‘Gifs are cringe’: how Giphy’s multimillion-dollar business fell out of fashion

The No 1 gif of 2021 was a slow zoom on the character Stanley from the US version of The Office. Photograph: Giphy/peacock/https://giphy.com/stories/top-gifs-of-2021-a4b4dd4f-8e99

It is rare for a multimillion-dollar company to explicitly state that its business is dying because it is simply too uncool to live.

But that is the bold strategy that the gif search engine Giphy has adopted with the UK’s competition regulator, which is trying to block a $400m (£352m) takeover attempt by Facebook’s owner, Meta.