what are .webp files and why has my online experience been plagued by them?
I don't know what a .webp file is but I don't like it. They're like a filthy prank version of the image/gif you're looking for. They make you jump through all these hoops to find the original versions of the files that you can actually do anything with.
Edit: honestly I assumed it had something to do with Google protecting themselves from image piracy shit
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It's just a new picture format that is arguably better than jpeg in many scenarios. It has been around for many years. Windows just refuses to do file associations correctly, so people hate it for no reason.
Here is an example of a non crap webp:
Is there a joke I'm missing here?
No, it's just a random blender render.
For anyone who doesn't know, you can easily change the file extension to .jpg and it'll still work.
But also know that it's not a jpeg, and it only works because whatever app is opening the jpeg is able to read the webp format.
You cannot rename a file from webp to jpg, but you can change the URL to .jpg and it will likely serve you the jpeg version. You can also convert webp to another format with dwebp or MS Paint.