A couple of months ago artist Man Bartlett announced that he could no longer remain silent about the course of art on the Internet and specifically had to express his beef with the animated GIF.
Some unfortunate words like "post-hipster" and "depressingly vapid" got slung around and one of my pages got linked to so I replied by asking Bartlett some questions, essentially trying to move to specifics from flame mode.
He replied on Twitter and the answer is...he's not going to reply! This recalls the Paris Peace talks during the Vietnam war where the US kept proposing different designs for conference tables, thus forestalling actual talks:
manbartlett
@tommoody Turn comments on on your blog and I'll attempt to answer them. You make some worthwhile points: http://is.gd/kcK9Ztommoody
thanks, @manbartlett but--you can't respond on your own blog? hyperlinks make speedy communication possible!manbartlett
@tommoody I could, but won't create a new post to answer your questions. Post them in the comments of my original post then?tommoody
...@manbartlett: arguing about where to have the argument is a great way to avoid substantive discussiontommoody
if it's not worth two blog posts it's probably not something you care about or have much stake in, @manbartlett (i.e., web animation)
And that's where it sits. Talks stalled; GIF wars rage.