With over a billion people getting involved with the World Cup on social media, it’s been one of the most digitally engaging events in our history. It also came at a time when Twitter began to allow animated GIFs. We’ve already looked at how brands used this opportunity to improve their tweeting, today we look at how fans of a global event have expressed themselves over the last month with 23 World Cup GIFs and Vines.

There’s no point in lying, since the moment GIFs on Twitter became a thing we’ve wanted to do this post.

https://twitter.com/opendorse/status/479357535380455425

The instantaneous nature of a goal combined with the brevity of GIFs and the real time aspect of Twitter meant that the world couldn’t wait to share beautiful strikes such as this...

https://twitter.com/fifacupgifs/status/480433552568250368

Oh, there was one that looked like this too.

https://twitter.com/allstarfilm/status/488423828683751424

Plus this one that came straight out of a computer game.

https://twitter.com/JasonWStanley/status/479374538397204480

But it wasn’t all about moments of sublime skill, and neither were all of the World Cup GIFs. There were ugly patches too, such as Benoît Assou-Ekotto headbutting his own teammate

https://twitter.com/soccergods/status/479411783866675200

But the biggest woeful flashpoint came from Uruguay’s hungry hungry Suarez, giving real time marketers an excellent opportunity to sink their teeth into.

https://twitter.com/JamieRoss7/status/481571427351822336

It wasn’t just the players losing control of their emotions, those on the touchline could barely contain themselves either.

https://twitter.com/lyrapappin/status/481255700665217026

Or those in the stands! Whatever this guy is feeling, we want to feel it too.

https://twitter.com/El_Eleven/status/481040173279739904

Fans up in Space were getting involved in the build up to Germany vs. USA as well.

https://twitter.com/NASA/status/481940664641654785

This guy though… this guy.

https://twitter.com/WIRED/status/482196358057971713

The 2014 tournament also featured some astounding feats of goalkeeping

https://twitter.com/SBNation/status/482594376774713344

After the quarter final against Belgium, #ThingsTimHowardCanSave became one of the funniest trends on Twitter following his outstanding performance between the sticks. In that match Tim Howard made more saves than any other goalkeeper in a single world cup match. Here’s all of them at once.

https://twitter.com/YahooSports/status/486348245195829249

It turns out Tim Howard is quite okay saving an avalanche of Belgian shots, but isn’t too cool with some random dude trying to hug him at the airport.

https://twitter.com/Michael_Lark/status/485519213457453057

The host nation’s semi-final match against Germany was the most tweeted about sporting event in history. As mentioned last week, over 35 million 140 character outbursts, jokes, comments, and opinions came gushing out of desktops, tablets, and phones all over the world. The match started badly for Brazil, with five goals in the first half including Miroslav Klose breaking Ronaldo’s record for the most goals scored in World Cup history.

https://twitter.com/ZProphet_MMA/status/486607111267176448

Yep, the world had fun with that one.

https://twitter.com/SportsNation/status/486608101865701376

In the following hours everyone tried to create a funny GIF to mark the occassion. It was hard to pick out which one quite captured the essence of Germany’s exhilarating, show-stopping, and almost-hard-to-watch annihilation of the five-time champions. But we think that Mankind and The Undertaker summed it up pretty well.

https://twitter.com/WTFItsCiaran/status/486633576897970176

The Argentines briefly thought they’d won the final before their goal was ruled out for being offside

https://twitter.com/VinesWorldCup/status/488406710420525057

Over 32.1 million tweets were sent out during the final. It was a tough game with both sides receiving sturdy blows to the head, including this one from the giant German Manuel Neuer.

https://twitter.com/BamCaker/status/488469938030387201

After an intense 113 minutes of deadlock, 22 year old substitute Mario Götze shattered Argentine hearts with a masterful, clinical finish.

https://twitter.com/MarkDiStef/status/488537255145771008

And with that, a young man’s life has been changed forever...

https://twitter.com/florella_/status/488521203594694656

618,725 tweets were sent in the minute that Germany became world champions, which Twitter claimed to be a record for any event.

https://twitter.com/VinesWorldCup/status/488444234559938560

Despite the lows of defeat (unless you were German), it was a halcyon month that leaves us looking forward to 2018 and more World Cup GIFs.

https://twitter.com/dradojcin/status/488678890496614400

Time to get on with life I suppose…

https://twitter.com/zlatc/status/488623604259495936