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
Webp is a more modern image standard built for the web. Gif has major limitations, and animated gifs are actually bigger in size and worse quality than video files - these days, very few gifs you see on the web are actually .gif files. A while back imgur started converting them to mp4 behind the scenes.
Webp was built with animation in mind, so it works like gif and with much better file size. Even though it's relatively new it should have decent support in most programs that have been updated in the last few years - so you shouldn't necessarily have to jump through hoops to use it.