Gif TV Brings Your Favorite Internet Memes to Your Desktop

The word meme was first introduced by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene, and was used to describe ideas that spread through culture in a way that mimics biological evolution. But most people think of memes as silly images or GIFs that get passed around on the internet, primarily as jokes. They’re most often still images, but short video clips in the form of GIFs are becoming increasingly common. If you have some favorites that you like to look at occasionally, Gif TV makes it easy to display them on your desktop.

Gif TV was developed by Jennifer Bennett and is currently being crowdfunded through a Kickstarter campaign. It has only reached $1,000 of the $5,000 funding goal so far, but it still has 22 days left to go in order to reach that goal. Physically speaking, Gif TV is just a nice — though simple — stand for your phone. It’s made from 1/8” laser-cut birch plywood, and can be quickly assembled. After you’ve put your Gif TV together, you can slip in your smartphone and use its screen to start showing off your favorite GIFs. Most smartphones should fit in the stand.

That stand is pretty nifty looking, but it’s really the Gif TV app that completes the package. With that app, you can create your own channel full of GIFs you make yourself or with existing memes that fit a theme you’re going for. Other people can tune into your channel, and you can tune into theirs. You can also utilize tags if you want to, for example, just watch Full House GIFs. These channels are built using the GIPHY API, so you can take advantage of what that platform already offers. You can download the app by itself if you aren’t interested in the Gif TV stand.

If you do want the stand, the Kickstarter campaign will be running until August 13th. A single Gif TV stand with the app included costs just $25. Rewards are expected to be delivered in October of this year.