Leave it to Disney to predict the future of Internet culture. In 1997, it released Flubber, a remake of its 1961 flick, The Absent-Minded Professor. Flubber is a science fiction comedy film starring Robin Williams, Marcia Gay Harden, Jodi Benson and Christopher McDonald. The film's premise is simple enough -- Williams' character, Professor Philip Brainard, creates an elastic, sentient, green goo called Flubber in an attempt to develop a new energy source and save Medfield College from financial ruin. However, Flubber isn't the only noteworthy creation of Brainard. That honor goes to Weebo (voiced by Benson), a robot with a wicked sense of humor and an affinity for GIFs. That’s right -- Weebo used GIFs to convey her emotions throughout the film before they were invented.
Although the history of GIFs can be traced back to the 1970s with the creation of the LZW compression algorithm, which was mostly used on proprietary dial-up services, it wasn't until the late 1990s and early 2000s that GIFs were almost exclusively used in the creation of website building. At the time, most Internet users were still using a dial-up connection. GIFs were the only way these users could post animated pictures on websites. These early GIFs were unrefined and often amateurish. They were treated by most as a joke and a throwback.
It would take some time before GIFs were used as a visual language to convey emotions and random thoughts. GIFs became more popular with the growth of social media sites like Twitter, Tumblr, Facebook and Reddit. With Tumblr's creation of GIF messaging and GIF search, the animated pictures exploded in popularity, with many sites following suit and creating GIF-related features.
In Flubber, Weebo, a small, yellow robot, uses short clips from television and film to better communicate with the professor and convey her thoughts. When Brainard tries to wake her up, Weebo plays a clip of Sleepy from Snow White. When Brainard succeeds at something, Weebo celebrates by showing clips of people clapping. In one scene, Weebo's in a bad mood and displays a clip of a frustrated Shirley Temple. When Brainard, his girlfriend and Weebo are falling through the sky in a flying car, Weebo plays clips of Looney Tunes and other characters also falling.
Even though GIFS have been part of the Internet since the 1970s, Weebo used clips in the way the public uses them now: to enhance conversation and convey random thoughts and emotions. As such, Disney was ahead of its time with the inclusion of animated clips in Flubber.