Why do we miss Vine so much? It was officially wiped from the internet as of January 17 this year. We have had nearly an entire year to get over our loss. Yet, with unwavering dedication, the internet has kept Vine’s heart and soul alive through social media outlets and conversational word vomits of references to the six-second pieces of art.
Brevity and randomness are the two words that best define Millennial Humor™.
“Oh god. Is this really going to be one of those articles that is all like ‘Millennials are weird! Blah blah blah!'” Yes. Yes, it is. We are weird.
Do you remember the “Charlie the Unicorn” videos that came out in like 2008? They were weird as hell. A unicorn got his kidneys stolen by two other unicorns. You’d also be lying if you told me that you did not go through a phase where you would say things like “Rawr! It means ‘I love you’ in dinosaur.” or some other trash like that.
We are weird… crazy weird. Vine matched our crazy.
Vine also didn’t require much of an attention span. The plot and all of its contents were wrapped in a whopping six seconds. As a group of people who is constantly on the go and constantly looking for the next best thing, Vine wasted no time. It wasted such little time that you could spend three minutes or two hours scrolling through different videos. More often than not, it was two hours.
What made a successful vine is the true epitome of Millennial Humor™. Vines that were extremely thought out and required staging or something along those lines were often frowned upon. Good Vines were just people being weird. Think of “Ms. Keisha,” the rat lady, Gavin, Jared (who can’t read), and Raven (who can’t swim). These were silly, often recorded by a friend. Except for Jared (who can’t read), all of these examples were just being organically idiotic. Millennials seem to appreciate realness over grandiose. There’s an entire article in the Huffington Post about how we aren’t buying diamonds.
Recently, there has been a rumor that a sequel to Vine is in the works, and that it shall be called V2.
Despite how much I believe that we worshipped Vine in its prime, I am unconfident that the sequel to it will thrive. What led to the downfall of the original app was the fact that people who were uncreative and vulgar, accused rapist Curtis Lepore and several other men and women who made sexist and racist vines in order to rise to fame and fortune, took over the app with their constant posting and collaborating with each other.
Eventually, everyone left. Chances are, these people will come back, disregard the randomness and brevity that we loved Vine for, and cause another app to go dormant. Also, Twitter bought the original Vine, and I’m thinking that, legally, they won’t take too kindly to the idea of a lookalike.
Vine will always exist in threads on Twitter. It will always exist in conversational references. Most of all, it will always exist in our hearts.
Cover image source: Pexels