That's probably the best workaround that I've head thust far tbh.
My only concern is that, given the nature of the media, the OP is gonna get huge. For users w/ less powerful machines or slower internet, the barrage of gifs and images might get really heavy. I don't know if there are safety elements built into the site that stagger content loading, but I haven't heard anything from the devs when I've mentioned it in the past.
Thanks for the input, I'll have to update my OP. I've been adding updates through comment only.