First thing I thought of when I read the title were 1990s era webcams.

When I read the title, the first thing I did was laugh and think about telling you to 'check this new thing out'.

A guy I used to work with wrote a tiny JavaScript library that would write into GIF content to create motion graphics. It actually worked, in 1997.

A bit later, web browsers cleaned up their implementations, and it no longer works.

Good times, though.

I don't think it is really funny. Hacks like this is how progress is delayed. Because why innovate when you can rely on "hacks that provably work in the real world"?

Well, it was innovation 20 years ago. Today there are more direct ways that achieve the same effect (such as canvas) without taking these roundabout ways.

Good luck finding an email client that supports canvas.

Good luck finding an email client that will load animated gifs from remote sources and will keep the connection open indefinitely. Personally I'd consider either one of those to be a bug worthy of a ticket.