Guide to Facebook commenting in GIF form

The GIF guide to commenting on all the most cliche Facebook posts

By Molly McHugh August 30, 2013

the best gifs to use in response prototypical fb posts gif guide

Facebook has finally (sort of) introduced GIF support (kind of). Thanks to a Giphy workaround, you can now post animated GIFs from the service to Facebook – and while they don’t autoplay (yet) and you can’t post them from other sites, it’s still a huge coup for the GIF-obsessed among us.

Photo comments have already become one of the most popular ways to let images say for us what we can’t quite put into words. And now, GIFs can help us take it an extra step. Here are is a guide to commenting on all the prototypical status updates filling your News Feed in GIF form. (All of the GIFs below are available in Giphy’s catalog.) Let’s get busy and add a little sass to your Facebook responses, shall we?

1. The relationship status update

single fb Congratu-freaking-lations, you’re in a relationship. Time for the masses to comment on and/or superfluously “like” this status update. We’ve all seen it: One of those pieces of News Feed fodder that keeps on rising to the top of the stream for days, all because your friend found someone that can tolerate her and is comfortable with this very public declaration of commitment. If you ignore this update, you’re a curmudgeonly old miser (and we should hang out soon). If you “like” it, you’re just another sheep, shamed into societal norms. Commenting on it is weird – don’t be that person. The perfect solution?

2. The over-eager invite

We all have the Facebook friend who we haven’t seen in years that suddenly wants to “chill sometime.” Maybe you ran into her at the grocery store, or he was at that mutual friend’s party. Whatever the occasion, hanging out came up at some point. While you had no intentions of actually following through with this game of catch-up, the instigator thought otherwise – and now your wall has become a place of unanswered invitations. Instead of passive aggressively ignoring them (“Oh, see, I threw my router out the window accidentally…”), you now have the perfect answer.

3. The vaguebook post

Vaguebookers, you are the bane of our existence. You post these attention-seeking, desperate little pieces of cryptic nonsense – and if we all ignore them like we so want to, we feel like huge jerks. You can’t like that status either, so what the hell are we to do? How can we communicate we semi-care but not to the point of wanting to actually get involved in whatever new drama the poster has dreamed up?

4. The baby picture post

And by “baby picture,” I obviously mean the 80-odd photos that just hit your feed and keep rising to the top of the stream thanks to incessant comments and “likes.” Not that babies aren’t … you know… relatively cute, chubby, small people – but enough is enough, and very few people honestly care about witnessing the minute growth of your infant via a screen. If you know the poster decently well, however, you are required to say something about their new human. If you’ve grown weary of the “Awww!” response, here’s a new idea (that will also get you out of babysitting duties from now ’til forever).

5. The requisite ‘Happy Birthday!’ posts

Now this is one is two-fold. Every year on your birthday, your wall is likely flooded by comments from people you know, don’t know, like, hate, and didn’t know still existed. Even if you only get a handful (which is fine! This is a measure of nothing! Facebook birthday well-wishing is not significant or meaningful), some sort of response is necessary. Thanking each person individually is a fool’s game, and a blanket “thanks guys!” is boring. Thus:

And when a friend’s b-day rolls around, and for the love of all things holy you can’t bring yourself to write one more damn “happy birthday YOU!” on someone’s wall, there’s this gem:

6. The advice-asking post

fb braces I don’t totally understand sending advice requests out into the Facebook ether, but that doesn’t mean people don’t do it. They do. A lot. Input is sought for everything: haircuts, boyfriends, girlfriends, pets, vacations, dinners, music, etc. Tell us what you think about everything so that life/daily decisions can be Internet crowdsourced! If you’ve got one Facebook friend who particularly makes a habit of this, and you feel compelled to add something to the conversation, then say hello to this GIF.

7. The countdown post

broom Someone you know is excited about something, and damnit if they aren’t going to let you know about it – for 23 consecutive days! Whether it be a wedding, birthday, Christmas, Arbor Day, the anniversary of when they got their cat – whatever – people love the Facebook countdown. Once it’s been going on for over a week and you see “Only three more days until I get to marry my best friend!!,” you’ve entered torture zone and you cannot be held accountable for your actions. New rule: You get three days, Facebookers! Three days of countdown. You go over that, and you deserve whatever happens, which might be this GIF comment.