If X allows GIF profile pics, I will literally die

• A designer for X (formerly Twitter) polled users about adding animated GIFs for profile pics.
• Twitter banned GIF profiles in 2013, but old ones were allowed to keep them — including me.

X appears to be considering letting users add animated GIFs to their profile pictures.

Andrea Conway, a designer for the site formerly known as Twitter, tweeted a poll this week on the idea. As of Friday, the poll had generated more than 13,000 votes, with a clear majority 73% saying they'd want animated GIFs.

There's one particular part of the minority who feels especially passionate about this: the tiny handful of people who still have animated GIF avatars. And as a member of that small group, well, I have feelings.

Animated avatars were generally discouraged in early Twitter — the only way to get one was to make the GIF image a set of very specific sizes. Eventually, in 2013, then-CEO Dick Costolo, who found the GIF avatars annoying, closed the loophole. However, accounts with existing GIF profiles were allowed to keep them.

Over the years, the number of those who held onto animated GIF avatars dwindled. Some accounts are gone, have been inactive for years, or simply changed their profile picture to something else.

I kept my avatar, realizing if I ever changed, I couldn't get it back. I cherish my GIF. It pleases me greatly. I know that others covet my flashy avatar of pulsating rainbow balloons. It makes me feel special that I have something other people want and they can't have. It shows that I've been on Twitter for a long time. I know — admitting you care about Twitter was pathetic enough two years ago, and it's even more so now at a time when X is increasingly falling into irrelevance and becoming such a cesspit it feels morally fraught to remain active on the platform. Trust me, I'm humiliated by all this just as much as I should be. Absolute loser behavior, big worm energy.

I also find myself in a unique position to know that many people want animated GIF avatars. Strangers DM me fairly frequently to ask how I got mine. I used to joke "I pay for Twitter PRO features!" but that joke doesn't work now that this actually exists.

For the last few years, I've been in a group DM with 20 other accounts who are still clinging to their GIF profile pictures, but we occasionally joke about when strangers DM us asking to buy our accounts.

I asked them how they felt about our special group opening up to the unwashed masses.

"This is going to cause me personal trauma because I have ADHD and not having the option to change my profile picture was the only thing keeping my life together in the face of the paradox of choice. The grease in my hair when I'm no longer able to shower will be on your hands, 'Andrea'," said @sex_colum, whose GIF is of a shirtless David Hasslelhoff.

"Maybe they'll break the whole site before they implement it," suggested @coolgarydotnet, who has a giggling pink blog for an avatar. "It's fun lying to people when they ask how I got one. We lose out on a renewable source of entertainment."

"They will implement it in the dumbest way possible. That's for sure," said @leyawn, a walking plump bird cartoon.

"They should let you use entire old ytmnds as profile pics, complete with sound," suggested @sharked_up, with an animated shark cartoon. "I will still never pay Elon a cent."

"Actually I think the best part will be the GIF-creation app startups sloppily launched by directionless but optimistic 17-year-old sons of Fidelity VPs that explicitly advertise making your own GIF profiles that will only be used by IDF astroturf accounts and deeply undersocialized 30-60 year olds to make incoherent post-boomer trumpwave cartoons," said @sex_colum.

If X does actually go through with allowing animated profile photos back, it might be fun, but as much as it pains me, Dick Costolo probably was right: a feed full of animated avatars would probably look annoying. I hope that it doesn't happen, not really because I want to maintain my rare status, but because I'd prefer X not to look any worse than it already does. With headlines removed from links, ad labeling hidden, X is in full enshittification. Adding a bunch of GIFs avatars would only push it further into the abyss. Eh, maybe we should just let it happen.

One possibility is that GIFs will only be available for X Premium subscribers. If so, having a GIF will suddenly have a new meaning: that you actually PAY for X (ew). In that case, @weedhitter, who has a flashing spaceman suit GIF, raised the possiblity of suing for defamation, claiming: "my career has suffered through my forced and incorrect association with Twitter Premium."