After much shouting and name-calling (mostly with me on the receiving end, sorry to say), Will Brand has revised this statement:
The preference for GIF as a medium, it seems to me, has nothing to do whatsoever with its compression algorithms, a teensy bit to do with the retro appeal of a limited color palette, and a whole lot to do with the fact that - as the very existence of your remix culture indicates - it's so easily interchanged.
He now understands that many artists prefer GIFs for their funky compression algorithms (what John Michael Boling called "the elegance in an appropriately used dither"), the minimal, de stijl-like appeal of a limited color palette (whether or not it is retro), and somewhere further down the list, ease of remixing (since, after all, the first attempts at "art" GIFs existed long before a SocMed "remix culture").
It was rough, but I finally got him to publicly agree with me.
Update, July 2011: This is an ironic post. I don't think I would ever say that someone "publicly agrees with me"--it has a bit too much of a "smell the glove" ring to it. Nor does WB actually agree with me--he still maintains that interchange trumps graphics in the GIF acronym. Was just inverting his words out of annoyance with the linked-to post.
