY you liked or disliked the book.
They are fun in rants, otherwise no
THANK YOU Tori. I can barely stand Goodreads any more. And just yesterday was chagrined to discover a gif-ridden review on the Smart Bitches blog (one of the RITA Reader Challenge reviews).
I used to feel like Mandi, blodeuedd, and some others above who can take gifs in certain contexts or in small doses, but NO MORE. I am officially over them completely. Thanks for the post.
Oh, thank you for this rant! I am so tired of the Gifs and picture reviews, especially those with racy pictures (not that I mind the racy pictures – it’s just that you never know who might be walking by the computer at the same time those images appear). And then – if any of my GR friends likes the review – they appear on my feed – over and over again.
A good review tells me why the review liked/disliked the book.
YES! Thank you! Every other review I try to read on GR now is loaded up with gifs and it drives me crazy.
They drive me NUTS!!!! I always pass them over.
I liked them at first, but now I detest them. They are distracting, and they take my attention away from the written review (if there is one). Gifs also slow my computer down.
I hate everything, so yeah I’m not a fan. HEH.
I recall LONG ago, seeing one that had me rolling on the floor in laughter because it so perfectly mocked a book. It was epic in awesomeness. AND there was an actual review there.
I think a few of those went up, got HUGE positive response, and people went “Oh, ok! Let’s all make this a thing even though we’re not funny and won’t make it good!”
I left goodreads about the same time I quit FB, and I just don’t miss it. between you and Mandi and twitter I just don’t need another site/book source! So I guess it doesn’t bug me too much because I never see these gif reviews.
I tend to skip over reviews with gifs in them. Honestly, if I follow a blog or reviewer and the majority of the reviews or gif-ridden I stop following them.
I’m not a fan of the .gif riddled review. Like several comments above, they were cute for a bit and now are generally overused. I also dislike HUGE photos depicting characters…while I don’t mind seeing someone’s celebrity look-a-like…does it have to be a 5×7?
Excellent rant Tori!
Amen!! They ruin the whole experience, plus they are soooo yesterday! Enough is enough. I’m glad I’m not the only one that feels this way :)
Just today I saw a review like that on Goodreads, with hundreds of likes, and I honestly thought “too much, there is no review just pictures!” I use gifs on reviews, but just one or two in the right moment to emphasize a point I have already written. Gifs can be use as crutches, specially when you are just starting out to review books. I use them but the point of the matter is I don’t over use them. I’m out, good post :)
Hate hate hate the GIF-ridden review. I do not read. Because I don’t even look, it won’t necessarily put me off buying but if that’s all there is if I’m deciding whether to buy or not, I most probably won’t buy.
Yes! I’m really not a fan. They don’t serve much of a purpose and I end up spending more time wondering if I ought to know who the person in the gif is (if knowing is key to understanding an otherwise hard-to-understand usage). Also, I’m not sure they fall under fair use of the videos they use and I’m a stickler for getting it right.
They don’t really bother me, as anyone who puts that many GIFs or Squeees and OMGs!!! in a review, isn’t really someone I would take seriously when wanting a rec. Just like a reviewer that constantly gives 5 stars to everything they read.
I have my go to blogs who I know I can rely on for good, solid recs. So when I see all these reviews with photos etc splattered all over them, I just skim on by.
I agree with you. Goodreads, in particular, has become so bloated with gifs and other images in the reviews that I now block all images at that site. It’s a pain, but it’s preferable to wading through all that unnecessary crap to get to the review itself. If there was some way to just block images in the reviews there, I’d be delighted.
Lol I don’t even know how to do gifs in my reviews, or where to find them. I only read reviews on blogs, and never on goodreads, although I do post them there myself.
I am with Blodeuedd, in a rant those are fun (unless I did love the book that is being trashed), but too distracting in a review. I would not decide not to buy a book because of a review with gifs though. That is not the authors fault after all.
Yep! I think we had this conversation at RAGT!
Thank you, thank you, thank you! I hate gifs in reviews. It;s like sensory overload. I am tempted to write a comment to the person who overuses gifs to say “use your words!” There is a blogger who uses them too much to the point I’ve unsubscribed from the blog. I don’t read reviews with gifs anymore.
When they first started popping up it was amusing – the occassional well placed amusing gif that made you laugh/giggle etc. but now it’s just ridiculous. I don’t read reviews with more than one gif in – and if it’s a badly used gif I DNF.
I dislike the reviews that are mostly to all gifs, and saying that the number of likes pushes the review to the top of the pile and people looking for an honest review are being deceived.
As someone who suffers from motion sickness, I hate GIFs because they make me dizzy and give me headaches. I have to cover them with my hand if I want to read the review, but most of the time I just find another review (without GIFs) to read instead.
I think it’s hilarious when you try to look on a new adult review on Goodreads. It seems like all the top reviews contain at least 5 GIFs. Use your words.
I actually depend more on blogs like Smexy than Goodreads. I wonder though, if the folks at Goodreads administration realize how annoying many users find the gif-bloated reviews? Might be worth speaking up about it before they lose too many of the Goodreads members.
They know. There’re multiple threads in the “feedback” section begging them to do something about it. They have said over and over that they’re not going to do anything. It’s frustrating, but they just don’t care.
Am I completely out of my mind but isn’t it true that pics and animation, etc. take up more space on servers than text? Looks like if this was the case GR might be a little more concerned.
This is a rant well worth well, ranting about. I hate those damn things!
My Goodreads account is for YA and NA books, and people who review these books are100000x worse with the gifs than people who review other genres. Often the top ‘reviews’ for books there are literally just one gif or one picture.
I also hate when reviewers ‘cast’ actors for the characters and put giant pictures everywhere. Especially if it’s an actor I dislike. I always think, ‘thanks for blasting me with those images and ruining the character’!