The Little Viral Gnome

If you've been on the internet in the past four months, there's a good chance you've seen this guy.

I made this GIF shortly after the 2016 presidential election. I was not feeling happy, and I just wanted to focus on making something simple and sweet for a few hours. It was nice to get an instant reaction when I posted it on social media, and then that reaction just grew and grew. The GIF was shared on popular Facebook accounts that I'd never heard of. Somone told me that her local bank had included it in a "thank you" email to her. More recently, Sarah Jessica Parker and Boing Boing both featured it on their social accounts on the same day. Someone in Japan left a comment saying they remembered seeing it on NHK, of all places. 

This little GIF is the most viral thing I've made to date. It's probably needless to say that in most of the instances that people saw this GIF, they didn't see a credit along with it. I'm pretty OK with that, especially because if you really want to know who made it, it's not hard to figure out. It's strange to have something go viral that I spent so little time on, but that's sort of how viral things usually work, isn't it? It's strange to feel happy about this GIF's popularity. But I am happy that the image seems to have connected with people in a genuine way.