A new trend is sweeping its way online, and involves adding entirely unnecessary explosions to GIF files.

Just when you thought the looping image format had reached peak GIF when some artist was flogging one for thousands of dollars on eBay, along comes the 80s’ action movie pyrotechnics you never knew you needed.

Collated under the hashtag #DirectedByMichaelBay – given the American auteur’s love of a well-timed fireball as a point of plot exposition – these GIFS have been popping up all over the Internet in the last few days, and certainly add a lot of explosive action into your favourite cat fails.

Try as you might to run away from this meme, it's coming for you...