What's with that?

[chhotii]

An increasing number of people on my flist have added, as an icon, an animated gif of a little cartoon character beating his own head into a bloody pulp against a keyboard. It's as disgusting as you can possibly imagine from that description. Yes, cutely drawn, but really, really disgusting. I may have to switch to only using lynx for LJ, and miss all the pretty photography *sigh*

Comments

[klingonlandlady.livejournal.com]

Yeah, i hate that one too.

[donnad.livejournal.com]

I've noticed that particular icon quite a bit as well. I don't like it at all either, but then I find the moving icons really distracting to start with. I have noticed that if you hit stop after the page has loaded, it stops moving at least!

[totient]

I hate that icon, enough that every time I see it, I use adblock to blow it away. I have to do it again every time one of my friends uses it, but only once for each friend.

[ceo]

I hate it too, enough that I think I'm going to complain in a comment every time someone uses it. Who's with me?

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

You might want to consider that, if someone's having a bad enough day that the icon is the perfect visual descriptor for their feelings about it, your complaint about the icon may be taken rather poorly.

[ceo]

Yeah, that did occur to me.

[quietann.livejournal.com]

sigh. if you had not pointed it out to me, I probably would have continued in blissful oblivion.

[gosling.livejournal.com]

Yeah, it actually squicks me enough I really can't look at it.

[hammercock.livejournal.com]

It's a perfect icon for when you're having one of those days when the only thing stopping you from doing the same thing is that you're really not into that sort of pain.

[tb]

I've set Firefox to let animated gifs cycle only once, so usually all I see is the last frame, which is a lot less disgusting. Sometimes I miss somebody's cute animation, but it's worth it. I also don't have to deal with endless bouncing/twitching mood icons, which make it hard for me to read the text.

[perspicuity.livejournal.com]

and one can always ban such icons into oblivion permanently with a single click. buhbye.

#

[candle-light.livejournal.com]

It is in fact rather gruesome. I rather like it. I can see why some people might be bothered by it. How's this one instead?

[whitebird.livejournal.com]

A little on the fast side. Otherwise, not bad.

[marmota.livejournal.com]

As mentioned by others, it's possible in most browsers to set rotating gifs to either cycle only once or to stop by stopping the page. I like that icon; there are days and situations where it fits well. Is the one on this reply any better?

[totient]

I find the long frame at the end of that one (a) nasty and (b) detrimental to the exploding effect. Otherwise, oddly less disgusting than the hand drawn one. What's up with that?