The Real Reason Your Partner Loves Sending You GIFs
There may be more to these funny images than you think
You send your partner a message and they immediately send you back a GIF instead of writing an actual response. Maybe it’s funny. Maybe it’s meant to send some kind of a meaningful message. Maybe it just seems random.
And maybe your partner’s love of GIFs means more than you think, and it’s actually a window into their personality and communication style.
At least, research from Scott Church, which was published in Convergence: The International Journal of Research into New Media Technologies, would suggest there is. In fact, Church and his colleagues — Tom Robinson, Clark Callahan, and Jesse King — found that there are three types of GIF users with three distinct ways of using GIFs to communicate with others.
The Enthusiast
If your partner is a GIF enthusiast, they love using them to make you laugh — and they also love that you’ll recognize their Internet savvy. Also, your partner is probably not satisfied with sending emojis with their messages, and feels GIFs really get to the heart of what they’re trying to say.
One study participant who was identified as an enthusiast explained it this way: “I hate that my body language cannot…
