I'm with you on this. I like sending gifs with my friends, but it's a poor medium for open discussion on a message board.
Yeah, well, I don't think they're going to get used to do deep discussion of design principles or anything.
And is not three now...OTOH, we used to be so grognard-ish about pictogram communication that ENWorld banned the rolls eyes smiley. It got added back into the mix awhile back ....
Don't expect mockery via gif to hold up well.