Like practically everyone who earns their bread off the internet, I have mixed feelings about comments. The relationship is at best love/hate, similar to my feelings for Twitter, Facebook and any other social network really. Comments introduce me to interesting and challenging people. And they also, sometimes — OK, relatively often — suck the life force from my very core. Negativity is like deadly radiation, and I won't last long when exposed.

Sometimes I prefer to just use GIFs in comments. They're lighthearted. It's easy to sense the emotion of the message, which I can't always say about text. Today, I came across these GIFs of Pokemon evolving, and giddily imagined a world in which Pokemon GIFs were the de facto method of communicating online. Everything would be happy and sweet and cuddly. Sure, it would thwart productivity and conversation and eventually I would miss the real world. But, you know, what if we made the dream a reality here in this post?

Credit for these beautiful GIFs goes to the immensely talented Brakken on Tumblr, whose other work is worth a look.