See that's the biggest thing for me personally, I can explain the joke in the alt text but not ruin it for people who know the gif'd character or whatever
Exactly this. There are so many jokes that people who use gifs assume everyone will understand because of pop culture, and what that mindset ignores entirely is that there are a lot of different cultures and different things are popular in each of them.
Yeah, if an image is something I don’t recognize and there’s alt text, I’ll read it right away. If no alt text, I’ll check the comments if anyone else already asked “what’s this from” lol. If neither, I’ll ask if I really want to know 😅
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Or conversely, I have zero idea if a pic is an OC if it’s not in the post. But sometimes I can find out from the alt text.