GIFs are everything that you need in life. The perfect little GIF (or Jif, if you prefer) will emote a thousand feels, all in one tiny moving thumbnail. Additionally, it will make you laugh – it’s a win all around, trust me.
Keeping this in mind, Google has used its search insights from Tenor to use celebrities or characters to convey emotions, feelings, and actions.
So basically, your search for a celebrity or character will take you to an emotion or feeling associated with them. So, if like me you search for Bojack, you’ll find depressed or badass GIFs, mostly with profound quotes because that is who I am apparently.
Additionally, another tool lets you search for emotions that will link you to the most popular celebrity or fictional character. So, a search for “shrug” will give you GIFs associated with Kayne, Elmo, Will Smith and Joey from FRIENDS, to name a few.
These cool new interactive tools are based on data gathered by Google’s GIF and stickers search engine Tenor. Notably, Google acquired them in 2018. Google’s Trends team created these tools afterward by pulling information on the most searched for emotions and reactions. They later associating them with famous pop culture icons.
Google also came up with an emotional “fingerprint” tool, which lets you search through a range of emotions – from happy to sad and more. Several dots scattered throughout give an estimate of which celebrities or fictional characters best display the type of emotion you are trying to communicate.
With the advent of social media, it has truly become difficult to express emotions using a few words. This is where GIFs come in – they provide additional context and sometimes, you don’t even have to type anything.