It’s the year 2021, and people on the internet prefer to utilize short, silent clips to visualize their reactions to things rather than words. These little videos, called GIFs, crop up pretty much instantly after a relatable moment appears in a movie or TV show, and then spreads across social media.
Of course, in among the millions of GIFs out there, you’ll find plenty taken from the world of fantasy and sci-fi. From the cutest creature in the galaxy to Agatha Harkness, let’s take a tour of Giphy’s most popular geeky GIFs of 2021.
The Mandalorian
Coming in at number 10 is, you guessed it, Grogu, aka Baby Yoda from The Mandalorian. What’s interesting about this one is that the clip is taken from season 2, which didn’t even air this year. Regardless, seeing Grogu get excited is both ridiculously cute and always relatable content. We can’t wait to be excited as this when season 3 finally airs.
Bridgerton
At number eight is Daphne Bridgerton (Phoebe Dynevor) with her mildly surprised reaction from Netflix’s Bridgerton. Okay, so it’s not really a fantasy show but we’re including it anyway. This show was Netflix’s biggest ever release, breaking all the records…until a little show called Squid Game arrived and blew it out of the water. But that’ll be next year.
WandaVision
At fifth place, coming as a shock to absolutely nobody, is Agatha Harkness’ (Kathryn Hahn) wink from Marvel Studios’ WandaVision. This GIF is the type you simply can’t scroll down Twitter without seeing approximately 10,000 times. In fact, Agatha has her own Disney+ TV show, House of Harkness, currently in development, so perhaps we’ll see more winking antics. Until then, I don’t think we’ll ever get bored of seeing this. In fact, currently, it sits on a crazy 414 million views. Yikes!
Pokémon
From the ongoing struggles of the pandemic to the climate change crisis, there are plenty of reasons to express sadness and disappointment this year. So it only makes sense that a sad GIF takes fourth place. It comes in the form of Pikachu, head bowed, about to cry. Up to now, this GIF has saddened over 465 million people.
The Office
We can’t leave you without sharing the number one most popular GIF of 2021. It is, of course, Stanley Hudson’s classic bored, mopey pose from The Office.
Interestingly, none of the GIFs featured on this list were also part of the equivalent list from 2020. I suppose that just goes to show how fast the internet moves on to new memes.
What is perhaps even more strange is that 2020’s list didn’t contain a single GIF from a fantasy or science fiction franchise, so maybe the world is getting slightly geekier.
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