Vine: The Rise and Fall of the Platform that Changed Humor Forever

By Sam Hwang

Nov 5, 2018

Have you ever had an experience like the following? You’re driving with some friends, when you suddenly pass an orange construction sign. “Road work ahead?” someone says, reading the black letters dramatically, followed by a chorus of almost hysteric “uh, yeah. I sure hope it does.” Perhaps you’ve seen someone exclaim “yeet!” before hurling an object across a room. Or maybe you’ve worn a fresh new pair of shoes, only to have your self-confidence shattered by the three most devastating words in the English language, “what are thoooooose!?” If you are familiar with any of these references, you have been exposed to a Vine, a short, six-second looped video popularized by a platform of the same name. Short adages like these have become a hallmark of Generation Z slang. In any high school, you’re bound to hear at least one Vine quoted on a daily basis - their ubiquitousness has truly made Vine one of the pioneers of modern culture. And yet, it had a remarkably short run, having lived for just five years before its tragic death on January 17, 2017 (Fiegerman, 2017). Many wondered how Vine, which was so beloved by its users, could ever have shut down. In reality, the company faced a myriad of underlying problems which prevented it from having a lasting prominence as a platform.

Vine’s story began in 2012, when founders Dom Hofmann, Rus Yusupov, and Colin Kroll sold the newly developed social media network to Twitter for $30,000. The two seemed to be a perfect pair - both Tweets and Vines placed limits on how much a user could share at one time, whether that be via a character count or a six second video length limit. Indeed, Vine was originally intended to be a supplemental feature to Twitter. However, it soon became something far greater than anyone could have imagined. People took the length cap as a challenge, resulting in a highly creative and experimental user base. Furthermore, its simplistic features made it easy to use, meaning users who opened the app always intended to either watch or create Vines. Then in 2013, Vine unveiled one of its only significant updates - the ability to use the front-facing camera on smartphones. This created a wave of “Vine stars,” including Zach King, Lele Pons, and Logan Paul - people who became known for consistently producing entertaining content, such as skits or jokes, each under six seconds in length. Ironically, it was the emergence of prominent Vine stars that played a large role in the company’s eventual downfall (Newton, 2016).

Vine provided a platform that some people were able to use to become Internet celebrities. This turned them into a commodity. Competitiveness among various social media networks quickly emerged. In June of 2013, Instagram began allowing its users to post 15 (and later 60) second videos. Instagram also allowed specific accounts to become “verified,” a sign of status, and featured the most popular accounts on the “explore page,” where they could increase their followings. Many former Vine stars recognized the lucrativeness of these features, and thus began migrating to Instagram. Vine failed to offer similar services, causing it to lose some of its major contributors, which resulted in a usership to decline. By October 2016, the percent of Android owners who used the app had fallen to 0.66%, from an all-time high of 3.64% in 2016. Vine was no longer profitable for Twitter (Newton, 2016). And so, that very month, Twitter made plans to kill off the platform. Three months later, it was dead (Fiegerman, 2017).

While the app may not be functioning anymore, Vine’s cultural impact is anything but gone - remarkably, they are still referenced and quoted frequently, both on the Internet and in real life. But why? Many analysts cite the way Vine loops its videos endlessly, “allowing the clockwork repetition and glaring mundanity to take on a semi-hypnotic rhythm” (Raftery, 2016). In the same sense that a word loses its meaning when repeated too many times, Vines, which may not be humorous in themselves, could quickly become hysterical (in a very nonsensical, millennial kind of way) - the looping feature provided by the platform actually compounded the humor latent in every video (Raftery, 2016). They were, in some ways, a return to a very raw and primitive kind of comedy - a stark contrast from the highly processed and synthetic comedy we see on late night TV. Furthermore, their short length made them easy to watch and easier to quote, creating a new type of slang. Why would you express sorrow and self-loathing following poor performance on an English test by saying “that English test was hard and I didn’t study enough,” when you could say “what up, I’m Jared, I’m 19…” instantly conveying the idea that you “... never f***ing learned how to read?”

It’s often said that you don’t know what you have until it’s gone. Alas, this seems to be the case with Vine. While many of the most popular Vines have been preserved on YouTube, there is a sense of nostalgia surrounding them, since no more Vines will ever be produced - they are the product of an era which has since come to a close. But what if things had been different? What if Vine had decided to implement features to allow it to compete with other social networks like Instagram and Snapchat? What if its corporate leadership had been more unified? Would Vine still be around today? Would we want it to be? Regardless of what is or was or could have been, Vine is dead, and it’s not coming back. All we can do now is revel in the gifts it left behind, while keeping its legacy alive.

Works Cited

Fiegerman, Seth. “Twitter Officially Shuts down Vine.” CNNMoney, Cable News Network, 17 Jan. 2017, money.cnn.com/2017/01/17/technology/vine-shuts-down/index.html.

Newton, Casey. “Why Vine Died.” The Verge, The Verge, 28 Oct. 2016, www.theverge.com/2016/10/28/13456208/why-vine-died-twitter-shutdown.

Raftery, Brian. “RIP Vine, the Platform That Made 6 Seconds Feel Like a Lifetime.” Wired, Conde Nast, 27 Oct. 2016, www.wired.com/2016/10/rip-vine/.

Image credits to Vine