It's interesting to poke around and see how the game of telephone works. The first mentions I saw on Twitter were from February 2018[0]. Subsequent Black Histo

It's interesting to poke around and see how the game of telephone works. The first mentions I saw on Twitter were from February 2018[0]. Subsequent Black History Months[1] would reiterate how she invented GIFs or sometimes animated GIFs. You even get crazy things like how she invented the animated GIF while working with the Obama administration[2]. (That post references an article that talks about her working with the Obama administration that doesn't mention GIFs[3]. The author just merged the two things she's credited with.) In 2024, the story is that she invented the GIF at Netscape[4], which obviously makes little sense. It could be a reference to GIFs looping, but I see no evidence for that, especially since her LinkedIn[5] doesn't say she worked at Netscape. She worked at Macromedia, which involved work with Netscape, and I suspect the genesis is her work on Shockwave during that time (2005-2010), and that was taken to be a precursor to animated GIFs (obviously false, but an easy mistake for someone young and non-technical. Maybe it's a cultural precursor to modern animated GIF usage in people's minds?) Overall, though, this is a pretty dumb thing for them to claim, even if the claim is widespread across the Internet these days. She was roughly 17 when animated GIFs were first developed. As I said, it's interesting to see how the game of telephone plays out. I don't think anyone involved in this was intentionally spreading false information, and I don't really expect random Twitter users to fact-check carefully. I would like NYT to put some effort into it. As it is, we now have a NYT touting an obviously-false claim when she actually did a lot of really important and impressive stuff they could focus on instead. There's no need to spread fake accolades for her. Her actual contributions stand on their own. [0] https://x.com/Reel365/status/960288180447694848 https://x.com/Reel365/status/960288180447694848 [1] https://x.com/search?q=%22Gelobter%22%20%22gif%22%20until%3A2020-01-01&src=typed_query&f=live https://x.com/search?q=%22Gelobter%22%20%22gif%22%20until%3A... / https://x.com/search?q=%22Gelobter%22%20%22gif%22%20until%3A2022-01-01&src=typed_query&f=live https://x.com/search?q=%22Gelobter%22%20%22gif%22%20until%3A... / https://x.com/search?q=%22Gelobter%22%20%22gif%22%20until%3A2024-01-01&src=typed_query&f=live https://x.com/search?q=%22Gelobter%22%20%22gif%22%20until%3A... [2] https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:share:7034543821229084672 https://www.linkedin.com/feed/update/urn:li:share:7034543821... [3] https://theblackwallsttimes.com/2022/08/18/computer-scientist-lisa-gelobter-is-the-gif-that-keeps-on-giving/ https://theblackwallsttimes.com/2022/08/18/computer-scientis... [4] https://seattlemedium.com/lisa-gelobter-the-trailblazing-computer-scientist-behind-the-creation-of-the-gif/ https://seattlemedium.com/lisa-gelobter-the-trailblazing-com... [5] https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisagelobter/details/experience/ https://www.linkedin.com/in/lisagelobter/details/experience/