I made myself sad last year when I chronicled 2012 in 50 GIFs. A lot of awful dark shit happens when you're focusing on "the most memorable" moments of a year. Lifting footage of those events, good or bad, and fading portraits of dead celebrities into black wasn't exactly calling my name as 2013 came to a close.

So this year I decided to do something I hardly ever do, and started looking at Instagrams. I compiled GIFs of different peoples' feeds for the year. That's right, 2013 through the eyes of some of Instagram's biggest and brightest. Of course, this list is by no means comprehensive, so please send further suggestions of whose Instagram you'd like to see crunched into one single drive-by burst.

As a wallflower in the Instagramosphere, I'm pretty sure this is where I'm supposed to begin:

Kim Kardashian

This is who I think of whenever I hear the word "Instagram" uttered, and this is the experimental GIF I made that launched this whole project.

567 Instagrams in 2013.

Instagrams per day ratio: 1.55:1

James Franco (selfies only)

For the New York Times Thursday, Franco addressed the selfie's question, in which he explained, "I am actually turned off when I look at an account and don’t see any selfies, because I want to know whom I’m dealing with. In our age of social networking, the selfie is the new way to look someone right in the eye and say, 'Hello, this is me.'"

So I hucked all of the "Instagram King"'s selfies into one GIF, which took quite a while to weed out, because really, he's addicted to Instagram. He posted 1,369 times this year. Of those, 195 were selfies.

Instagrams per day ratio: 3.75:1

Selfies to Instagram ratio: 1:7

VICE

This is an obligatory kudos to Hanson O'Haver and his team for their work on VICE's fabulous Instagram account.

344 Instagrams in 2013

Instagrams per day ratio: 1:1.06

Motherboard

This is just embarrassing, as I take responsibility for this account. New year's resolution? I'll be better at Instagram in 2014.

58 Instagrams in 2013.

Instagrams per day ratio: 1:6.3

MC Hammer

When my family bought our first CD player, I was about four years old, and selected our inaugural CD: Too Legit to Quit.

Watching Hammer's 2013 flash before my eyes, in 220 Instagrams, I'm wholly inspired, as I'm sure you might be too.

Instagrams per day ratio: 1:1.66

NASA Goddard

The Instagram account of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center churned out some incredible images in 2014. There were 210 to be exact.

Instagrams per day ratio: 1:1.74

Mars Curiosity Rover

Of course, the only reason to send a rover to the red planet is for its resulting Instagram feed, right? Right.

45 Instagrams in 2013.

Instagrams per day ratio: 1:8.1

General Electric

A friend sent me this when I told her I was compressing everyone's Instagram feeds into GIFs. This isn't sponsored placement, just a lot of cool pictures of engines, whizzing by.

131 Instagrams in 2013.

Instagrams per day ratio: 1:2.8

New York City

Here's the million-follower-plus account's 2013 feed, created by Liz Eswein, all packed into one GIF.

254 Instagrams in 2013.

Instagram per day ratio: 1:1.44

Pope Francis

follow4pray

20 Instagrams in 2013.

Instagrams per day ratio: 1:18.25

@danstuckey