… and his name is Zachary Crockett, who also happens to be our indefatigable Sunday story editor.
When he’s not crafting 2k-word viral deep dives (e.g., “How a janitor at Frito-Lay invented Flamin’ Hot Cheetos”), Zack is making the iconic GIFs that lead off our daily newsletters.
The GIF was invented in 1987…
… by a computer scientist named Steve Wilhite (FWIW, he says GIF is pronounced “jif”, with a soft G).
The ubiquitous format was originally created to compress an image size with minimal data loss. Today, it’s an incredible medium to roast people convey information and tell stories.
The genius of Zack’s GIFs is how little information he needs
Typically, he can craft the perfect GIF just based on an article’s title.
Here were 5 of our favorites from 2020:
From: “Can startups make their own mafias?”
From: “The App Store backlash is growing”
From: “A new case for deepfakes”
From: “What’s powering Apple’s $2T valuation?”
From: “A Facebook ‘first’: a college-only social network”
