Why Can’t You Find “I’m With Her” GIFs On Your iPhone?

I'm a GIF enthusiast who, thanks to iOS 10's inclusion of a GIF library (#images), tends to incorporate at least one silly animated image for every three texts sent. I will also be voting for Hillary Clinton tomorrow. So naturally, I was excited to start using "I'm with her"-themed GIFs in all my text conversations with fellow Hillary supporters.

There's just one problem: A search within #images for the Clinton campaign catchphrases "I'm with her" and "Stronger Together" returns zero results. Meanwhile, a search for Donald Trump's "Make America Great Again" produced 110 search results, about 40 of which were relevant to Donald Trump and the election. Of course, not all of these GIFs were complimentary (one was a phallic depiction of Trump, while another portrayed him as the Grinch), but there were still ones you would expect to find, of Trump at the podium, his campaign's slogan spelled out in large letters beneath. He was preaching his message — but where was Clinton preaching hers?

Apart from the political realm, there are some strange inconsistencies within #images — you don't get results for "butt" but you do for "twerk"; you don't get results for "Lyft" but you do for "Uber" — so I'm not suggesting that this is some sort of anti-Clinton conspiracy on Apple's part, and I don't believe that it is. Still, it's rather odd.

We looked into it, and learned that Apple sources the GIFs in Messages from apps including Giphy, Gif Keyboard, and Tumblr. This makes it stranger that no "I'm With Her" GIFs appear. Search the phrase on Giphy and you'll get "nasty woman" GIFs and see women such as Michelle Obama and Jennifer Lopez voicing their support, among others. There are similar results for "Stronger Together." So why aren't those filtering through to the search results in Messages? One possible reason could be search volume. If more people tend to search for Trump's slogan on giphy (as they do on Google), then it might explain why more GIFs would populate within iMessage. But even if "I'm With Her" and "Stronger Together" aren't searched as frequently, wouldn't there still be at least a few options? For those eagerly searching #images right now, Clinton isn't completely absent: Type in "Hillary Clinton" and you're met with plenty of images of the candidate in her signature pantsuit. But I'm still left questioning why the central supporting statements of the Clinton campaign, which have been voiced by everyone who endorses her bid for office — from Beyoncé to President Obama — are absent. Tomorrow, I'll be sourcing my election day GIFs straight from the Giphy app — and sporting an "I'm With Her" T-shirt for extra measure.