There was a brief moment where people were doing truly beautiful things with GIFs. Rain falling on a street. Sun glinting through leaves. Subtle motion of a flag, or a neon sign flashing on and off in an otherwise static image, a single water droplet running down the side of a beer bottle... It seemed there was so much potential, and so much artistry/delicacy possible... And then the trend seemed to die off as soon as it started, and the technique is rarely used any more. (Cue the internet commentors who will now search to find the few places on the internet where you can see these kinds of GIFs, thereby proving... well... proving my point, actually.)
Cinemagraphs, you mean. Thing about cinemagraphs is they're a bitch to make, there are only so many things you want to see for very long, and in order to create one of any quality you need to be a decent photographer, a decent cinematographer and a decent hacker. I think the practice ran its course.
It takes some skill to do that kind of thing (or some clever software, but I'm not aware of any video/image editors with something like that built in). Grabbing a couple of frames of someone making a funny face is easy. Once gifs caught on again it was inevitable you'd get more of the easy thing than the hard thing.