I've been on tumblr since 2011 so I'd like to think I know some etiquette stuff, but I'm so confused reading your story.

ME TOO

I think the only thing I would've done differently from what you did is drop the original gif creator an ask and say you want to use x gif in a post, with credit, and would that be cool? most people I think would say yes, go ahead. what other people then get up in arms about is *their* problem and the block button is free to use.

This is so reasonable!

I made a gif maybe once and posted to tumblr where it then automatically entered the built-in tumblr gif tool system, which means that maybe once a year I get a random notification that somebody used my gif in a post via that built-in gif tool system. every time I'm like ??? what??? (because I always forget that I made that one gif once upon a time and then get confused that somebody wants to use it.) makes me wonder if the people who uploaded popular gifs get a lot of notifications about it... but also if any gifs one uploads to tumblr enters the built-in tool system then there is just no policing who then uses them, you know? and that method comment-jerk describes with all the html steps - literally never heard of it.

It appears (again, limited knowledge here) that this is precisely what they were aiming for - they wanted me to use the gif thru the tumblr attribution system so the original gif maker would get that notification. And I think I would, if I could figure out how to do it without quite as much HTML steps, but I didn't know it at the time.

And, well, back in the days of LJ, doing that (using a link to an image rather than downloading and hosting it yourself) would have been called 'hot linking' and was frowned on bc it would eat the hosting bandwidth for the original poster.... so it would have been a dick move not that long ago.